The Board of Directors of Astronomy & Astrophysics invites applications for two Associate Editor positions in the following broad research areas:
The new Associate Editors should possess broad and recognised expertise in their respective fields, as demonstrated by a strong record of influential published research. Familiarity with additional fields of astrophysics will be considered an advantage for both positions. For the planetary science position, the ideal candidate would also have a good understanding of some aspects of exoplanets. Candidates from underrepresented groups and geographical regions are strongly encouraged to apply.
As part of A&A’s ongoing commitment to our authors and readers, Astronomy & Astrophysics has launched a short survey to better understand the publishing needs and priorities of our community.
In a rapidly evolving landscape of scientific publishing, it is more important than ever for A&A, a journal for astronomers by astronomers, to listen carefully to the community it serves. This survey explores key issues including open access, peer review, the role of AI, and journal selection criteria.
The 6th Scientific Writing for Young Astronomers (SWYA) school took place from 5–9 May 2025 in the historic town of Sintra, Portugal. Organised by Astronomy & Astrophysics and hosted at NH Sintra Centro, the event brought together 30 early-career researchers and 12 lecturers from across Europe and as far away as Chile.
On March 5th 2025, the A&A Board finalised their selection for this year’s A&A Awards, recognising the exceptional work of early-career researchers in the field.
We are pleased to introduce a new article format: the Review Article. These articles provide timely, focused, and high-quality assessments of topics relevant to the Journal. You can read more about them in our Editorial and explore the first published Review, authored by Conny Aerts and Andrew Tkachenko, titled "Asteroseismic modelling of fast rotators and its opportunities for astrophysics".
Since 2022, the Astronomy & Astrophysics Journal (A&A) has been published in open access under the Subscribe to open (S2O) model conditional on the renewals of library subscriptions, allowing unrestricted access to all papers published in the journal, regardless of geographic or economic barriers. We are strongly committed to maintaining this policy in the future, and continuing to publish A&A as a journal by astronomers, for astronomers.
The Board of Directors of Astronomy & Astrophysics invites applications for three Associate Editor positions in the following broad research areas:
The Board of Directors of Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) attributes two yearly awards for outstanding research published in A&A by individuals in the initial stages of their careers. With these two awards, the Board aims to recognise and contribute to the enthusiasm of the new generation of researchers who will shape the future of astronomy for decades to come.
The Scientific Writing for Young Astronomers (SWYA) School is returning in 2025. Scheduled to take place in Sintra, Portugal, from 5-9 May, this programme is designed to enhance the writing and communication skills of young researchers in astronomy. The SWYA programme provides a unique opportunity to learn from experienced mentors, share insights with peers, and strengthen the impact of your scientific work.
Registration is now open, and the deadline to apply is 15 November 2024. Register here.
Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) is hiring Language Editors
A&A is an academic journal based in Paris, France, that publishes high-quality research in English in all areas of astronomy and astrophysics. In recent years we have worked hard to increase the quality and scope of our language editing service, and we are now looking to fill two freelance language editing positions.
Paris, France, 03 May 2024: Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) is delighted to announce the continuation of its open access publication for the third consecutive year under the Subscribe to Open (S2O) model. As other astronomy journals have shifted to open access via the Gold (APC) route, A&A has persistently opted for this subscriber-based approach to maintain immediate open access, ensuring minimal disruption for both authors and subscribers. This decision underscores A&A's commitment to ensuring the broad accessibility of its high-quality research to the global scientific community, while also securing the journal's sustainability and financial stability.
On February 23rd, 2024, the A&A Board finalised their selection for this year's A&A Awards, recognising exceptional work of early-career researchers in the field.
The Board of Directors of A&A is pleased to announce that each recipient of the A&A Awards 2024 will be recognized with a cash prize of 2000 Euros. The A&A Awards underscore the commitment of the Journal to promote the scientific work of young researchers for their outstanding contributions to the field published in A&A.
