It’s time for another Saturday update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further four papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 249 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 697.
I continue to include the posts made on our Mastodon account (on Fediscience); these announcements also contain a clickable form of the DOI for each paper. Our Mastodon account has regular updates and other announcements from OJAp too, including posts from the OJAp blog.
The first paper this week was published on Tuesday 20th October in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. The title is “The Metallicity Distribution of the Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxy Segue 1” by Daisy Bissonette (U. Chicago, USA) and 8 others based in the USA, Australia and Canada. The article explains that new data on the metallicity of ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Segue 1 reveal a continuous, short-duration episode of star formation and chemical enrichment, confirming its classification as a galaxy.
The overlay for this one is here:
You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The Metallicity Distribution of the Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxy Segue 1" by Daisy Bissonette (U. Chicago, USA) and 8 others based in the USA, Australia and Canada.
The second paper for this week, also published on Tuesday 20th October in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, “Ultraviolet diversity of Little Red Dots as a probe for direct-collapse black hole ages” by Elia Cenci & Melanie Habouzit (U. Geneva, Switzerland) and Dale D. Kocevski (Colby College, USA). This article uses simulations to explore UV emissions from galaxies hosting direct-collapse black holes (DCBHs), finding that these emissions evolve rapidly, reflecting changes in stellar mass and metal enrichment.
The overlay looks like this:
The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Ultraviolet diversity of Little Red Dots as a probe for direct-collapse black hole ages" by Elia Cenci & Melanie Habouzit (U. Geneva, Switzerland) and Dale D. Kocevski (Colby College, USA)
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Dark Energy Survey Year 6 Results: improved mitigation of spatially varying observational systematics with masking for the MagLim++ lens sample" by M. Rodríguez-Monroy (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain) and 65 others from around the world.
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Spectroscopic Binary Detection as Agent-Callable Tools: Detecting 40,000+ Main-Sequence Binary Candidates from SDSS DR19 APOGEE Spectra" by Serat Mahmud Saad and Yuan-Sen Ting (Ohio State University, USA).
That concludes this week’s update. I had anticipate that we’ll pass the 250 mark this week, but business has been slower than of late so we’ll have to wait until next week for that. It is noticeable that the arXiv submission process is slower now than it used to be, presumably because of the huge influx of AI slop that the moderators have to deal with.
The number of papers being submitted to the Open Journal of Astrophysics continues to rise, as demonstrated by the following graphic which shows the stats for new submissions for the last five years:
It’s very clear that the thicket is getting thicker and thicker as times goes on! The increasing number of articles is of course very welcome indeed, but it is increasing the load on our Editorial Board and that includes me! I think it’s time once again to look for more volunteers to join the team, in any area of astrophysics. As a reminder, here are the areas we cover, corresponding to the sections of astro-ph on the arXiv:
astro-ph.GA – Astrophysics of Galaxies. Phenomena pertaining to galaxies or the Milky Way. Star clusters, HII regions and planetary nebulae, the interstellar medium, atomic and molecular clouds, dust. Stellar populations. Galactic structure, formation, dynamics. Galactic nuclei, bulges, disks, halo. Active Galactic Nuclei, supermassive black holes, quasars. Gravitational lens systems. The Milky Way and its contents
astro-ph.CO – Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. Phenomenology of early universe, cosmic microwave background, cosmological parameters, primordial element abundances, extragalactic distance scale, large-scale structure of the universe. Groups, superclusters, voids, intergalactic medium. Particle astrophysics: dark energy, dark matter, baryogenesis, leptogenesis, inflationary models, reheating, monopoles, WIMPs, cosmic strings, primordial black holes, cosmological gravitational radiation
astro-ph.EP – Earth and Planetary Astrophysics. Interplanetary medium, planetary physics, planetary astrobiology, extrasolar planets, comets, asteroids, meteorites. Structure and formation of the solar system
astro-ph.HE – High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena. Cosmic ray production, acceleration, propagation, detection. Gamma ray astronomy and bursts, X-rays, charged particles, supernovae and other explosive phenomena, stellar remnants and accretion systems, jets, microquasars, neutron stars, pulsars, black holes
astro-ph.IM – Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. Detector and telescope design, experiment proposals. Laboratory Astrophysics. Methods for data analysis, statistical methods. Software, database design
astro-ph.SR. – Solar and Stellar Astrophysics. White dwarfs, brown dwarfs, cataclysmic variables. Star formation and protostellar systems, stellar astrobiology, binary and multiple systems of stars, stellar evolution and structure, coronas. Central stars of planetary nebulae. Helioseismology, solar neutrinos, production and detection of gravitational radiation from stellar systems.
