REVTeX Home Page

Current version: REVTeX 4.1 (released August 11, 2010)

Please send all comments to revtex@aps.org.

Release of REVTeX 4.1 (patch level 2)

Please note: REVTeX 4.1 now requires the latest version of the natbib package, version 8.31a which was released in November 2009. Please be sure to upgrade your natbib (see below).

August 11, 2010: A new release of REVTeX 4.1 has been made public. The following bugs were addressed:

• AIP BibTeX style files properly handle journal article titles.
• Pasting a .bbl file into the main TeX file no longer results in duplicate numbering of references.
• BibTeX style files no longer put in spurious comma after journal name.
• Improved compatibility with non-REVTeX BibTeX style files.
• BibTeX style files no longer warn when both an editor and author are present in an @BOOK entry.
• Review of Modern Physics BibTeX style file now correctly handles muliple references by an author in the same year.
• Fixed linking of DOI when not using pdflatex.
• Fixed listing of videos.
• Improved handling of ISSN and ISBN fields in bibliography entries.
• Fixed citation of a reference with long author lists in AIP author-year styles.
• Fixed punctuation of authors in references.

March 15, 2010: Bugs addressed in the first patch level release:

• Using the same \affiliation more than once results in some authors not getting any affiliation at all.
• reftest was left out of the distribution
• For RMP, the \cite command doesn't enclose the citation in parentheses properly.
• For RMP, the .bst files don't properly handle several cases including a book with editors, but no authors

In addition, there were many other improvements including the handling of footnotes, compatibility with packages such as lscape and hyperref, and punctuation in bibliographies. Also, the "long" version of the BibTeX style files have been removed from the distribution. The remaining style files have been enhanced to provide the same functionality when the longbibliography class option is used.

Introduction to REVTeX 4

REVTeX 4.1 is a set of macro packages designed to be used with LaTeX2e and is well-suited for preparing manuscripts for submission to the journals of the American Physical Society (APS) and American Institute of Physics (AIP). The changes from REVTeX 4 include bug fixes, improved functionality, and support for a wider range of journals, including those of the American Institute of Physics (AIP). REVTeX 4.1 was developed jointly by APS, AIP, and Arthur Ogawa. Additional work was done by Patrick Daly to incorporate our suggested improvements into natbib 8.3 to address many new features concerning bibliographies. natbib 8.31a or later is required to run REVTeX 4.1.

Major changes in REVTeX 4.1 include:

• Added support for APS journal Physical Review Special Topics -- Physics Education Research
• Added support for AIP journals. There is now an explicit "aip" society option along with support for AIP journals. Please see the Author's Guide to AIP Substyles for REVTeX 4.1. In addition, REVTeX 4.1 provides an extensible system for the easy addition of new collections of journals.
• Endnotes now ordered correctly. Endnotes in the bibliography now appear in the correct order, interleaved with citations.
• Multiple references in a single citation supported using a special starred (*) argument to the \cite command. One of the major new features in 4.1 made possible by the joint work on "natbib 8.3". Multiple BibTeX entries can be combined into a single \bibitem command.
• Free form text can be prepended and appended to a bibliographic entry using the special starred (*) argument to the \cite command. Often a citation in the bibliography will have explanatory text such as See also or and references therein before and after the actual citation. The new REVTeX 4.1 \cite command allows the specification of both text to precede and follow a citation.
• Structured Abstracts. Use of the "description" environment in abstracts now provides for "structured" abstracts.
• Figures referring to videos now supported. A "figure" may now be labeled as a Video by using the "video" environment. A frame from the video may be included in the figure and a URL to link the caption's label to the online video also may be included. There is also a \listofvideos command.
• Better support for arXiv.org in BibTeX Three more BibTeX fields have been added: "SLACcitation", "archivePrefix", and "primaryClass" in addition to the existing field "eprint".

Authors submitting to APS or AIP journals using TeX should use REVTeX 4.1. Proper use of the commands provided by REVTeX greatly aids the peer-review and the publication process, reducing the chances for the introduction of errors.

Documentation

The documentation is included in the full REVTeX 4.1 distribution However, for convenience the documentation is also available from here in PDF format:

• REVTeX 4.1 Author's Guide
• APS Author Guide for REVTeX 4.1
• Author's Guide to AIP Substyles for REVTeX 4.1
• What's New in REVTeX 4.1
• REVTeX 4.1 Command Options Summary

Download and Install REVTeX 4.1

The REVTeX 4.1 may be downloaded directly from here as revtex4-1.zip. REVTeX 4.1 is also available on CTAN.

To install REVTeX 4.1, unzip the revtex4-1.zip file. This will unpack a README file as well as an additional zip file, revtex4-1-tds.zip. The README file contains information about how to unpack and install the revtex4-1-tds.zip file. Briefly, this zip file contains all of the files in the REVTeX 4.1 distribution in the standard "TeX Directory Structure" (TDS) layout. Usually the file can be unzipped directly in the local tree of your TeX distribution (for TeX Live, this would be in the texmf-local directory).

Required Packages

The most common problem encountered when first trying to use REVTeX 4.1 is missing or outdated packages. REVTeX 4.1 requires the natbib package (version 8.31a or higher), url.sty, textcase.sty, and bm.sty files at the very least. AMS-LaTeX is required as well for certain documentclass optons. Most pacakges are available from CTAN, but you will be better served by installing an up-to-date TeX/LaTeX2e distribution such as TeX Live or MikTeX.

• natbib: This can be downloaded from the contrib/natbib directory on CTAN. Be sure to get version 8.3 or later (8.31a was released in November 2009, so it is likely you will need to update natbib).
• url.sty: This can be downloaded from the contrib/url directory on CTAN.
• textcase.sty: This can be downloaded from the contrib/textcase directory on CTAN. Note that you need to download textcase.dtx and textcase.ins. textcase.sty is generated by running latex on the textcase.ins file.
• bm.sty: If you are missing bm.sty, you have a very incomplete or outdated LaTeX2e distribution and you should upgrade your distribution.
• AMS-LaTeX: Version 2.0 or higher is needed. It is available from www.ams.org/tex/.

Contact us

Please consult the Frequently Asked Questions below first. Email revtex@aps.org if you need more help with REVTeX 4.1 or with submissions to APS journals (Physical Review Letters, Physical Review A-E, Physical Review X, Reviews of Modern Physics, or the Physical Review Special Topics journals). For issues concerning AIP's journals, please contact tex@aip.org instead.

Frequently Asked Questions

REVTeX FAQ:

• Downloading REVTeX4
• Installing REVTeX4
• Using REVTeX4
• Page Length
• Bugs/Workarounds
• BibTeX
• Figures
• Changes from REVTeX 4