The first issue of MNRAS was published on 9 February 1827 as Monthly Notices of the Astronomical Society of London and it has been in continuous publication ever since. It took its current name from the second volume, after the Astronomical Society of London became the Royal Astronomical Society. Until 1960 it carried the monthly notices of the RAS, at which time these were transferred to the newly established Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society and then to its successor journal Astronomy & Geophysics. Until 1965, MNRAS was published in-house by the society; from 1965 to 2012 it was published by Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the RAS. From 2013, MNRAS is published by Oxford University Press. The journal is no longer monthly, with thirty-six issues a year divided into nine volumes. The Letters section had originally appeared on pink paper in the print edition, but moved online only in the early 2000s. Print publication ceased after the April 2020 volume, during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the journal becoming online-only.
Content
MNRAS publishes peer-reviewed articles on original research in astronomy and astrophysics. Two sorts of article are carried by MNRAS: papers, which can be of any length, and letters, which are published more quickly but are limited to five pages in length. Editorial control of the journal is exercised by the RAS through an editorial board of professional astronomers;, the editor-in-chief is David Flower.
Open access
The stated policy of the RAS is "to focus on high quality papers through rigorous peer review and, as far as practicable, to provide free publication". Authors are not charged for publishing in MNRAS, with the costs of publications being met by subscriptions. MNRAS provides a form of open access by providing authors with the option to pay for publication, allowing free access by anyone without charge. Fellows of the RAS are given free online access to the RAS journals as part of their membership benefits. Downloadable PDF versions of MNRAS articles are made available 36 months after publication, on both the journal website and the Astrophysics Data System. MNRAS also permits self-archiving by authors on personal webpages, in institutional repositories, and on the arXiv server. Also, authors are provided with a link to a perpetually freely accessible PDF file, the idea being that the file itself should not be hosted by the author nor by anyone except the publisher, while the link to it can be freely distributed. This is the modern equivalent of offprints, paper copies of the article which used to be provided to the author to distribute, freely, as he or she saw fit. Authors do not assign copyright to the RAS or OUP, but are required to grant an exclusive licence to publish the article prior to its publication.
Editors-in-chief
The following persons have served as Editor-in-Chief :
David Flower
Robert Carswell
Andy Fabian
John Shakeshaft
Roger Tayler
Function performed by the Secretaries of the RAS Council