We are looking for experienced scientists in any of these areas, and it would be useful to have people who can cover a range of subjects (as some of our existing editors do). As I mentioned here, our most popular area is 1 (Astrophysics of Galaxies) but 2 (Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics) is running it a close second. While I would welcome offers from people with expertise in either of those fields, Editors in any of the other areas listed above would be welcome additions. Since we don’t charge authors or readers we can not offer payment to Editors but it is nevertheless a way of providing a service to the community.
If you’re interested, please get in touch either through the Open Journal website here, or through a message Mastodon here, BlueSky here, or LinkedIn here.
Peter Coles Editor-in-Chief Open Journal of Astrophysics
It’s Saturday again, so it’s time for another update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further eight papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 245 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 693. There was no arXiv update on Monday 12th October owing to a US holiday, and I was on strike on Wednesday 14th October, so there were no papers published on either 13th or 14th October.
I continue to include the posts made on our Mastodon account (on Fediscience); these announcements also contain a clickable form of the DOI for each paper. Our Mastodon account has regular updates and other announcements from OJAp too, including posts from the OJAp blog.
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Search for Gamma-ray emission from Abell 119 galaxy cluster using INTEGRAL/ISGRI, COMPTEL, and DAMPE data" by Siddhant Manna & Shantanu Desai (IIT Hyderabad Kandi, India)
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Fast Astronomical Transients in Archival Photographic Plates: Using optical aberrations as a tool for discerning real images, from plate artifacts" by Ivo Busko (Independent Researcher)
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics "Differentiable Optics with dLux II: Optical Design Maximising Fisher Information" by Louis Desdoigts (Leiden Obs., NL), Benjamin Pope (Macquarie U., AU), Michael Gully-Santiago (U. Texas Austin, USA) & Peter Tuthill (U. Sydney, AU)
The fourth new article of the week, also published on Thursday 15th October, in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies is “The Lumina Project: Intergalactic Clumping and Recombination Sinks” by Ali Sadain (U. Texas Dallas, USA) and 12 others based in the USA, S. Korea and Germany. The study uses simulations to examine the uneven recombination rates during the Epoch of Reionization, finding a universal clumping evolution and discrepancies in recombination rates due to photoheating.
The overlay is here:
The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The Lumina Project: Intergalactic Clumping and Recombination Sinks" by Ali Sadain (U. Texas Dallas, USA) and 12 others based in the USA, S. Korea and Germany.
Paper Number Five for the week is “Blast.jl: Differentiable Non-Limber Power Spectra for Joint Clustering, Shear, and CMB lensing Analyses” by Sofia Chiarenza (U. Waterloo, Canada) and 6 others based in Canada, Italy, France and USA. This study, which is in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics, presents an enhanced version of Blast.jl, a toolkit for computing non-Limber angular power spectra, incorporating various cosmological effects. Despite increased complexity, it maintains efficiency and supports gradient-based inference. It was also published on Thursday 15th October.
The overlay is here:
The officially-accepted version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Blast.jl: Differentiable Non-Limber Power Spectra for Joint Clustering, Shear, and CMB lensing Analyses" by Sofia Chiarenza (U. Waterloo, Canada) and 6 others based in Canada, Italy, France and USA.
Sixth one up is “EMU detection of mysterious multiple component radio-continuum emission from nearby spiral Seyfert I type galaxy ‘Sand-timer’ (NGC 7213)” by Miroslav Filipović (Western Sydney U., Australia) and an international cast of 26 others. The observations presented in this paper reveal peculiar emissions and previously undetected features in the ‘Sand-timer’ galaxy NGC 7213, possibly due to black hole activity or a tidal disruption event.
The overlay is here:
The officially-accepted version of this paper is on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement on the fediverse here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Blast.jl: Differentiable Non-Limber Power Spectra for Joint Clustering, Shear, and CMB lensing Analyses" by Sofia Chiarenza (U. Waterloo, Canada) and 6 others based in Canada, Italy, France and USA.
