As 2023 ends and a new year begins, the International Journal of Astrobiology is preparing to begin a new journey. Beginning in 2024, all articles in IJA will be available under Gold Open Access. The published ‘version of record’ will be made available to everyone upon publication and can be found on the journal’s homepage. Papers will be free to read for anyone, anywhere.

Authors will continue to retain copyright of their work: content will be published under a Creative Commons license, that allows free access and redistribution and, in many cases, allows re-use in new or derivative works. Back issues will also be free, although with no changes of the licenses under which they were published.

The timing for this change comes at an exciting time for Astrobiology with the discovery of mud cracks on Mars as evidence for sustained wet-dry cycles on ancient Mars that might have provided conditions for prebiotic chemistry that could have led to life, the discovery of prebiotic compounds previously found in meteorites have now been found in the asteroid Ryugu, confirming their extraterrestrial origin, the continuous discovery of new planets, and more. Clearly the future of research in astrobiology holds enormous promise.

As an Open Access journal, IJA will be financially supported through an article processing charge (APC), that will be obtained from various sources. Authors within an institution who are part of a Read and Publish Agreement with Cambridge University Press will not need to pay an APC. Other authors might have their APC covered by their funding bodies or their own institutions. Authors from Research4Life countries will have their APC discounted or waived. We are also seeking sponsorship to cover APCs for authors who do not have funds to cover them: no author of an accepted paper will be denied publication due to lack of funds. The pervasive idea is to shorten the time between scientific discovery to its dissemination to the scientific community.  To accomplish this requires the scientific community to have ready access to these discoveries and Open Access helps solves that issues.

International Journal of Astrobiology is the Gold Open Access peer-reviewed forum for practitioners in this exciting interdisciplinary field.

Editor-in-Chief: Rocco L. Mancinelli