Astronomy & Geophysics

• 1. Introduction

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  Astronomy & Geophysics is a scientific periodical that has served professional astronomers and geophysicists since 1997, yet it carries a lineage stretching back to 1960. Twice a year, every member of the Royal Astronomical Society opens their copy to find not cutting-edge research papers but something rarer: reviews, debates, historical investigations, and the kind of frank discussion that formal journals rarely allow. What exactly fills those pages? How did this magazine come to exist? And what happened to the journal it replaced, the one that ran for 37 volumes across nearly four decades?

• 2. What Gets Published

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  Sue Bowler of the University of Leeds edits a publication that deliberately steers away from original research papers. A&G carries news reports, interviews, topical reviews, historical investigations, obituaries, and meeting reports. It also covers science policy, opinions, correspondence, and book and software reviews.

  The journal spans an unusually wide scientific terrain: astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, planetary science, solar-terrestrial physics, and both global and regional geophysics. Contributions are not restricted to RAS members, which means voices from across the scientific community can find space in its pages.

  The publication also serves an organizational role. It functions as a communication channel between the membership, the council, and the Society's Officers, carrying Royal Astronomical Society announcements about events and people. An impact factor of 0.549, recorded in the 2020 Journal Citation Reports, reflects its profile as a magazine for a professional readership rather than a venue for peer-reviewed research.

• 3. The Quarterly Journal's Long Run

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  From September 1960 to December 1996, the Royal Astronomical Society published the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, a title eventually produced by Blackwell Science in its later period. Over that span, 37 volumes were issued. The journal reviewed modern astronomy and geophysics, hosted discussions about research topics, carried meeting reports, and published contributions about the history of science.

  Detailed scientific research papers were deliberately kept out of the Quarterly Journal; those belonged in the Society's Monthly Notices. The Quarterly Journal was set up precisely to free the Monthly Notices to focus on original research. Before 1960, the Society had published proceedings and research papers together in the Monthly Notices, alongside reviews in its Occasional Notes. When the Quarterly Journal launched, the Occasional Notes were discontinued.

  Eight editors guided the journal through its 36-year run. David Dewhirst opened that era from 1960 to 1965, followed by C. Andrew Murray from 1965 to 1970. A. Jack Meadows held the position from 1970 to 1975, and Simon Mitton from 1976 to 1980. David W. Hughes served two separate terms, from 1981 to 1985 and again in 1996, the journal's final year. George H. A. Coles edited from 1986 to 1991, and Robert C. Smith from 1992 to 1995.

• 4. From Quarterly Journal to A&G

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  In 1997, the Royal Astronomical Society replaced the Quarterly Journal with a new glossy magazine format and called it Astronomy & Geophysics. The transition was not a break but a continuation: A&G carries forward the same volume numbering from its predecessor, so readers moving from one to the other found a familiar sequence intact.

  Oxford University Press took over as publisher, distributing the bimonthly magazine to RAS members. The new format preserved the tradition, established by the Quarterly Journal, of publishing discussions of fundamental science and scientific debates rather than primary research findings.

  All articles from the Quarterly Journal were indexed, with abstracts, in the Astrophysics Data System, which also holds scans of every page. The ADS bibliographic code QJRAS keeps that archive findable. A&G's own indexing reaches into databases including the Science Citation Index, Scopus, Academic Search, and Current Contents/Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences, among others.