Authors in most Physical Review journals have the option to pay an article-processing charge (APC) whereby their accepted manuscripts are made available barrier-free and open access. These manuscripts are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (CC-BY) [1], the most permissive of the CC licenses, which permits authors and others to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work, provided that proper credit is given. The APCs ($1700 for Physical Review A-E and $2700 for Physical Review Letters) have been set to cover all costs, thus providing a sustainable model. These charges will decrease the need for subscription revenue and will help to keep APS's subscription price-per-article among the lowest of any physics journals.
Authors seeking to publish articles under the CC-BY license should select this option when they are asked to complete the appropriate Publication Rights [2] documentation. Accepted CC-BY articles will not be prepared for publication until APCs are paid in full.
Links:
[1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
[2] http://publish.aps.org/pub_rights.html