The seventh paper of the week is “pynucastro 3: A community library for nuclear astrophysics” by Zhi Chen (Stony Brook U., USA) and 10 others, all based in the USA. This was published on Friday 16th October, i.e. yesterday, in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. This article announces the latest release of pynucastro, a python library for nuclear astrophysics, includes new rate approximations, a stellar equation of state, StarLib support, and network exploration tools.
The overlay is here:
The officially accepted version is on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "pynucastro 3: A community library for nuclear astrophysics" by Zhi Chen (Stony Brook U., USA) and 10 others, all based in the USA.
The eighth, and last, of the new papers for this week is “A Deep Look at the Ultra-Faint Milky Way Satellite Virgo III with Rubin Observatory Data Preview 2” by Aashay Pai (U. Chicago, USA) and 12 others based in the USA. This study uses data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory to analyze the ultra-faint Milky Way satellite, Virgo III, confirming Virgo III’s properties as an ultra-faint dwarf galaxy.
The overlay is here:
The final version of this paper is on the arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "A Deep Look at the Ultra-Faint Milky Way Satellite Virgo III with Rubin Observatory Data Preview 2" by Aashay Pai (U. Chicago, USA) and 12 others based in the USA.
That concludes this week’s update. I anticipate that we’ll pass the 250 mark for 2026 next week, which means we’re well on target to publish over 300 papers and reach the 750 mark by the end of the year. I’ll do another update next weekend.
It’s Saturday again, so it’s time for another update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further eight papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 237 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 685.
I continue to include the posts made on our Mastodon account (on Fediscience); these announcements also contain a clickable form of the DOI for each paper. Our Mastodon account has regular updates and other announcements from OJAp too, including posts from the OJAp blog.
The first new paper this week was published on Monday 5th October in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics. The title of the paper is “Diameters and Temperatures VII: High-angular resolution measurements of Solar-type stars with the CHARA Array” and it isby Tabetha Boyajian (Louisiana State University, USA) and 10 others based in the USA and Australia. This study uses interferometric measurements to determine precise characteristics of 27 nearby solar-type stars, including their radii, effective temperatures, and luminosities. The findings represent benchmarks for testing stellar evolutionary theory.
The overlay for this one is here:
You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Diameters and Temperatures VII: High-angular resolution measurements of Solar-type stars with the CHARA Array" by Tabetha Boyajian (Louisiana State University, USA) and 10 others based in the USA and Australia.
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The jet-shaped pipe morphology in planetary nebulae and core-collapse supernova remnants" by Jessica Braudo and Noam Soker (Technion, Israel)
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Balancing bias, baryons, and scale cuts in LSST 3x2pt analysis" by Ottavia Truttero (U. Edinburgh, UK) and 5 others on behalf of the The LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "High-Precision Differential Radial Velocities of C3PO Wide Binaries: A Test of Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND)" by Serat M. Saad and Yuan-Sen Ting (Ohio State University, USA)
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Simulating the jittering-jets explosion mechanism: circum-jet rings account for observed core-collapse supernova remnant morphologies" by Muhammad Akashi & Noam Soker (Technion, Israel)
The sixth paper of the week is “Radio Continuum Study of One of the Brightest Large Magellanic Cloud Supernova Remnant N 132D” by Rami Z. E. Alsaberi (Western Sydney U. Australia) and 7 others. This was the first of three papers published on Friday 9th October, and it is in the folder High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena. This one presents a radio continuum analysis of the Large Magellanic Cloud supernova remnant N 132D, revealing insights into its magnetic field structure, energetic properties, and particle acceleration.
The officially-accepted version of this paper is on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement on the fediverse here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Radio Continuum Study of One of the Brightest Large Magellanic Cloud Supernova Remnant N 132D" by Rami Z. E. Alsaberi (Western Sydney U. Australia) and 7 others
The seventh paper of the week is “New Signs Pointing Toward a Correlation Between Astrophysical Neutrinos and Radio Flares” by Yjan Gordon (U. Wisconsin-Madison), Peter S. Ferguson (U. Washington), Eric J. Hooper & Michael N. Martinez (U. Wisconsin-Madison); all in the USA. This was also published on Friday 7th October, but in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. It is very topical, in the light of the award of this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics to Francis Halzen for his work on IceCube. The paper explains how data from VLASS and IceCube Neutrino Observatory reveal a correlation between radio variability and astrophysical neutrino detection, suggesting radio flares contribute to about 13% of astrophysical neutrinos detected by IceCube.
