Astronomy and Astrophysics Submission Guide: How to Submit to A&A (EDP Sciences)

A&A is a LaTeX journal in the strict sense. The manuscript must be prepared with the journal's own aa.cls document class, which produces the two-column format and handles the affiliation and reference systems. References use the author-year style, not numbered citations, and the journal expects controlled keywords drawn from its keyword list rather than free-text terms.

The abstract is semi-structured and limited to 300 words. Three labeled paragraphs, Aims, Methods, and Results, are mandatory. An opening Context paragraph and a closing Conclusions paragraph are optional but expected for most research papers. The structured format exists to make the article's logic visible at a glance, and an abstract that does not separate aims from results reads as unfinished to an A&A editor.

You also assemble the standard declarations before upload. A&A expects a cover letter that states the astrophysical significance and the chosen section, an ORCID iD for the corresponding author, a data availability statement pointing to the CDS deposit, a funding statement, an author-contributions note, and a conflicts of interest declaration. You may list suggested reviewers, but keep the list broader than a single sub-subfield, since a too-narrow set slows referee assignment.

On length, the policy that took effect on 2 April 2025 matters for planning. Regular papers publish free up to 12 pages of main text and 8 pages of appendix. Beyond that, each additional page costs EUR 150, applied to both main body and appendix with no distinction, and levied on the first author or, for large alphabetical collaborations, the corresponding author. Letters carry a strict 4-page main-body limit.

A long appendix is the most common way authors trip this budget without noticing, because they treat the appendix as free space when the per-page charge applies there too.

A&A requires English, and a structured language-editing step exists, though not every paper is seen by a language editor. Manuscripts whose English is weak enough to obscure the argument are flagged, so the language bar is real even when it is applied unevenly. The data requirement is firmer: observational tables, photometric catalogs, and spectral data must be deposited at the Strasbourg CDS for hosting in VizieR, with the accession reference included in the manuscript, and a missing deposit holds the paper at the proof stage.

Before the format and data deposit are locked, an Astronomy & Astrophysics formatting and data-readiness check can confirm whether the aa.cls structure, the structured abstract, and the CDS-ready tables are in place before you upload.

A&A assigns each submission to a section editor, who routes it to referees through the Nestor system. Community-reported data puts the first review round at roughly two months and total handling near three to four months for accepted papers. Treat the stages below as planning ranges, not commitments.

• Day 0: Submission and section routing. The Nestor system ingests your LaTeX source and figures, you confirm the section, and the manuscript reaches the relevant section editor. This is where a wrong section choice quietly costs you, because re-routing adds a cycle.

• Days 1 to 4: Editorial screening. The editor checks scope, section fit, format compliance, and obvious flaws.

A&A rarely desk-rejects on-topic work, so the fastest returns here, around 4 days, are reserved for off-topic submissions or papers with a visible fatal problem.

• Days 4 to 14: Referee assignment. The section editor invites referees from the section's pool.

The referee who reads a Cosmology paper is not the referee who reads a Planets paper, which is why section accuracy determines the standard your work is judged against.

• Days 14 to 63: Peer review. Referees return reports, typically one to two per submission.

SciRev community data reports a first round near 2.2 months as common, though section and referee load shift this, and recent reports describe first-review windows as short as seven weeks.

• Days 63 to 120: Decision and revision. Accept, minor revision, major revision, or reject. A revised manuscript must address each referee point in a response letter.

Because A&A leans on referees rather than the editor, most attrition happens in this window, not at submission.

• Days 100 and beyond: Final decision, data deposit, and production. Total handling time for accepted papers runs near 3.3 months. At the proof stage, the CDS data deposit is verified, and a missing deposit stalls publication until the tables are hosted in VizieR.

In our pre-submission review work with Astronomy & Astrophysics manuscripts, four patterns generate the most consistent stalls. Because A&A rarely desk-rejects, these mostly surface as referee rejections or proof-stage holds rather than early editorial returns, which means the cost lands after weeks of review rather than in the first week.

In our review of astrophysics manuscripts, each of these is a named rejection pattern you can check your own draft against, and each reflects how A&A's section-based referee model reads submissions. The journal's reliance on referees rather than editorial impact-triage raises the stakes on the science itself, because there is no editor filtering for novelty before a referee weighs in.

A&A editors screen for section fit and obvious flaws, and referees reject papers that miss these patterns before the work clears review.