We are excited to announce that after 20 years of reliable service, our Manuscript Management System (MMS) is nearing the end of its operational lifespan. In response to the changing landscape of academic publishing, we are migrating to NESTOR (New Editorial System Tool for Research)—a platform designed and developed specifically with A&A's needs in mind. The migration will commence on Monday, 6th November 2023 at 18:00 CET and conclude with NESTOR becoming operational on Thursday, 9th November 2023 at 13:00 CET. The migration aims to enhance your experience by offering advanced features, improved security, and an intuitive user interface tailored for authors, referees, and editors. As part of this migration, all existing data—including registered users, manuscripts, and associated data—will be securely transferred to the new system.
The Board of Directors of A&A attributes two yearly awards for outstanding research published in A&A by individuals in the initial stages of their careers. With these two awards, the Board wishes to express its appreciation, and contribute to the enthusiasm, of the new generation of researchers who will be shaping astronomy for the decades to come.
Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A), a leading international journal dedicated to the dissemination of original research across the broad spectrum of astronomical and astrophysical disciplines, is pleased to announce the appointment of three new associate editors to its editorial board: Vasiliki Pavlidou, Andreas Koch-Hansen, and Eva Schinnerer.
Paris, France, September 06, 2023. The annual meeting of the A&A Board of Directors was held in Heraklion, Greece on May 31st and June 1st 2023. During this meeting, the A&A Board, the governing body of the journal, made several key decisions. These included defining long-term scientific policies, establishing publishing guidelines, and appointing new Scientific Editors. Additionally, the Board recommended approval of the journal budget to the ESO Council and took other actions to maintain and develop A&A's status as one of the premier peer-reviewed journals in the field.
In the recently announced Journal Citation Reports™ and CiteScores, Astronomy and Astrophysics (A&A) continues to solidify its stellar reputation, maintaining an impressive Impact Factor of 6.5, showcasing consistent growth for the third consecutive year. Ranking 9 out of 69 in the Astronomy and Astrophysics category and firmly placed in quartile 1, A&A demonstrates its leading position in the field. With a high CiteScore of 9.8, A&A further establishes its significance. A&A now operates under the Subscribe to Open (S2O) open access model, promoting wider accessibility to its valuable research.
The 2023 A&A prize for PhD work published in A&A will be awarded on July 14th at the EAS Annual Meeting in Krakow. The award recognizes an article of exceptional quality published in A&A by an individual who defended a PhD in the last two years (https://www.aanda.org/news/2659-astronomy-astrophysics-awards-2023).
EDP Sciences, in collaboration with the European Southern Observatory (ESO), has announced the introduction of links between Astronomy&Astrophysics (A&A) articles and corresponding ESO datasets. This initiative establishes A&A as the first major astronomy journal to feature such links, significantly enhancing research discoverability and facilitating a more comprehensive reader experience.
Paris, France, 3 May 2023: Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) is pleased to announce that it will continue to publish its research in open access for the second consecutive year under the Subscribe to Open (S2O) model. In contrast to other core astronomy journals that have transitioned or will transition to open access via the Gold (APC) route, A&A has chosen a different approach to achieve immediate open access while minimizing any potential disruption to authors or subscribers. This decision reaffirms A&A's commitment to making its high-quality research easily accessible to the global scientific community, while also ensuring sustainability and financial stability for the journal.
The positions advertised are now filled, no more applications will be considered.
The Board of Directors of Astronomy & Astrophysics invites applications for three positions of Associate Editors. The positions to fill are in the following broad research areas:
We are pleased to share the Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) Subscribe to Open (S2O) 2022 Transparency Report. This is the first transparency report and provides a range of information related to the A&A Subscribe to Open program including:
The Board of Directors of A&A attributes two yearly awards for outstanding research published in A&A by individuals in the initial stages of their careers. With these two awards, the Board wishes to express its appreciation, and contribute to the enthusiasm, of the new generation of researchers who will be shaping astronomy for the decades to come.
In 2023, Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) will continue to be published under a Subscribe-to-Open (S2O) open access model.
Whether or not A&A’s content will be open access in 2023 depends on the level of subscriptions. This will be announced in the first quarter of 2023. If the level of subscriptions is insufficient to continue publishing A&A in open access, only subscribers will retain uninterrupted access to A&A.
