Submissions to RNAAS should be brief communications — 1,000 words or fewer, with no more than a single figure or table (but not both) — and should be written in a style similar to that of a traditional journal article, including references, where appropriate, but not including an abstract.
The 1,000 word count limit includes title, headers, captions, and references. Easy though not entirely full proof ways to count the number of words in a Research Note are to use the texcount utility installed with most LaTeX installations, or by copying the words into MS/Word and using ”Word Count” under the Tool tab. The call texcount -v3 -merge -incbib -dir -sub=none -utf8 -sum rnaas.tex includes the options to pick up references and provides a nice color-coded visual summary of which words are included; this produces a result consistent with the Overleaf word count. Please note that the original version of these instructions failed to add the -sum option for texcount, leading to inaccurate estimates of the total words in a TeX file. Also note that this texcount call includes authors and affiliations and often poorly parses equations. Thus, the AAS Editorial office’s word count is the final arbiter of the limit.
Authors are expected to follow the Professional and Ethical Standards for the AAS Journals (Kennicutt et al. 2006), including guidance on plagiarism (Vishniac 2012).
Research Notes are published as they are submitted, with no further language review or production services. Our priority for Research Notes is fast circulation of knowledge, and this process means they can be published as quickly as possible. It does mean that typos and other such errors will be published if they appear in the original submission.