The overlay is here:
The officially accepted version is on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "New Signs Pointing Toward a Correlation Between Astrophysical Neutrinos and Radio Flares" by Yjan Gordon (U. Wisconsin-Madison), Peter S. Ferguson (U. Washington), Eric J. Hooper & Michael N. Martinez (U. Wisconsin-Madison); all in the USA
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Spectroscopic follow-up of compact object binary candidates from Gaia DR3: White dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes, and the parallax zeropoint" by Kareem El-Badry (Caltech, USA) and an international cast of 14 others.
That concludes this week’s update. We’re still on target to publish over 300 papers and reach the 750 mark by the end of the year. I’ll do another update next week.
It’s Saturday again, so it’s time for another update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further 13 papers, including one correction to an article already published, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 229 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 677. This would have been a busy week even without the clutch of four MEGATRON papers announced on Wednesday!
I continue to include the posts made on our Mastodon account (on Fediscience); these announcements also contain a clickable form of the DOI for each paper. Our Mastodon account has regular updates and other announcements from OJAp too, including posts from the OJAp blog.
The first new paper this week was published on Tuesday 28th September in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics. The title is “Phlegethon: a fully compressible magnetohydrodynamic code for simulations in stellar astrophysics” and it is by G. Leidi (Heidelberger Institut für Theoretische Studie, Germany) and 14 others. PHLEGETHON is a magnetohydrodynamic code designed for multidimensional simulations in stellar astrophysics, capable of modeling a wide range of dynamical processes in stars. It is publicly accessible online.
The overlay for this one is here:
You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Phlegethon: a fully compressible magnetohydrodynamic code for simulations in stellar astrophysics" by G. Leidi (Heidelberger Institut für Theoretische Studie, Germany) and 14 others.
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The impact of source and survey modelling on the connection between [O III] emitters and Ly-α forest transmission at z ~ 6" by Luke Conaboy (U. Nottingham, UK) and 5 others based in the UK, India and Germany.
Next we have four related papers produced by the MEGATRON Project, led by Harley Katz (U. Chicago) and Martin Rey (U. Bath, UK), Corentin Cadiou (IAP Paris, France). These were all published on Wednesday 30th September in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies.
I mentioned this in a separate blog post here, so I won’t describe them in detail again here. Here are the four overlays:
The Mastodon announcement for these is in the form of a thread:
Today we have published four related papers produced by the MEGATRON Project, led by Harley Katz (U. Chicago) and Martin Rey (U. Bath, UK), Corentin Cadiou (IAP Paris, France)
These articles are announced in the following thread:
The four papers can be found on arXiv here, here, here and here.
The four MEGATRON papers were not the only ones published on Wednesday 30th September, however. We published “The Chirp-Mass Ladder: A New Rung Emerges” by Vaibhav Tiwari (U. Birmingham, UK) in the folder High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena on that day too. This paper presents an analysis of 256 binary black-hole (BBH) events, suggesting a hierarchical merger scenario to explain the structured mass distribution, and encouraging further investigation into hierarchical mergers’ role in the BBH population. The overlay for this is here:
The accepted version of this one can be found on the arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Kinematics of the Weak Cool-Core Cluster A3571 Observed with XRISM: Low Cooling Rate Balanced by Low Heating Rate?" by Hannah McCall (U. Chicago, USA) and 12 others based around the world.
We now have four papers all published on Friday 2nd October (i.e. yesterday).
The first of this batch is “Analytical weak-lensing shear response of galaxy model fitting” by Xiangchong Li (Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA). This is in the folder marked Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics: it explores how galaxy model fitting responds to weak-lensing shear distortions using a new algebraic system, quintuple numbers, within the AnaCal framework, keeping multiplicative bias low.
The overlay is here:
The officially-accepted version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Analytical weak-lensing shear response of galaxy model fitting" by Xiangchong Li (Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA)
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Evidence for inefficient dust production in a massive, metal-rich galaxy at z=7.13 uncovered by JWST and ALMA" by Kasper E. Heintz (Cosmic Dawn Center, Copenhagen, Denmark) and 19 others in Europe, UK and USA.
