I got today an email from Physical Review Letters announcing a reinvigoration of their acceptance standards. This seems to me as a very necessary measure to cope with the increasing publishing inflation of the last years.

From: PRL Editors
Date: Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 6:16 PM
Subject: Reinvigorating PRL Standards
To: me

Dear Dr. ---,
We at Physical Review Letters always look for ways to do better at our core mission, which is to provide the physics community with accounts of crucial research in a convenient format. PRL at present publishes about 80 Letters per week, and we Editors, and many readers of PRL, have concluded that these cannot all discuss crucial research, and that it is too large a number to be convenient. This view is also held by our editorial board and by others, as we know from a wide range of exchanges with our colleagues.

As a result we will reaffirm the standards for acceptance for PRL. The criteria will not change fundamentally, but we will work to apply them with increased rigor. To meet the PRL criteria of importance and broad interest, a Letter must
1) substantially advance a particular field; or
2) open a significant new area of research; or
3) solve a critical outstanding problem, or make a significant step toward solving such a problem; or
4) be of great general interest, based, for example, on scientific aesthetics.

...

For this effort to be successful, authors must submit only results that meet at least one of the above criteria. Referees must judge breadth of interest based on impact both in the specific field and across field boundaries, and must support favorable recommendations with substantive reasons to publish. Editors will be more discriminating in both their own evaluation of manuscripts and their interpretation of referee reports. In support of these efforts we will revise our statement of Policies and Practices and our Referee Response Form.
...
We note that there are many papers that are valid and important in their area, but are not at the level of importance or broad interest that is necessary for PRL. There are also papers of great importance for their field and/or of broad interest that simply cannot be presented in a letter format. The Physical Review journals have high standards and unmatched reputations and are natural venues for such papers.
We know that these changes will lead to some disappointments. We are convinced, however, that a more selective PRL will communicate the best physics more efficiently.
Sincerely,
The Editors
Please see our Editorial: Improving PRL

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In "The Wisdom of Crowds", James Surowiecki describes an interesting episode: In 1968, the submarine Scorpion got lost in the north Atlantic and the navy had only a general idea of its location. To determine the position of the lost ship, various independent experts in different disciplines where asked to give their opinion about the location. Later, by weighting these answers, a naval officer managed to predict the position of the Scorpion within within 220 yards.

The idea now is to try to predict the position of the lost AF 447 flight through a similar scheme. To such end I ask you to examine the available data in newspapers and send the coordinates (latitute + longitude) where you think the main remainings are located by commenting to this post. To ensure that each of your posts is independent there will be a delay between your submission and the moment when the comment appears online.

Please send the coordinates in the format: X.XXXXN XX.XXXXW, or as a distance (XXX.XXX km N/S and XXX.XXX km E/W) from the last transmission point (3.5777N 30.3744W). More info on the Air France 447 flight available in wikipedia and links therein.

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