Report to IAU Commission 7
2005-2008
CMDA is being published, since 2007, with a new cover showing an artistic representation of one low-thrust trajectory between the Earth and the Moon, including an halo orbit around L2 and using the gravity assist of the Moon to direct the flight towards a distant target. This new cover reminds that mission analysis and other aspects of Astrodynamics as determination, prediction, computation and selection of orbits are among the aims of CMDA, as defined in the first journal issue, in 1969. The number of published papers on Astrodynamics is increasing and a large special issue is scheduled for publication in 2009.
The impact factor calculated by the Institute
for Scientific Information and published in the Journal Citation Reports reached
1.562 in 2008, largely compensating the low of 0.844 in 2007. The JCR impact factor
is related to the number of citations, in a given year, of papers published in one
journal in the two previous calendar years and is impaired by large
statistical fluctuations. The new more robust 5-yr factor, published in JCR
since 2007, reached 1.272 in 2008. The analysis of previous years shows that the
5-yr impact factor of CMDA is being held close to or above 1.0 since 2004
50 percent of the submitted papers are
published. The average times between the submission of one (accepted) paper and
the final decision is being kept within 6 months. Some extremely long times are
still recorded, but they generally correspond to papers demanding
time-consuming thorough revisions.
The transients from the merging of Kluwer and Springer are over and the journal is being published rigorously according with the schedule. Because of continued efforts, CMDA is currently reaching, through electronic and hardcopy subscriptions, more than 5,000 institutions. A few recent papers are being offered by Springer on a free-access basis, but it is important that authors use the rights allowed by current copyright rules to make easily available e-preprints of their articles. The old issues (before 1997) are available for free download through the NASA-ADS site, but Springer will not extend this allowance to more recent issues.
Editor-in-chief