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Electronic journal "Astrophysical Bulletin"

Author Guidelines

1. General Provisions

The electronic journal Astrophysical Bulletin accepts manuscripts from authors from all over the world in Russian or in English. The journal publishes original scientific papers and surveys in all the fields of present-day astrophysics, instrumental and methodical papers on astronomy. The total length of a paper (inclusive of tables and figures) should not exceed 30 standard typewritten pages, as a rule. The length may be increased by a decision of the editorial board. The author submitting a manuscript to the journal guarantees that corresponding material (in the original form or in translation into any languages or from any languages) has not been published previously and is not being considered for publication elsewhere.

For the decision of the editorial board on the possibility of publication of a paper in the journal, authors should submit the manuscript (a PDF file), a cover letter from the author(s), and a copyright transfer agreement filled in and signed by the author and all the co-authors. It is necessary to indicate the address, name, surname, and patronymic (if any) of the contact author, his/her phone and fax numbers and the e-mail address. The copyright agreement comes into force on the occasion and on the date when the paper is accepted for publication. The copyright-agreement form and additional legal information are available HERE.

New manuscripts as well as all the covering documents must be submitted electronically via the Pleiades Publishing Portal. After login to the system, the author must find "Astrophysical Bulletin" in the list and click the "Submit New Article".

By submitting a paper to the editors, the authors assign the rights to its translation into English (for manuscripts in Russian) and into Russian (for manuscripts in English) to the founders, editorial board, and publishers of the journal but reserve the rest of the copyright.

Submissions that meet the scope and scientific status of the journal as well as these Guidelines are anonymously peer reviewed. The review copies are sent in to the authors. Within two months, the authors should consider the referee's recommendations and make due corrections or submit a reasonable response in case of disagreement. After this period, the renewed paper will be considered as a new submission. The authors return the corrected manuscript with a cover letter describing corrections made and containing responses to all the referee's comments and proofs. In case of no agreement between the author and the referee, the manuscript might be reviewed additionally. Based on the results of the reviews, the editorial board makes a decision on the acceptance or rejection of the paper. In case of rejecting the paper, the editors keep the original manuscript and send a reasoned refusal to the author. The reviews are kept in the editorial board.

Once a manuscript is accepted, the author may not make any considerable proofs and additions. On the publication, the author receives a copy of the paper in PDF. Manuscripts are not to be returned to the authors. The editorial board may reject a manuscript without communicating with the author on the reasons of the rejection.

Astrophysical Bulletin comes out quarterly.

The Russian electronic copy of the journal is available in open access on the SAO RAS website.

No publication fee is charged from authors for publications in Astrophysical Bulletin.

Manuscripts are translated by the editorial office of the journal. The English version of the journal is published through MAIK Nauka/Interperiodica simultaneously with the Russian volumes and is distributed by subscription by Pleiades Publishing, Inc. and Springer, on-line and in hard copies.

Postal address: Special Astrophysical Observatory (SAO RAS), Nizhny Arkhyz, Karachay-Cherkess Republic, 369167 Russia.

E-mail: astrobull@sao.ru.

Tel. +7(87822)93398, fax +7(87878)46315.

2. Manuscript structure

The following manuscript elements are considered REQUIRED:

1. A title of the manuscript, most informative and concise.
2. Surnames and initials of all the authors. The corresponding author must be indicated. Authors who normally write their names in a transcription other than Latin should include their names in the Latin characters.
3. Authors' affiliations. The full (please, do not use any abbreviations) institution name and the postal address including the city, country, and postal code are required. If authors affiliate with different institutions, the name of each institution should be given.
4. A corresponding author's e-mail. As final layouts are submitted to authors for revision via e-mail only, it is recommended to give an alternative e-mail address for communication in case of possible technical problems. The alternative e-mail box would be the one that the author checks irrespective of his/her location. If there is more than one author, two or three e-mail addresses might be given.
5. An abstract. The abstract should not be too short and should not contain bibliographic references. It must be informative and detailed, describe methods and main results of the investigation. It should be evident from the abstract what questions were set for the study and what answers have been obtained.
6. The abstract of the manuscript must contain 1 to 6 keywords from the list. If desired, the author can use keywords from the Unified Astronomy Thesaurus (UAT).
7. A manuscript. The text of the paper irrespective of its length should be concise, clear, and carefully edited. When preparing a manuscript, the uniformity in terms should be ensured, i.e., it is not recommended to name one and the same thing by different terms. The uniformity in designations, systems of units, nomenclature is also advisable. Unnecessary acronyms/abbreviations except for the truly obvious and familiar are better to be avoided. In case the acronym/abbreviation is used, the term should be spelt out at the first occurrence in the text. In particular, alphanumeric abbreviations of names of telescopes, instruments, and projects should be given in full including their main features. The overuse of formulae and duplication of data by using it both in the text and in tables or figures are not allowed. Slang words, abbreviations, and expressions used only by small groups of researchers should be avoided.
8. A list of references prepared in accordance with the technical requirements should contain bibliographic references to available sources only and not be excessive. The use of BibTeX is advised for preparing the bibliography. The BibTeX style file (bst) of the journal can be found HERE.
9. If figures or tables are present, they should be placed right after their first mention in the text and numbered. Each figure must include a caption. If a figure consists of several parts, these parts must appear in sequence and have a common capture. Figure files should be numbered in accordance with their numerical order in the body of the text.

Manuscripts may be declined without a review if at least one of the above-listed elements is missing.

3. Preparing the Electronic Copy of a Manuscript

Manuscripts must be submitted via Pleiades Publishing Portal.

The final electronic version of a manuscript should contain all files of the paper revised according to suggestions of the referee and the editorial board: the text and tables in LaTeX, figures in EPS files, and the paper compiled into a PDF file. The files and covering documents should be compressed into one archive (e.g., ZIP).

1. LaTeX template. Also in Overleaf.

2. Instruction for LaTeX-file preparation.

3. Technical requirements for figures.

4. Technical requirements for the list of references.

4. Review Process

The editors inform the author on possible acceptance of the paper for publication, forward remarks and comments of the editorial board, and the referee's report using Pleiades Publishing Portal. In the case of a positive review, the paper may be accepted for publication after the settlement of controversial points (if any) between the author, the referee, and the editorial board. The final version of the paper is submitted to the editors in accordance with the instructions given. Upon the technical processing and translation of the paper, the translated (Russian-English or vice versa) version is sent to the author for approval. Instructions for entering corrections are e-mailed to the author along with the translation.

Other questions on manuscript preparing and timescales for reviewing and publication may be addressed to the editorial office.