Advances in Astronomy

About Advances in Astronomy

Advances in Astronomy at a glance

Advances in Astronomy is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that publishes original research articles and review articles in all areas of astronomy and astrophysics. That sentence is the journal's own statement of its aims, preserved in the journal's description as carried by library and publisher sources, and it is deliberately broad: this is a generalist astronomy journal, not a title devoted to one class of object, one wavelength regime or one technique. Its print ISSN is 1687-7969 and its electronic ISSN is 1687-7977. The journal was established in 2008 as a Hindawi title, and its publishing identity now sits within the Wiley and Hindawi open-access programme, with John Wiley and Sons Ltd named as publisher in current indexing records and the United Kingdom given as country of publication.

A note on the underlying directory record. The Journals World record for this post stores the publisher in its body text only as the number 60, while its publisher taxonomy names John Wiley and Sons Ltd; it labels the journal Q4, gives an h-index of 35 and coverage of 2010–2026. The numeric publisher is a garbled structured field. The fuller truth, set out below, is a title founded by Hindawi in 2008 whose publishing arrangements have since been folded into Wiley's open-access programme — a history that explains why different directories name different publishers for the same ISSNs, and why an author must check the journal's current Wiley journal page rather than rely on any directory, including this one, for submission mechanics.

A generalist open-access astronomy journal, and what that means

Astronomy is served by a small number of very large, long-established general journals, by society journals with deep roots, and by a wide tier of specialist titles. A generalist open-access journal founded in 2008 occupies a distinct position in that ecology. It can take a sound paper on any astronomical topic without asking whether the topic fits a narrow remit; it publishes continuously rather than holding accepted papers for an issue; and it makes the published article free to read, which matters in astronomy more than in many fields because the field's readers include observatory staff, data scientists, teachers and serious amateurs in institutions and countries without large subscription budgets.

Breadth is also the journal's main editorial challenge, and authors should understand it as such. A generalist journal must find competent reviewers across the whole of astronomy and astrophysics, from solar physics to cosmology, and it cannot rely on a small, stable community of referees who share a sense of what counts as a contribution. That places more weight on the manuscript itself: a paper for a broad journal must establish its own context, state its method in a way a competent astronomer outside the sub-field can follow, and make its contribution explicit rather than assumed. The papers that succeed in generalist venues are usually the ones that are best written for a reader who is expert in astronomy but not in the author's niche.

Scope in detail

The stated scope is all areas of astronomy and astrophysics, for original research and for reviews. In practice, that covers the following territories, each of which the journal's indexed record shows it publishing.

Observational astronomy across the spectrum. Papers reporting observations from ground-based and space-based facilities, in optical, infrared, radio and higher-energy regimes: photometry, spectroscopy, imaging, astrometry and time-domain work, presented with the calibration and error treatment that make results reusable by others.

Stellar, galactic and extragalactic astrophysics. Studies of stars and stellar populations, of the structure and evolution of the Milky Way and other galaxies, of active galactic nuclei and of large-scale structure, whether the evidence is observational, theoretical or computational.

Cosmology. Work on the origin, composition and evolution of the universe, on dark matter and dark energy, on the cosmic microwave background and on tests of cosmological models — a sub-field in which a broad journal must be especially careful to distinguish a genuine test of a model from a restatement of one, and where authors should expect referees to press hard on assumptions.

Planetary science and exoplanets. Research on the solar system, on planetary atmospheres and surfaces, on small bodies, and on the detection and characterisation of exoplanets and their host stars. Indexing records place the journal in a Space and Planetary Science category as well as in Astronomy and Astrophysics, which reflects this part of its content.

Solar and heliospheric physics, and space science. Studies of the Sun, of solar activity and its effects, and of the interplanetary environment, provided the paper is framed as astronomy or astrophysics rather than as operational space-weather reporting.

Theoretical and computational astrophysics, methods and data. Modelling, simulation, and new analytical or computational methods, including work on astronomical data processing and on the use of survey data. Method papers should demonstrate the method on real or realistically simulated data and should state its limits as clearly as its advantages.

Review articles. The journal's aims name review articles alongside original research. A useful review for a generalist journal is one that a reader entering a sub-field can start from: it defines terms, orders a literature that has grown disorderly, identifies where the evidence is strong and where it is merely repeated, and ends with questions that can actually be worked on. A review that summarises the author's own group's papers in sequence is not that article.