The 11th paper of the week is “Starbursts hiding in the main sequence: a pathway toward quenching?” by Florent Renaud (Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg, France) and 12 others based in France and UK. This article explores the “starbursts in the main sequence” (SBMSs) that intermittently appear in galaxy evolution, attributing their existence to earlier stellar mass assembly and frequent mergers. It was published on Friday 2nd October 2026, in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies.
The overlay is here:
The officially accepted version is on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Starbursts hiding in the main sequence: a pathway toward quenching?" by Florent Renaud (Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg, France) and 12 others based in France and UK.
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Ring Position Angles and Spin in M87* and Sgr A*" by Nicholas S. Conroy (U. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA) and 6 others all based in the USA.
And finally, on Monday 28th September we announced one (minor) correction to a previously published article. The overlay of the correction notice is here:
Correction Notice issued at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "CORRECTION – TDCOSMO XXVI: Uniform Lens Modeling of Eight Doubly Imaged Quasars" by Brady et al. (originally published 7th August 2026).
The corrected version of this paper can be found on arXiv here.
That concludes this week’s update. As things are going we seem likely to publish over 300 papers this year, and may reach the 750 mark by the end of the year too. I’ll do another update next week.
It won’t last past tomorrow, so I thought I’d post this today:
According to the Book of Revelation (Chapter 13 Verse 18):
Here is wisdom: Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.
Does this mean that the Open Journal of Astrophysics is officially a beast?
In my recent weekly updates of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics, the latest of which is here, I’ve remarked that we had built up quite a backlog of papers accepted but yet to be published. This is no doubt due to August being a holiday for many researchers. Well, we seem to be catching up rather rapidly. So far this week we have published eight new papers, and it’s only Wednesday!
The recent burst of activity has led to us establishing a first, a week in which we have published a full house of at least one paper in each of the six sections of astro-ph on the arXiv. As a reminder, these are they:
astro-ph.GA – Astrophysics of Galaxies. Phenomena pertaining to galaxies or the Milky Way. Star clusters, HII regions and planetary nebulae, the interstellar medium, atomic and molecular clouds, dust. Stellar populations. Galactic structure, formation, dynamics. Galactic nuclei, bulges, disks, halo. Active Galactic Nuclei, supermassive black holes, quasars. Gravitational lens systems. The Milky Way and its contents
astro-ph.CO – Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. Phenomenology of early universe, cosmic microwave background, cosmological parameters, primordial element abundances, extragalactic distance scale, large-scale structure of the universe. Groups, superclusters, voids, intergalactic medium. Particle astrophysics: dark energy, dark matter, baryogenesis, leptogenesis, inflationary models, reheating, monopoles, WIMPs, cosmic strings, primordial black holes, cosmological gravitational radiation
astro-ph.EP – Earth and Planetary Astrophysics. Interplanetary medium, planetary physics, planetary astrobiology, extrasolar planets, comets, asteroids, meteorites. Structure and formation of the solar system
astro-ph.HE – High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena. Cosmic ray production, acceleration, propagation, detection. Gamma ray astronomy and bursts, X-rays, charged particles, supernovae and other explosive phenomena, stellar remnants and accretion systems, jets, microquasars, neutron stars, pulsars, black holes
astro-ph.IM – Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. Detector and telescope design, experiment proposals. Laboratory Astrophysics. Methods for data analysis, statistical methods. Software, database design
astro-ph.SR – Solar and Stellar Astrophysics. White dwarfs, brown dwarfs, cataclysmic variables. Star formation and protostellar systems, stellar astrobiology, binary and multiple systems of stars, stellar evolution and structure, coronas. Central stars of planetary nebulae. Helioseismology, solar neutrinos, production and detection of gravitational radiation from stellar systems.
As of yesterday we had published in five of the six categories and were only missing a paper (in Number 4 – High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena). Today, right on cue, from the queue, came this paper to complete the set:
There’s still a couple of days to go and we have more papers in the pipeline so it looks like I’ll have a busy time on Saturday morning when I do the next update!
As of today, 25th August 2026, the Open Journal of Astrophysics has published 632 articles. Using the dollar cost of an MNRAS APC as a benchmark – many journals charge more – this means that we have now saved the global astrophysics community over $2M (for a total outlay of around $15K).
