Dear colleagues and friends,

We greatly thank you for your kind support and contributions to Chinese Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ChJAA) throughout the years. Now we are pleased and proud to announce that a new peer-reviewed, international journal, ‘Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (RAA)’ will be launched in the coming International Year of Astronomy, 2009. It is established by transforming an earlier bi-monthly journal, ChJAA into a monthly journal, involving scientific co-operation with several neighboring countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

RAA will be a journal of excellence and be representative to the rapidly growing research in astronomy and astrophysics, not only in China, but the whole Asia-Pacific region and beyond. The journal has a distinguished editorial board with extensive academic qualifications, ensuring high academic standards and a broad international coverage. RAA will be a non-commercial journal with no page charges for all the authors. New papers published for the first month in RAA will be free of downloading for all the readers. It aims to provide a forum for the rapid dissemination and communication of original research as well as reviews in astronomy and astrophysics.

As editors-in-chief, we sincerely invite you to submit papers. The journal is now accepting letters, invited reviews and original research papers. Topics covered by RAA include all the research areas in astronomy and astrophysics. The website of the journal (http://www.raa-journal.org) and the web-based peer review system for manuscripts will be opened soon. All the information that includes submission guidelines and editorial board membership will appear in our website. We will inform you at the first place when the website is available.

Before the formal opening of the journal website, you are welcome to submit your manuscripts electronically via email address of chjaa@bao.ac.cn or through ChJAA website (http://www.chjaa.org), where the instruction for authors and the LaTex style file can be found.

We will make all the efforts to ensure the refereeing and publication process very fast. It would be still possible to publish papers submitted till the end of September in the "historic" first issue if the referee readily recommends publication or asks for minor changes only. Your kind offer of manuscripts will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely yours,

Cheng Fang, Jingxiu Wang and Yipeng Jing

Editors-in-chief