Publisher history: Hindawi, Wiley, and why directories disagree

The journal was established in 2008 by Hindawi, the open-access publisher then based in Cairo with a London presence, whose model was a large portfolio of broad and specialist open-access titles funded by article processing charges. Hindawi's journals were later brought into a publishing partnership with Wiley and then into Wiley's ownership, and Hindawi titles were progressively presented within the Wiley journal platform; the Hindawi brand was subsequently retired from active publishing after Wiley's well-publicised difficulties with compromised special issues and paper-mill submissions across parts of that portfolio, which led to large-scale retractions and to the closure or transfer of a number of titles. Against that background, the survival and continued indexing of an individual title is itself information: a journal that remains listed, with a continuing volume record and current indexing coverage extending to 2026 in the directory record, is a title that has been carried forward rather than closed.

For an author, the practical consequences are three. First, publisher names in older sources — Hindawi Ltd, Adam House, 1 Fitzroy Square, London, in older journal-guide records — and publisher names in current indexing records — John Wiley and Sons Ltd — can both be historically accurate for different periods, so a disagreement between directories is not evidence that one of them has confused this journal with another. Second, submission, licensing and fee arrangements are those of the current platform, and must be read there. Third, the wider Hindawi history makes due diligence more important, not less: before submitting to any title that passed through that portfolio, confirm on the publisher's current journal page that the title is actively publishing, that its editorial board is named and current, and that the volume record shows recent, regular publication.

Open access, charges and licensing

The journal is an open-access title, and open access in the Wiley and Hindawi programme is funded by an article processing charge payable on acceptance, with articles published under Creative Commons licences — the programme's standard options, described in university library guidance on the Wiley and Hindawi agreement, are CC-BY, CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-ND and CC-BY-NC-ND, with the author's institution or funder frequently paying through a read-and-publish agreement where one exists.

Fee figures for this title published by third-party journal-finder sites disagree with each other, and for once the disagreement can be settled from a registry record rather than left open: the journal's DOAJ record, checked directly for this profile, states an article processing charge with maxima of USD 1,240, GBP 840 and EUR 1,080, and points to Wiley's open-access page for the journal. The two aggregator figures in circulation — about USD 1,080 and about USD 1,240 — appear to have taken the euro and dollar figures respectively and mislabelled one of them. This profile therefore adopts the DOAJ-recorded figure of USD 1,240, attributed to that record. Even a registry figure should be confirmed on the journal's own page on Wiley's platform at the time of submission, together with any waiver or agreement coverage that applies to your institution, and authors should check whether their funder's open-access policy is satisfied by the licence options offered. Waivers and discounts for authors without funds have historically formed part of this publishing programme, but their current terms, too, must be confirmed with the publisher rather than assumed from older guidance.

Indexing and metrics, with sources and limits

Indexing records for the journal list it in Scopus and in the Science Citation Index Expanded within the Web of Science. It is also listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, and on that point this profile can be precise because the listing was verified directly: a search of the DOAJ search API by this journal's print ISSN, carried out for this profile, returned exactly one record, for Advances in Astronomy, with publisher Wiley in the United Kingdom, electronic ISSN 1687-7977 and print ISSN 1687-7969 matching this journal, and the article processing charge described in the fees section above. Authors for whom DOAJ listing is a funder or institutional requirement can rely on that record, while noting that registries change and a fresh check at submission is always worthwhile.

OpenAlex resolves the journal, by its electronic ISSN, in a direct API check for this profile, to the source S20854694, named Advances in Astronomy, with a homepage at the journal's Hindawi address and Hindawi Publishing Corporation named as host organisation, recording 414 works and 8,320 citations at the time of checking, with a two-year mean citedness of about 1.07 and summary statistics including an h-index of 42. The Journals World record gives an h-index of 35. As with every title in this batch, the difference is a difference of index, coverage and date, not an error to be corrected by choosing one; cite the figure with its source. A third-party summary of Scopus-based data gives a CiteScore of about 1.8, an SJR of about 0.141 and Q4 placement in both Astronomy and Astrophysics and Space and Planetary Science, matching the Q4 label in the directory record; older SCImago-based summaries give higher readings, including Q3 placement and an SJR around 0.28 in an earlier extraction. A journal whose readings move between Q3 and Q4 across years is a journal near the middle-to-lower part of its categories by citation prestige, and that is the honest summary: this is a legitimate, indexed, generalist open-access journal of modest citation standing, not a leading title in its field, and it should be chosen for fit, speed of the open-access route and readership rather than for ranking.