We are pleased to report that Astronomy & Astrophysics’ impact factor has increased to 6.240 – its highest ever impact factor. It is ranked 12 in the Astronomy & Astrophysics category (Q1) and is clearly held in high regard by its community (its CiteScore also increased significantly this year). We look forward to further success following A&A’s transition to the Subscribe-to-Open (S2O) open access model in 2022.
Following the release of the latest CiteScores by Scopus, we are pleased to report that the 2021 CiteScore for Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) is 9.9 – an increase from 8.3 in 2020. It is now ranked 11/101 in Space and Planetary Science and 11/91 in Astronomy and Astrophysics (Q1). We are delighted to see the high-quality content published by A&A continuing to make an impact in the astronomy and astrophysics community. We look forward to further success following A&A’s transition to the Subscribe-to-Open (S2O) open access model in 2022.
Paris, France, 4 April 2022: Following the announcement made in October 2021 that Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) would move to the Subscribe-to-Open (S2O) open access model in 2022, the A&A board of directors and EDP Sciences are pleased to announce that A&A has now received the required level of support and will be published open access in 2022 under the terms of this transformative model.
The Board of Directors and the Editors of Astronomy & Astrophysics are deeply appalled by and concerned with the recent events in Ukraine where the sovereignty and independence of the country and the freedom and the lives of its citizens are suffering direct and brutal military threat by an act of war from its neighbour.
We condemn this reckless act of aggression by the Russian Federation on independent Ukraine, and ask for an immediate cease-fire. No political narrative can justify the loss of lives of innocent people. All disagreements can and must be solved by diplomatic means rather than bombing.
The Board of Directors and the Editors stand united with our Ukrainian colleagues and all Ukrainian people. Ukraine is part of the A&A community and one of the 27 sponsoring countries of Astronomy & Astrophysics. Ukrainians are fighting to defend the independence of their country and democracy. We appeal to our colleagues worldwide to immediately act and support every effort to help stop the atrocities and help the Ukrainian people.
With the continued support of subscribers, Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) journal will be published open access in 2022 under a Subscribe-to-Open model.
Paris, 19 October 2021: The A&A Board of Directors has announced that their journal will move to a Subscribe-to-Open (S2O) model. If libraries renew their subscriptions, A&A will be published in full open access in 2022. Since its launch in 1969, A&A has been publishing pioneering, peer reviewed scientific content. The transition to open access will extend access of its high-quality research to a worldwide audience – furthering the field of astronomy and astrophysics. Library subscriptions, together with substantial contributions from the A&A sponsoring countries, will cover publication and editorial costs and enable content to become open access.
Dear Colleagues,
The success of the A&A journal brings with it a rapid growth in the number of articles and pages which we have to process in production.
As a consequence of this success and to keep down production costs, we have decided to typeset the Appendices as camera-ready material. This means that our publisher (EDP Sciences) will no longer modify the Latex layout of the appendices.
However, some cases, such as an Appendix starting with a title followed by
a blank page, still need to be handled, and we then have to ask you a small
extra effort. As many of these issues are recurring ones that we have identified,
or are in the process of identifying, we have produced a short document to guide you through these changes.
Sincerely,
Thierry Forveille (Editor in Chief), David Elbaz (Managing Editor)
The Board of Directors of A&A attributes two yearly awards for outstanding research published in A&A by individuals in the initial stages of their careers. With these two awards, the Board wishes to express its appreciation, and contribute to the enthusiasm, of the new generation of researchers who will be shaping astronomy for the decades to come.
A&A embraces open, inclusive, and fair practices that reflect the culture and values of the worldwide community of astronomers. As such, the A&A Board of the Directors, at their June 2021 meeting, has supported a new policy for name changes. The Board recognizes that authors may change their names for many reasons, including gender identity change, marriage or divorce, religious conversion, or purely personal reasons, and supports the best practices put forth by COPE. A&A can and will change names by request from an author in all web versions of the author’s papers and their associated metadata. A&A will not be able to change names on paper-printed articles already disseminated in libraries across the world but it can and will change names on the PDF version of papers produced under the current production contract. Authors that request name changes should contact SAO/NASA ADS to make sure the name change propagates to their databases. A&A recommends that authors register with ORCID, which will identify their work independently of their name. For more details, please see the full EDP author name change policy.
