As a component of online publication, APS will publish figures online in color whenever the author supplies them as color PostScript files, without the costs associated with print publication of color figures. "Color online only" will occur without special charges to authors. Beginning with articles sent to our production vendors on June 1, 2002, Physical Review E and Physical Review Letters will serve as test journals for the production workflow of this process. If successful, the service would soon be extended to the other Physical Review journals.
In order to accomplish this service, any usable color figures included in an electronic manuscript submission for PRE and PRL will appear in the online journal in color. Authors will have the opportunity to review the color figures in the pdf proof of their article. Please follow the instructions for submitting color figures located on the APS website at http://authors.aps.org/esubs/guidelines.html#figures [1].
Those who publish in color in the print journal will continue to incur the current color processing costs and must complete the associated color authorization form which may be found at http://forms.aps.org/author/colfigauth.pdf [1].
If an author chooses to submit color figures that will appear in black and white in print, care must be taken to ensure that captions and text references to the figures are appropriate for both the online color and print black and white versions, and that the figure will be sufficiently clear in both versions. Note that the black and white figure in print will be derived from the color PostScript file; the complications to the workflow if different versions of the figure were submitted by the author would likely prevent us from offering this as a free service.
Links:
[1] http://pre.aps.org/http