Journal-guide records also preserve an older publisher statement that the journal's impact factor at that time was 1.328 according to the 2013 Journal Citation Reports, with an acceptance rate then reported at 29 per cent and average times of 37 days from submission to final decision and 57 days from acceptance to publication. Those figures are historical — they describe the journal as it was more than a decade ago, under a different publishing arrangement — and this profile reports them only as history, clearly dated, because they still circulate online as if they were current. More recent third-party estimates put an impact factor for the journal at about 0.9. No current impact factor, acceptance rate or decision time is asserted in this profile, because none was verified from the publisher's current journal page in hand; authors who need those numbers for a decision should take them from that page.

Article types and how to write for a broad readership

Because the journal publishes research and reviews across the whole field, its most common failure mode for submissions is a paper written as if for a specialist workshop. Three habits distinguish manuscripts that travel well in a generalist venue. First, an introduction that builds the problem from the field's shared knowledge outward to the niche, rather than starting inside the niche. Second, a methods section that gives enough detail for an astronomer in an adjacent area to judge the result — instrument, data source, reduction, uncertainties and the treatment of systematic effects — rather than referring the reader to a chain of earlier papers. Third, a discussion that states plainly what has changed: which measurement is new, which model is now constrained, which earlier result is confirmed or contradicted. Astronomy is a cumulative, data-rich science, and the value of a paper in an open-access generalist journal often lies in a well-documented result that later survey and archive work will reuse; write so that reuse is easy, with data sources and catalogues identified precisely.

Who should publish here, and who should not

The journal suits astronomers and astrophysicists with a complete, well-documented result of interest beyond a single narrow community, authors who need open access for funder compliance, and researchers whose institutions hold an agreement that covers the charge. It also suits review authors able to write an entry point to a sub-field for the whole discipline. It is a weaker choice where a paper's natural audience is a tight specialist community served by a dedicated title whose referees will push the work harder and whose readers will find it sooner; where an author's promotion or assessment case depends on a high-ranking venue; or where the work is preliminary, incremental without a clear use to others, or dependent on data that cannot be described openly. Authors should also satisfy themselves, on the publisher's current page, that the title is actively accepting submissions in their area at the time they plan to submit, since portfolio titles in this programme have changed status in recent years.

How to judge fit before you submit

Fit is not a matter of a journal sounding prestigious. It is a matter of whether an editor who handles manuscripts like yours every week will recognise, in the first few minutes, that your paper belongs in the conversation this journal is already having. Read at least one recent issue in full, not only the abstracts that a search engine surfaces. Note the balance of article types, the length the journal gives to methods and context, the way authors frame a contribution for this particular readership, and the level of prior literature the papers assume. Then test your own manuscript against that pattern honestly. If your introduction would need to explain basic terms that this readership already commands, you may be aiming too broadly. If your paper never engages the debates the journal has been publishing, you may be aiming at the wrong conversation even when the topic words match.

Keep a short fit note for yourself while you revise. Write, in plain language, who will cite the paper, what those readers will do differently after reading it, and which recently published articles it extends, corrects or complicates. If you cannot name those articles, the research phase of the submission is not finished. Editors can tell the difference between a manuscript that was written for their journal and one that is being circulated from journal to journal with only the cover letter changed. The extra work of re-framing an introduction, re-ordering a discussion and engaging a different literature is rarely wasted: it usually makes the paper clearer for every later reader as well.

Preparing the manuscript

Follow the journal's own author instructions for the version you submit, even when they differ from the habits of your own institution or from the last journal you published in. Check the requirements for title page information, abstract structure, keywords, word limits, figure and table placement, reference style, statements on funding and competing interests, and any separate files for anonymised review. Where the official instructions are brief, do not invent a house style and do not assume a requirement exists; prepare a clean, complete manuscript, keep the required declarations present, and be ready to supply a missing item promptly if the editorial office asks for it.

Pay particular attention to consistency between the parts of the submission that are often written at different times. The title, abstract, keywords and cover letter should describe the same study, with the same scope and the same claims. Numbers in the abstract should match the tables. Author names, affiliations and corresponding-author details should be identical in the manuscript file and in any submission form. These small mismatches are common, entirely avoidable, and they slow a paper down before its scholarly merits are considered at all.