The two winners of the first edition of the A&A awards for individuals in the initial stages of their careers were announced at the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society.
After undergraduate studies at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Miriam Keppler moved to MPIA in Heidelberg, where she completed both her master’s degree, which included an ERASMUS year in Grenoble, and her PhD, and where she is now a postdoc. She is probably best known for her discovery of a (proto)planet in a gap of a protoplanetary disk, which is the first such detection and something that planetary astronomers had been seeking for a long time. Protoplanetary disks and planets have both been imaged for over a decade, and gravitational interaction with an embedded planet has always been one leading explanation for the gaps that are observed in some of those disks, but Miriam Keppler's 2018 A&A paper first closed this loop by finding an uncontroverted observational example. Miriam Keppler has since built on this work by characterizing both disks, through ALMA and near-IR high contrast imaging, and planets, through near-IR spectrophotometry. The broad scope of her work is impressive for someone who completed her PhD less than a year ago and bodes very well for her future career.
After undergraduate studies and a master’s degree at the Copernicus University in Torun, Joanna Drazkowska moved to the Institute for Theoretical Astronomy in Heidelberg for her PhD, and she has since been a postdoc, first at the Institute for Computational Science in Zurich and now at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. Her work is on the theoretical side of planet formation in protoplanetary disks; she develops models of the growth of the solid phase from micron-size dust grains to Earth-size (and larger) planets. The 2016 A&A article for which she is receiving the A&A early career award is a milestone in that field as it was the first to overcome the fragmentation barrier, or meter-size barrier, which had blocked all previous planet formation models. Joanna Drazkowska showed that the "traffic-jam effect" (a local drop in the radial speed of the particles) that results from the radial drift of the solids can locally enhance the solid/gas density ratio to the point where planetesimals can form via a particle-gas hydrodynamical effect known as streaming instability, hence removing the previous decimeter limit to growth. This trailblazing study triggered many follow-up studies on mechanisms for dust pileup, both by Joanna Drazkowska and her collaborators and by others, and has been extremely influential.
The winners of the first edition of the A&A awards for "Best PhD Thesis" and "Early Career" will be announced very soon!
The ceremony will take place during the Opening Ceremony of European Astronomical Society (EAS) Annual Meeting (https://eas.unige.ch/EAS2021/) on Monday 28 June, at 14:20. https://eas.kuoni-congress.info/2021/programme/
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A), the Board of Directors of A&A is establishing two awards for outstanding research published in A&A by individuals in the initial stages of their careers. With these awards, the Board wishes to express its appreciation, and contribute to the enthusiasm, of the new generation of researchers who will be shaping astronomy for the decades to come.
The 2020 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to astronomers Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for their parallel discoveries of the supermassive compact object at the center of our Galaxy, and to mathematical physicist Roger Penrose for his theoretical work on black holes.
Over the past 30 years, the teams led by Genzel and Ghez have used telescopes in Chile and Hawaii, respectively, to track the orbits of stars around the very center of the Milky Way. This has shown that its central ~100 astronomical units contain 4 million solar masses and yet have very low luminosity; this result is extremely hard to explain with anything but a black hole. Recently, Reinhard Genzel's team spearheaded the development of the GRAVITY instrument for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer to improve the tracking precision of the Galactic center stars by an order of magnitude. In a series of A&A articles, the team used the exquisite GRAVITY measurements to pinpoint the properties of the central mass, measure the variable gravitational redshift it inflicts on passing stars, observe the Schwarzschild precession of their orbits, and measure the motions of gas clouds near the last stable orbit.
A&A warmly congratulates all three recipients of the prize, and thanks Reinhard Genzel and the GRAVITY team for choosing our journal to present their spectacular results. A very nice summary of those results, presented by GRAVITY team member Guy Perrin at the 50th anniversary celebration of A&A, can be viewed on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkQCauze-A8.
