Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

• Published in: Knowledge organization Vol. 47; no. 3; pp. 257 - 266
• Main Author: Smith, Arthur
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Baden-Baden Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG 01.01.2020; Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH und Co KG
• Subjects: Physics; Subject heading schemes
• ISSN: 0943-7444
• DOI: 10.5771/0943-7444-2020-3-257

PhySH (Physics Subject Headings) was developed by the American Physical Society and first used in 2016 as a faceted hierarchical controlled vocabulary for physics, with some basic terms from related fields. It was developed mainly for the purpose of associating subjects with papers submitted to and published in the Physical Review family of journals. The scheme is organized at the top level with a two-dimensional classification, with one dimension (labeled “disciplines”) representing professional divisions within physics, and the other dimension (labeled “facets”) providing a conceptual partitioning of terms. PhySH was preceded in use by PACS (“Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme”), which was in turn preceded by more ad hoc approaches, and this history and related vocabularies or categorizations will also be briefly discussed.