publications - Sending a paper to a 'Letters' journal

I am at the cusp of finishing my PhD, and my advisor and I have decided that it is time to publish since there seems to be no hole in the theories that I propose. I have always maintained that I'd like to get a publication in the good letters section such as Physical Review Letters and then submit a longer manuscript to a more specific journal (in my field that would be the Physics of Fluids). My advisor isn't a fan of arXiv as he see it only for preprints with little advantage as it would be easier to just circulate my manuscript among 10-15 established people in the field.

So my question is/questions are:

1. Is it useful to send in a manuscript to a letters section of a prestigious journal such as the PRL for quick dissemination of my work as well as brownie points for having published in the PRL despite a really high rejection rate.


2. Are letters section of journals really quick (with a short submission to publication time)?


3. As a contingency plan, a rejection would mean what exactly to my career/immediate future?


4. I have always had a soft spot for arXiv since several important works were first disseminated on it but I find that in the engineering community there is still some resistance to arXiv, any comments?

As a side note, I have read the several questions about arXiv on academia.SE and somehow I am not entirely convinced that a young academecian would gain much from publishing in arXiv than in a regular journal.

Answer

Okay, let's try to attack your questions in order. I assume from your journal examples that you're working in physics, so I'll focus mainly on that in the answer…

1. 
   

   Useful compared to what? Note that not all “letters” journals have a very high visibility, so it really depends. If we're talking Phys. Rev. Lett. in particular, then I’d say yes, having a paper published in PRL looks will look good on your CV. Especially on the short term, it can help publicize your results. (In the longer term, you can hope that your results may get the attention they merit, wherever you publish them.)

   
   


2. 
   

   It depends which journal, and compared to what. In high-level journals, you will know very quickly (within a week) if your manuscript is sent to reviewers or just rejected by the editor. After that, review time can take 2–3 months, and be longer if your paper is controversial (i.e. if referees aren't unanimous).

   
   
   

   On the other hand, some letter journals strongly emphasize short review times. The recently-launched J. Phys. Chem. Lett. has submission-to-publication times of 4 to 6 weeks, which is unmatched as far as I know (and the quality looks good).

   
   


3. 
   

   Rejection is not part of your academic record, so it means the same as absence of publication. If you intend to publish in a journal that does not frown upon it, you can put the manuscript on arxiv as well as submit to the journal, that way there is nothing for you to lose.

   
   


4. 
   

   No comment on that point.

   
   

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On the matter of publishing in Phys. Rev. Lett., the best advice you can get will be “Successful Letters in Physical Review Letters: An editor's perspective”.