Yes, we are still a small journal but the size of that figure should help you understand how much money is being wasted globally on publishing fees that could instead be spent on actual research.
It’s good to see that more and more researchers are seeing the light and switching to Diamond Open Access. Today we published the 184th article in Volume 9 (2026) of the Open Journal of Astrophysics. At the end of August we will be about two-thirds of the way through the year so I expect we will publish more than 270 articles this year. I also expect that less than a year from now we will have saved our third million dollars.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved in running this journal: the Editors, staff at Maynooth University Library who help us, the host of volunteer referees, and of course our authors. I’m confident that, together, we can change the publishing landscape in astrophysics, and put the power (and money) back in the hands of researchers instead of greedy publishers.
This is a slightly-edited version of a post I made yesterday, when we had published four fewer papers, for the Open Journal of Astrophysics blog.
I saw recently an announcement that arXiv – which recently became a standalone nonprofit organization – now hosts more than three million articles. That message took me to a post on the arXiv blog from which I learnt that said blog is on WordPress which makes it possible to include embedded links from this WordPress blog, i.e.:
This in turn reminded me to answer a question that people sometimes ask about the Open Journal of Astrophysics, namely what would happen if arXiv went offline? Since OJAp is an arXiv-overlay journal this would appear to be fatal. We have been keeping duplicates of all the papers we publish, and associated metadata, in a local repository so that if arXiv went down we could reistate them fairly quickly. All we would need to do is alter the overlay to point to a different web address: there is no reason at all why the overlay idea can’t be adapted to other forms of repository.
Recently, however, arXiv decided to do a similar thing for all its articles. Here is a blog post about it:
Anyway, if you use arXiv at all – which will include most astrophysicists – then it would be a good idea to follow the arXiv blog as there is very important news on it, including information about alterations to the schedule of announcements.
Yesterday I was going through the “onboarding” process via Zoom with two new Editors at the Open Journal of Astrophysics (OJAp) when one of them mentioned a recent policy decision at the USA which means we’ll probably get even more papers submitted from there. I wasn’t aware of the decision, but there’s an article in the Times Higher about it here.
In a nutshell:
Under proposed rule changes published by the Office of Management and Budget, all journal publication costs – “including page charges, article processing charges (APCs), or similar fees such as open access fees for professional journal publications and other peer-reviewed publications” – will become “unallowable under federal awards”.
It is important to stress that at this stage the change is proposed rather than actual and it remains to be seen whether it will stand. I think it should because publication fees, article processing charges or whatever you call them are a complete waste of money.
The Times Higher article frames this as “Trump’s ban on paying open access fees”. I was worried to be finding myself in agreement with Donald Trump on anything, but I very much doubt that Trump himself knows anything about scientific publishing or has had much of a hand in this decision. It seems to me to be eminently sensible to ensure that funds meant to be directed at research are not frittered away on page charges. If I were involved in running a research institution I would make it a disciplinary offence to spend money on publication fees.
Of course the academic publishing industry is upset about the proposal claiming that scientific publishing is “high cost”, which it is but only because the publishers rake in huge profits. The way forward, as I have argued many times (e.g. here), is Diamond Open Access, a exemplified by OJAp. The marginal cost per paper article published for OJAp is just $10 and we have at least as much impact as the other leading journals in astrophysics.
I have been surprised how many researchers from the USA are already using OJAp, including many from top institutions such as Harvard, Caltech, Princeton and Chicago. The surprise is basically that authors from the USA have for many years been used to paying page charges for publishing in the Astrophysical Journal and others from the AAS stable. This was the case even before digital journals came on the scene and well before the Open Access movement. I suppose American authors put up with page charges because they felt they had to, but that is no longer the case.
Will we get even more submissions from the USA as a result of this policy change? We’ll just have to wait and see…
The views presented here are personal and not necessarily those of my employer (or anyone else for that matter).
Feel free to comment on any of the posts on this blog but comments may be moderated; anonymous comments and any considered by me to be vexatious and/or abusive and/or defamatory will not be accepted. I do not necessarily endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify or agree with the opinions or statements of any information or other content in the comments on this site and do not in any way guarantee their accuracy or reliability.