Astronomy & Astrophysics, published by EDP Sciences, presents a series of articles on the Solar Orbiter space mission and its ten instruments.
Solar Orbiter, an ESA-NASA collaboration, was launched on February 10, 2020. It carries the most comprehensive payload flown in the inner heliosphere to date, with six remote-sensing instruments that image the Sun and its surroundings as well as four in situ instruments for monitoring the immediate environment of the spacecraft. A series of Venus and Earth gravity assists will adjust the probe’s perihelion to a minimum of 0.28 AU and raise the inclination of the orbital plane to over 33 degrees. This will allow the first-ever look at the solar poles. Thus, Solar Orbiter is the conceptual combination of two missions: an out-of-ecliptic in situ probe (like Ulysses) and one that brings state-of-the-art telescopes (which are an improvement over those of, e.g., SOHO and SDO) closer to the Sun than ever before as well as over the solar poles. Solar Orbiter will address the most pressing open questions of solar physics, and its results will remain unique for at least the next decade.
All calibrated science data will be made available three months after their reception on the ground, in line with the open-data philosophy of the mission. This publication is coordinated with the release of the first data from the four in situ instruments through the public ESA Solar Orbiter archive. This special feature was coordinated by Yannis Zouganelis and the Solar Orbiter teams.
To read the Solar Orbiter mission special issue, please click here.
We are delighted to announce that Françoise Combes, one of the associate editors of Astronomy & Astrophysics, has been awarded the CNRS 2020 Gold Medal. Françoise is a professor at the Collège de France and hold its chair in “Galaxies and Cosmology”. She is also an astrophysicist at the Paris Observatory and a member of the French Academy of Sciences.
This is a significant achievement. Not only does the CNRS, the French research agency, only award one Gold Medal a year across all academic fields, but, apart from the physicists Alain Brillet et Thibault Damour who received the Gold Medal for their contribution to the detection of gravitational waves in 2017, the last recipient in astronomy was Evry Schatzman in 1983. Previous Gold Medal recipients include most post-1950 French Nobel Prize laureates, so there is every reason to extend our congratulations for this very special moment.
This Gold Medal builds on the CNRS Silver Medal Françoise received in 2001. She has been an associate editor of Astronomy & Astrophysics since 2003, so it is our great honour and pleasure to work closely with Françoise on one of the leading original research journals in its field.
Read the CNRS article “The astrophysicist Françoise Combes receives the CNRS 2020 Gold Medal” or read the CNRS press release.
Astronomy & Astrophysics, published by EDP Sciences, has published a special feature on the results from the ESA Planck mission, based on data released by ESA and the Planck Collaboration in July 2018.
This 2018 data release has significantly lower systematic residuals for both Planck instruments, LFI and HFI, and a more accurate photometric calibration for HFI. These calibration improvements are most significant over the largest angular scales and for the polarized emission. The resulting frequency maps were used to separate the diffuse sky emission into maps of the cosmic microwave background, the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, the cosmic infrared background, and the Galactic thermal dust, carbon monoxide, anomalous dust, free-free, and synchrotron emission.
The 12 articles in the special issue describe the released data products and present scientific results extracted by the Planck Collaboration from this data. The six-parameter ΛCDM model continues to provide an excellent fit to the cosmic microwave background data at high and low redshift. Planck measures five of those six parameters to better than 1%, and together with external datasets, sets tight limits to many possible extensions of the model. Beyond those immediate results, the Planck 2018 dataset constitutes an essential treasure trove and will have lasting importance for both cosmology and foreground astrophysics. This special feature was coordinated by Jan Tauber and the Planck Science Team.
To read the Planck 2018 results special issue, please click here.
To support all researchers during the Covid-19 pandemic, EDP Sciences has opened the journals content on our site from 2018-2020 so it freely available for all to read.
Astronomy & Astrophysics is pleased to release the full length (1 hour) historical documentary discussing how the journal has evolved over the past 50 years since the first issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics was published in January 1969. It follows a shorter version published earlier this year.
