PASA publishes 4 issues per year, and 1-2 of these issues each year are usually devoted to a special theme or topic. Recent examples include The Origin of Elements Heavier than Iron and The Many Faces of Centaurus A.
These are not conference proceedings, but are a collection of rigorously refereed reviews or new results, as would appear in journals such as ApJ, MNRAS or Annual Reviews. However, often a recent conference or workshop can serve as the inspiration or motivation for a thematic issue, and we welcome peer-review-quality papers based on recent discussions or workshops.
The PASA Editorial Board believes that such an opportunity offers an important service to the community. Conference proceedings are decreasing in popularity and utility, and usually involve significant work and expense. In contrast, PASA offers end-to-end handling of manuscripts, high-quality refereeing and editorial assessment, prompt publication, and full indexation in ADS, ISI and other databases, all at zero cost.
If you would like to convene a thematic issue, your only responsibility would be to identify authors and topics, and to then make sure these authors deliver the papers to which they have committed. Your hard-working PASA Editorial Board will then run the refereeing process (working in consultation with you if you wish), while CSIRO PUBLISHING will handle the production and publication.
PASA now has an impact factor of 3.8, which is ahead of PASP and just behind A&A. We hope to maintain and grow this impact factor in the years ahead, while maintaining a unique niche as a journal prepared to publish topical issues, review articles, and papers on algorithms and techniques.
If you are interested in developing a special issue for PASA, whether inspired by a conference/workshop or simply because you have an exciting topic in mind, please email Bryan Gaensler, the Chair of the Editorial Board, for discussion.