Peer review, ethics and what to expect

Expect scrutiny of both contribution and presentation. Reviewers for a specialist journal know the field's standard references, its recurring methodological weaknesses and its unresolved arguments, and they will notice when a manuscript avoids the hard version of its own question. Treat review reports as a diagnostic instrument rather than as a verdict on your worth as a researcher. Where a reviewer is wrong about a fact, correct the record politely and cite the evidence. Where a reviewer has misunderstood a passage, assume first that the passage can be made clearer. Where a reviewer asks for an analysis or a source that would genuinely strengthen the paper, do the work if you can, and explain plainly if a request is outside the data or the design.

Ethical preparation belongs at the design stage, not at the submission stage. Confirm that authorship reflects real contributions, that permissions for reproduced material and for identifiable human material are in order, that data and quotations are represented accurately, and that any funding or interest that could be seen to shape the work is disclosed. Journals that follow the recommendations of bodies such as the Committee on Publication Ethics expect editors to act on concerns after publication as well as before it, so a shortcut taken to save a week can follow a paper for years.

Fees, access and licensing — verify the current position

Do not budget, or promise a funder, on the basis of a fee figure copied from an aggregator page, and do not assume that a journal that was free to publish in, or open to read, in one year has the same arrangement in the next. Publishing models change, titles move between publishers, and society journals in particular may combine subscriptions, member access, archive access and individual article options in ways a single label cannot capture. Where this profile states a fee or an access position, it gives the source and the wording that source used. Where a current figure could not be verified from an official source in hand, this profile says so plainly rather than repeating a number that may already be out of date. Before submitting, check the journal's official site on the day you submit and keep a dated copy of the terms that applied to your manuscript.

A note on metrics

Journal-level metrics describe a journal's past citation record; they do not predict whether your article will be read, used or cited, and they are not interchangeable. A quartile in one subject category can differ from a quartile in another category for the same journal and the same year. An h-index accumulates over a journal's whole history and therefore favours older and larger titles. Citation counts drawn from a broad open index such as OpenAlex cover more document types than a curated index and will not match them exactly. Use the figures in this profile as a dated snapshot for orientation — who publishes the journal, how large its indexed record is, and roughly how its articles have been cited — and then make the submission decision on fit, readership and editorial quality, which are the things that actually determine where a paper belongs.

Frequently asked questions

Is this the right journal if my paper is interdisciplinary? It can be, provided the paper's centre of gravity lies in this journal's field and the other disciplines are in service of that centre. Make the primary contribution unmistakable in the title and abstract, and show in the introduction why this readership, rather than a readership in the neighbouring field, is the one that needs the result.

What if a detail in this profile differs from the journal's website? Treat the journal's own current website as authoritative for submission rules, fees, editors and deadlines. Directory records, including this one, can lag behind a publisher's change. This profile flags the points where its own underlying directory record was incomplete or internally inconsistent, so that you know which facts were verified from primary sources and which could not be verified.

Should I contact the editor before submitting? A short enquiry is reasonable when the journal invites it or when fit is genuinely borderline and a one-paragraph summary can settle it. It is not a substitute for reading recent issues, and it should never be used to seek a promise of acceptance, which no responsible editor will give before review.

How should I cite the journal's title? Use the full title as it appears on the journal's own masthead for the years you are citing, and the ISSN that belongs to the format you consulted. Historical titles, parallel titles in another language and abbreviated titles are all legitimate in different contexts, but mixing them in a single reference list creates retrieval problems for your readers.

Sources and verification

This profile is based on the journal's own aims-and-scope statement as preserved in library and publisher journal records (a peer-reviewed, open-access journal publishing original research and review articles in all areas of astronomy and astrophysics; established 2008; Hindawi, London); on current indexing summaries that name John Wiley and Sons Ltd as publisher with the ISSNs 1687-7977 and 1687-7969, Scopus coverage and Q4 category placement; on university library guidance on the Wiley and Hindawi open-access agreement for licensing options; on the OpenAlex source record S20854694 resolved by the electronic ISSN 1687-7977 in a direct API check, for works and citation counts; on the journal's DOAJ record, retrieved through the DOAJ search API by its print ISSN, for the verified listing, publisher and article processing charge; and on the Journals World record for this post, whose garbled numeric publisher field and Q4 label are noted critically above. Third-party fee and historical performance figures are reported as attributed and dated, and are not adopted as current. The DOAJ listing and charge stated in this profile are taken from that verified DOAJ record.