Astronomy & Astrophysics author guidelines and the EDP Sciences policies define the mechanics below; the patterns describe how manuscripts coming through pre-submission review for this journal most often fall short of them. SciRev community data on this journal, where authors report a first review round near 2.2 months and a handling rating of 4.3 out of 5, is consistent with what we see: the editor moves the paper quickly to referees, and the substantive attrition happens during review, which is exactly where these four patterns bite.

A competent measurement with no real astrophysical conclusion. The single most common stall we see at A&A is a manuscript that reads as a clean technical exercise rather than a contribution to a question the community is actively pursuing. The result section reports a measurement, a fitted parameter, or a model run, but the discussion never states what the result changes about the physical picture.

A&A referees expect the paper to close on an astrophysical conclusion, not on a restatement of the measurement, and a paper that ends with the data rather than with their meaning reads as descriptive. The fix lives in the abstract Conclusions paragraph and the discussion: name the astrophysical question, and show how the result moves it.

Check whether your Astronomy & Astrophysics paper reaches a real astrophysical conclusion

A catalog or measurement set submitted without the required CDS data deposit. A&A requires observational tables, photometric catalogs, and spectral line lists to be deposited at the Strasbourg CDS for hosting in VizieR, with the accession reference in the manuscript. The recurring failure is a survey paper, a catalog paper, or a measurement-heavy results section where the data live only in the manuscript tables and the deposit was never prepared.

This rarely stops the science, but it stops the paper at the proof stage, and referees increasingly flag it during review because reproducibility depends on the deposit. The methods and data-availability sections are where this is decided: if the tables are not formatted for the CDS and the accession is not cited, the manuscript is not deposit-ready regardless of how strong the analysis is.

Check whether your Astronomy & Astrophysics data are ready for CDS deposit

An incremental model extension with no broader implication. A&A publishes solid, technically correct work, but referees still distinguish between a result that advances a question and a modest extension of an existing model that adds one more case without changing the picture. The manuscript runs a known model with new parameters, or extends a prior simulation by a step, and the discussion argues for publication on completeness rather than on what the extension implies.

The pattern is testable: if the introduction frames the work as filling a gap and the conclusions only confirm what the prior model already suggested, the contribution reads as incremental. The strongest version of the same work names the astrophysical consequence the extension reveals, not just the extension.

Check whether your Astronomy & Astrophysics result is a contribution or an increment

A section mismatch that routes the paper to the wrong referee pool. A&A's 15 sections each have their own editor and referees, and a recurring stall is a paper submitted to the section that fits its method rather than the section that fits its contribution. A planet-atmosphere study submitted under Stellar atmospheres, or an instrumentation-heavy survey submitted under Catalogs and data, lands with a referee whose standard does not match the paper's intent.

The result is a slow review, contradictory referee expectations, or a re-routing that costs a cycle. Because the section determines who judges the work, choosing it by the genuine astrophysical contribution rather than by the dominant technique is part of submission readiness, not an afterthought at the upload step.

This guide tells you what Astronomy & Astrophysics editors and referees look for; a Manusights review tells you whether YOUR paper passes that screen. A Manusights review checks the astrophysical conclusion, the CDS data-deposit readiness, the section choice, and the length budget against the bar this journal applies before review. Paid Manusights reviews include a 60-day money-back guarantee, and we do not train models on submitted manuscripts.

Before submitting, an Astronomy & Astrophysics conclusion and data-deposit readiness check tests whether your astrophysical conclusion, your CDS-ready tables, and your section choice clear the editorial bar this journal applies before review.

This guide was built from Astronomy & Astrophysics author information, EDP Sciences policies, the A&A Nestor submission system, the 2 April 2025 page-length policy, the Subscribe-to-Open open access model, and Manusights pre-submission review patterns from astrophysics manuscripts.

We checked the section structure, the aa.cls and structured-abstract requirements, the page limits, and the CDS data-deposit rule against the journal's own pages. We also cross-checked review-timing ranges against SciRev community data and Clarivate JCR 2024 metrics, including the 5.8-to-6.1 impact-factor correction. The failure patterns describe what we see most often when astrophysics manuscripts come through pre-submission review for this journal.

Use this page before you upload, when the official instructions cannot answer the real question: whether your astrophysical conclusion, your CDS-ready data, your section choice, and your length budget are already defensible. Source limitation: EDP Sciences updates format details, charges, and policies after this review date, so confirm administrative specifics against the journal's official pages before submission. To pressure-test the manuscript itself, run a manuscript readiness check.

• Astrophysical Journal submission guide
• Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society submission guide
• For the broader cluster, see the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal overview.

Before you upload, run your manuscript through an Astronomy & Astrophysics submission package check to catch the conclusion, data-deposit, and section issues referees filter for during review.