ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS - A JOURNAL OF ASTRONOMERS FOR ASTRONOMERS

Abstract

In the area of astrophysical research, a journal plays as important a role as a telescope. However, while the telescopes collect information and concentrate it to obtain high-quality images, a journal collects information, but diffuses it as widely as possible. The quality of a journal (as is that of a telescope) is proportional to its collecting power of high-quality papers and to its ability to bring the results to as wide as possible an astronomical community. We describe hereafter the efforts made over the past years to allow Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) fulfilling as well as possible these two quality criteria. After briefly recalling the circumstances leading to the creation of the journal in Sect. 1, we present in Sect. 2 its general organization. The recent changes in the structure of the journal, made to meet the present-day requirements of a science journal, are described in Sect. 3. Some statistics about the journal activity are given in Sect. 4. The last section describes future perspectives.