About the journal

Scope

The Astrophysical Journal (ApJ) is devoted to recent developments, discoveries, and theories in astronomy and astrophysics. ApJ publications constitute significant new research that is directly relevant to astrophysical applications, whether based on observational results or on theoretical insights or modeling. For more information, please visit https://journals.aas.org/astrophysical-journal.

Why should you publish in ApJ?

• Open access: All articles published in ApJ are free to read and reuse under a CC-BY license. This means everyone everywhere can easily access your research when they need it.
• Society owned: ApJ is owned by the American Astronomical Society, a non-profit professional society for astronomers, planetary scientists, heliophysicists, and others working in the astronomical sciences. The journal is run by scientists, for scientists.
• Fast publication: We are committed to providing you with a fast, professional service to ensure rapid peer review and publication.
• Scope: ApJ is dedicated to publishing original astronomical research, with an emphasis on significant scientific results derived from observations. Publications in ApJ include descriptions of data capture, surveys, analysis techniques, astronomical interpretation, instrumentation, and software and computing.

Peer review

ApJ articles are generally sent to one reviewer, although at the discretion of the editor two or more may be used. If issues with the article cannot be resolved the editor may seek the assistance of a second reviewer. ApJ is dedicated to eliminating biases and allowing authors and reviewers to focus on the manuscript as written. Therefore, at the request of the authors, we use dual anonymous peer review where both reviewers and authors are anonymized by removing names, institution lists, and acknowledgement sections. Authors and reviewers can choose to sign their manuscript or review should they wish their identity to be known.

For more information about ApJ's peer review policies, please visit https://journals.aas.org/policies.

Open access

All articles published in The Astrophysical Journal will be published as gold open access (Gold OA) articles, which means that all content is freely available without charge to anyone. Authors retain copyright for manuscripts accepted by ApJ and grant AAS a license to publish under CC-BY 4.0. This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. For more information, please visit https://journals.aas.org/article-charges-and-copyright/#copyright.

Article publication charges

The AAS calculates article publication charges using an approach that counts "digital quanta," units of information in digital form that the author supplies. Digital quanta can include words, figures, tables, data components, and figures within a figure set.

For articles submitted on or after 1 January 2022, article publication charges will be assessed to authors according to the tiered structure below, with the tiers set by the total number of quanta in the publication.

For more information, please visit https://journals.aas.org/article-charges-and-copyright/.

Members of the AAS who renew (or join) during the Society's annual renewal drive from early September through December are eligible to receive a 15% discount the following year on their share of the author charges for one paper published in an AAS journal, i.e., The Astronomical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal, Letters, or Supplement, or The Planetary Science Journal.

Journal archive

Archival issues of The Astrophysical Journal going back to 1995 are freely available on IOPscience. Earlier issues from 1895–1995 are freely available on ADS here.