Editor’s Note: This week, the Research Notes of the AAS (RNAAS) — a free-to-publish outlet ideal for timely observations, student work, and null results — published its 2,000th Research Note. Editor Chris Lintott shares his thoughts on this milestone below.
RNAAS editor Chris Lintott
I have the most interesting job in astronomy. Most mornings, just as the first coffee of the day is hitting the system, I open my AAS email and find a fresh Research Note sitting there. The variety is limited only by the creativity of our community; last week I handled updated observations of an intriguing planetary system, the categorisation of obscured active galactic nuclei, an updated catalogue of 50 million stars, and even a speculative piece on floating islands of lava on the surface of planet-consuming red dwarfs.
RNAAS is designed to be a simple place to publish, so these pieces in all their variety are moderated rather than peer reviewed, usually by me and that coffee, but occasionally by my colleagues across the AAS Journals editorial team. RNAAS‘s purpose is to get information of interest into the formal record quickly, without paying attention to notability. With a few exceptions (mostly for novel theory, which really does need peer review), if you have an astronomical result (even, perhaps especially, a null result), observation, or fact to write down, RNAAS will take it.
This week we published the 2,000th Note since RNAAS started back in 2017 (an interesting study of dual active galactic nuclei — galaxies with twin black holes — by Colton Burross and Krista Smith of Texas A&M University), and some modest self-congratulation is in order. Looking back over the 2,000 Notes, some themes emerge; we’ve clearly been successful in encouraging students on summer placements to submit, giving many of them a first formal publication, and the desire for large, growing, and updated catalogues across astronomy is increasingly being serviced by the rapid publication afforded by RNAAS.
That said, it is the sheer variety of submissions that stands out. From the contents of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar’s correspondence and observations of sunspots in 1791, to 128 new moons of Saturn, to guides on advanced statistics, the range is astonishing.
We have every intention of keeping RNAAS going as a free service to the astronomical community. But on this special occasion, if you are one of the authors who have contributed to our 2,000 Notes, then I want to say thanks. If not, then please consider if you have a thought that might be presented in a few pages (and one figure or table!). In either case, all of you are invited to do what I do, and start your day by browsing RNAAS with a coffee.
Chris Lintott
Editor, Research Notes of the AAS
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