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 limited to 300 words, and A&A encourages a structured abstract. If you use one, three labeled paragraphs, Aims, Methods, and Results, are mandatory, and an opening Context paragraph and a closing Conclusions paragraph are optional. The structured format is not mandatory: authors who prefer a traditional abstract are asked to follow the same logical structure implicitly. The structured format exists to make the article's logic visible at a glance.

You also assemble the author details before upload. In Nestor you enter the title, author names and addresses, abstract and keywords, suggest the section, and enter your co-authors' names and e-mail addresses so that they are invited to confirm co-authorship. Corresponding authors can link their ORCID iD at submission, and only authenticated ORCIDs are published. Any use of generative AI beyond language, coding and search for information must be disclosed at submission, specifying the tool and its role. A&A's editors choose referees themselves, and they sometimes ask authors for a short list of independent referees when a suitable one is hard to find.

On length, the policy that took effect on 2 April 2025 matters for planning. For a first author from a sponsoring country, 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. First authors from non-sponsoring countries pay EUR 100 to 150 per page within the cap and EUR 150 to 200 per page above it, with a lower total when co-authors work in sponsoring countries. Letters carry a strict 4-page main-body limit and a 5-page appendix cap.

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 can be sent back for an initial language revision, so the language bar is real even when it is applied unevenly. The data requirement is firmer: A&A makes it mandatory to publish the data presented and discussed in the article and needed to reproduce the results, usually at the Strasbourg CDS, immediately upon acceptance, and the text should refer to the electronically published material.

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.

An A&A editor (an Associate Editor for regular papers) is put in charge of each submission and chooses the referees. 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 choice. The Nestor system ingests your LaTeX source and figures, you suggest the section, and the manuscript goes to an editor. A wrong section choice is corrected by the Editor-in-Chief at acceptance.

• 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 handling editor invites referees chosen for the paper's topic.

The referee who reads a Cosmology paper is not the referee who reads a Planets paper, because editors pick referees by topic.

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

SciRev's 7 author reports (a small sample, read October 2026) average a first review round of 2.2 months, and the latest report gives 7.0 weeks, though section and referee load shift this.

• 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. The CDS checks submitted data tables for consistency, and the data are published immediately upon acceptance.

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 data-deposit requests at acceptance 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 referee-led review 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's 7 author reports on this journal (a small sample, read October 2026) average a first review round of 2.2 months and an overall manuscript-handling rating of 4.3 out of 5. In 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 makes it mandatory to publish the data presented and discussed in the article and needed to reproduce the results, usually at the Strasbourg CDS, with the text referring to the electronically published material. 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 the data still have to be published upon acceptance, 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 deposit 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 the Editor-in-Chief has to correct. A&A has 15 sections, 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, has to be corrected by the Editor-in-Chief at acceptance.

The result is an extra correction at acceptance, which the journal asks contributors to avoid to save time between acceptance and publication. Choosing the section 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.

Fit is a two-way question, not a one-way checklist. A&A is a strong, fast, no-APC home for complete astrophysics work, but it is the wrong target for several common manuscript shapes.

Submit If

• the paper reaches a genuine astrophysical conclusion, and the abstract Conclusions paragraph states it plainly
• your observational tables, catalogs, or spectra are formatted and ready to deposit at the CDS for VizieR hosting
• the work fits the 12-page main-text budget, or you have accepted the per-page charge for an over-length paper
• you want open access without paying an APC, and your section choice matches the genuine contribution

Think Twice If

• your results section reports a clean measurement or model run but the discussion never states what it changes about the physical picture, so the paper reads as descriptive
• your paper is catalog- or survey-heavy and the data are not prepared for CDS deposit, which will have to be fixed upon acceptance even if review goes well
• your contribution is a modest extension of an existing model whose conclusions only confirm what the prior model already implied
• the section that fits your method differs from the section that fits your contribution, and you are tempted to submit under the method's section

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 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 2026 JCR release metrics. 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. Before you commit to this target, 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.

Scope mismatch is the failure authors are least able to see in their own paper. Check my abstract's scope fit against Astronomy & Astrophysics before I reformat.

Layout, figure limits, and reference style are settled before you submit, not after: Astronomy & Astrophysics formatting requirements.