As Astronomy & Astrophysics celebrates its 50th anniversary, it invites you to explore how the journal has evolved from a European publication into a truly international journal, and what this means for astronomers today. The documentary considers the future of academic publishing and how this is likely to impact astronomy and astrophysics research.
Astronomy & Astrophysics, published by EDP Sciences, has published a special issue on the LOFAR telescope which is being used to survey the full northern celestial hemisphere in the 120 MHz band with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity.
This special issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics presents the first data release of the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey, along with selected early results.
The release also includes an extracted catalog of 326 000 sources, complete to 0.35 mJy for point sources. 70% of these sources are associated with an optical counterpart, and photometric redshifts are also provided. The early results of the survey span a wide range of mostly extragalactic topics, from the physics of active galactic nuclei to the intergalactic magnetic field, by way of interstellar medium and clusters of galaxies.
To read the special issue, please Click here
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Paris, France 18 December 2018. Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) the international Journal that publishes papers on all aspects of astronomy and astrophysics and one of the leading journals in its field, has signed a two-year transformative Open Access agreement with the Max Planck Society in Germany. Under this agreement, funds previously paid by the Max Planck Digital Library for subscriptions will, instead, be converted into a publishing fund, enabling corresponding authors from the Max Planck Institutes to publish their articles open access in A&A, and at the same time, granting access to the journal’s content to all Max Planck researchers.
The Board of Directors invites applications for three positions of A&A Associate Editors. The positions to fill are in the following broad research areas:
Astronomy & Astrophysics, published by EDP Sciences, has published a special issue on the second data release (DR2) of the Gaia space mission which has been recording astrometric and photometric measurements since July 2014.
Gaia is an astrometric space observatory developed by the European Space Agency. It is devoted to measuring the position, distance and movement of stars. Gaia DR2 is based on the analysis on the first 22 months of the mission and the data release gives an insight into its full potential. It represents “a game-changing leap for stellar and Galactic astronomy” ( Forveille, T., Kotak, R., Shore, S. and Tolstoy, E., A&A 616, E1 (2018) ).
To read the special issue, please click here
The Board of Directors of Astronomy & Astrophysics invites applications for the position of Managing Editor, which will become vacant in July, 2018.
15th May 2018 marks the beginning of the 50th anniversary of Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A)1,2. A year-long programme of events will begin today at the annual meeting of A&A Board of Directors at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Garching, Germany.
The anniversary marks a significant milestone for one of the leading original research journals in the field. Since its launch half a century ago as the fusion of 6 national journals and in collaboration with ESO, A&A has published nearly 650 volumes and special issues, disseminating the highest quality scientific research to the academic community. Since 2008, A&A has been also supporting early career researchers through its Scientific Writing for Young Astronomers residential seminars to provide guidance on writing for professional publications.
The anniversary will be marked by several events with a highlight at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Vienna, Austria (August 20th- 31st 2018).
1The member countries of A&A are: Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland
2A&A is currently published by EDPS.
Astronomy & Astrophysics, published by EDP Sciences, has published a special issue presenting observations and analyses of the plane of the Milky Way, as surveyed by the multi-national High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S) Collaboration.
H.E.S.S is a system of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes that detect cosmic gamma ray sources and air showers of charged particles. The largest telescope in the H.E.S.S array - based in Namibia – is constructed with a mirror that is 28cm in diameter.
To read the special issue, please click here.
The Board of Directors invites applications for three positions of A&A Associate Editors. Read more
Revised scope for A&A Letters.
The latest Journal Citation Reports® recently announced by Clarivate Analytics* have confirmed that Astronomy & Astrophysics’ Impact Factor has remained above 5. Astronomy & Astrophysics sits with the Astrophysical Journal as the two highest ranked titles publishing original research in the Astronomy and Astrophysics category.
In addition to the highest quality research papers, A&A publishes important special issues from the missions of Planck, Herschel, ROSETTA and Gaia.
*2016 Journal Citation Reports® (JCR) Clarivate Analytics, 2017
