Rejected from Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society? The 6 Best Journals to Submit Next

Every venue below publishes the same astronomy and astrophysics that MNRAS covers, so a paper rejected on fit rather than fatal flaws is realistically competitive at the top of this list. The table compares them on the dimensions that actually decide your next submission.

Source: journal author pages and society OA pages cited in Sources (accessed June 2026); review-speed figures are reported ranges, not guarantees.

To turn your decision letter into a target, match the reason MNRAS gave to the venue that handles it best.

Source: Manusights routing logic built from MNRAS decision-letter patterns; venue facts cited in Sources.

MNRAS does not run a one-click portfolio transfer, so the cascade here is a deliberate sequence you drive yourself. The logic is to drop down by fit, not just by prestige.

Tier 1: the lateral move to another flagship. If MNRAS rejected your paper on scope or breadth-of-interest rather than on a fatal flaw, your first choice is a sibling general journal: The Astrophysical Journal or Astronomy and Astrophysics. These are peers of MNRAS, not a step down, and a fresh editor plus a new referee pool often reaches a different verdict on the same science. Pick ApJ if your readership is North America-centered, A&A if it is Europe-centered, though both are fully international.

Tier 2: the specialized-contribution move. If the real contribution is an instrument, a pipeline, a catalog, or a software tool rather than a new astrophysical result, route to The Astronomical Journal (strong for surveys and catalogs), Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, or RAS Techniques and Instruments. A paper that MNRAS judged "not enough new astrophysics" can be exactly right at a methods venue where the technique is the point.

Tier 3: the fast indexed record. If you need a refereed, citable version quickly and your paper is already on the astro-ph arXiv, the Open Journal of Astrophysics gives you peer review at no cost. It is a genuine refereed journal, not a preprint server, and it suits authors who value speed and openness over a legacy title.

If your decision letter raised methodological or statistical problems, do not cascade at all yet. Those flaws travel with the manuscript to every journal on this list. Fix the science first, then re-enter the ladder at Tier 1.

MNRAS rejections cluster into a handful of patterns that are predictable once you know what editors screen for. Two things make MNRAS distinctive: Scientific Editors triage scope on the editorial board before refereeing, and every final rejection is confirmed by a second editor, so a borderline call rarely flips in your favor late.

When an MNRAS editor reads your abstract, the first question is not "is this true" but "is this an original astrophysics result that our readers need," and the patterns below are where papers lose that first question.

Out-of-scope or review-style framing caught at the desk. MNRAS publishes original research in astronomy and astrophysics and explicitly does not publish review articles. We repeatedly see manuscripts where the introduction reads like a review, with long lists of cited papers that the MNRAS instructions say should generally not be used outside a review.

When the abstract frames the work as a survey of a topic rather than a specific new result, a Scientific Editor can desk-reject it on scope before any referee is assigned. The fix is to rewrite the abstract and introduction so the original contribution is the first thing an editor reads.

Insufficient or unconvincing analysis behind a real dataset. A common post-referee MNRAS rejection is not "the data are bad" but "the analysis does not support the claim." This happens when error analysis is thin, when uncertainties on the headline number are missing or hand-waved, or when an alternative explanation for the signal is not ruled out. MNRAS referees are domain experts who will ask for the statistical analysis you skipped.

Strengthening the error budget and the robustness checks in the methods section is usually the highest-leverage fix before resubmitting anywhere.

Figures and tables that are not publication-standard or not color-blind safe. MNRAS specifically warns that unsuitable artwork is referred back to the author and that red-green figure combinations are a problem. We regularly flag figures with unreadable axis labels, missing alt text, or red-green color schemes that fail accessibility. These rarely cause rejection alone, but combined with a marginal result they push a paper from "revise" to "reject." Clean, accessible figures signal a careful manuscript to a referee deciding whether to invest the time.

Length and conciseness mismatched to the contribution. MNRAS encourages concise papers and notes that referees may be asked to suggest shortening overly long submissions. We see manuscripts where a modest result is stretched across an over-long methods section and excessive supplementary material, which reads to an editor as a thin story padded out.

Tightening the manuscript to match the size of the contribution, and using the Letter format (a maximum of 5 pages, excluding abstract and references) when the result is genuinely self-contained, aligns the paper with what MNRAS editors expect. All of this is submitted through the MNRAS ScholarOne portal at ScholarOne submission portal, so a clean, correctly typed manuscript matters from the first upload.

Before you resubmit anywhere, a MNRAS rejection-reason fit check maps your manuscript against these patterns so you fix the right thing rather than blindly cascading down the ladder.

The temptation after an MNRAS rejection is to change the journal name on the title page and resubmit the next morning. Don't just resubmit the same file elsewhere. A lateral move only works when the rejection was about fit, not quality, and a post-referee rejection usually needs real work first. Knowing when to walk away from a lateral move and revise instead is the difference between one more cycle and three.

Read the decision letter literally. If a Scientific Editor desk-rejected you on scope, the science may be fine and a sibling journal is the right move now. If referees rejected the paper after review, treat their comments as the to-do list every future referee will also write. The same missing error analysis, the same unaddressed alternative explanation, and the same over-long methods section will draw the same objections at ApJ or A&A, often from an overlapping set of reviewers in a small field.

Do not appeal reflexively. Because MNRAS confirms every final rejection with a second editor, the decision already survived a check, and appeals succeed only on demonstrable factual error. The honest path is usually to revise, not to argue. If the paper genuinely needs new analysis to support its claim, that is real work, and no journal on the list above will skip it.

Classify the rejection by scope, novelty, evidence, method, and presentation before choosing another journal. A venue change without this extraction simply transfers the same reviewer risk.

Verify every option against its current official scope and author instructions; this matrix routes the decision letter, not acceptance probability.

In our post-rejection review work on Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society manuscripts, the most useful signal is the exact component that failed: novelty framing, astronomical scope, data-analysis controls, simulation validation, instrument calibration, or readership fit. That page-specific diagnosis is more valuable than a generic list of astronomy journals.

• A&A. Best for: astronomy and astrophysics manuscripts that need a broad European society audience and can support a clear field-facing result. Tradeoff: it is not a lower-evidence shortcut; weak methodology or unclear contribution still needs repair before transfer.
• ApJ. Best for: observational, theoretical, and astrophysical interpretation papers where the science case fits the AAS readership. Tradeoff: choose it only if the MNRAS decision letter points to audience or positioning rather than a fundamental evidence failure.
• AJ. Best for: observational astronomy work with strong data presentation and community utility. Tradeoff: it is less convincing for manuscripts whose main issue is missing physical interpretation or inadequate validation.
• Research Notes of the AAS. Best for: concise, useful, bounded results, data notes, null results, or technical observations that do not need a full-article claim. Tradeoff: the format limits narrative depth and may not satisfy authors who need a full research article.
• Open Research Europe or institutional repository plus later retargeting. Best for: funder-aligned visibility, transparent methods, or preserving a record while a deeper revision proceeds. Tradeoff: it is not a substitute for journal fit when career or evaluation systems require a conventional astronomy-journal placement.