[Prof. Young Kuk, Jisoon Ihm] Outstanding Referees of the APS

Prof. Young Kuk and Porf. Jisoon Ihm are selected and honored with the Outstanding Referee designation.

The American Physical Society has initiated a highly selective award program to recognize scientists who have been exceptionally helpful in assessing manuscripts for publication in the APS journals. The program will annually recognize 130 of the 42,000 currently active referees, but in its first two "catch-up" years larger groups of 534 in 2008 and 340 in 2009 have received the Outstanding Referee designation. Like Fellowship in the APS and other organizations, this is a lifetime award. In initiating the program, APS expresses appreciation to all referees, whose efforts in peer review not only keep the standards of the journals at a high level, but in many cases also help authors to improve the quality and readability of their articles뾢ven those that are not published by APS.

The selection of Outstanding Referees was made based on two decades of database records on over 50,000 referees (some no longer in active service) who have been called upon to review manuscripts, of which 34,400 were submitted in 2008. Most of the referees chosen in the first two years of the program have given dedicated service for many years. The basis for selection was the quality, number and timeliness of their reports, without regard for membership in the APS, country of origin, or field of research. Individuals with current or very recent direct connections to the journals, such as editors and editorial board members, were excluded. The decisions were difficult and there are many excellent referees who have not yet been recognized. In the first two years of the program the lifetime of work contributed by a referee was emphasized but in future years, the focus will be on the more recent work of referees.

The 2009 honorees come from 35 different countries, with large contingents from the US, Germany, UK, Canada, and France. The names of all honorees so far are listed at http://publish.aps.org/OutstandingReferees. All have been notified, and have been sent a lapel pin and a certificate. The Outstanding Referees are to be congratulated and thanked for their outstanding service to the physics community.

About the APS: The American Physical Society is one of the world's largest professional body of physicists, representing over 47,000 physicists in academia and industry in the US and internationally. It has offices in Ridge, NY and College Park, MD. For more information: www.aps.org.