Pascal Willis
Editorial
Editorial

In 2020, we were all affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. It strongly affected our work and our life. We all had to adapt to the new situation. Even the 43th COSPAR scientific assembly (https://www.cospar2020.org) had to be postponed to January 2021 and will be held soon as an hybrid meeting. Fortunately, the journal was not too much affected. The number of submissions continued to stay at a high level (over 1100 per year) and the time taken for review did not increase too much. In June 2020, Advances in Space Research obtained an Impact Factor never obtained before (2.177), almost reaching the first quartile in the Engineering and Aerospace category. Issue 67(1), published on January 1st, 2021, is a special volume as all articles will remain online free-of-charge and freely accessible to all readers, without any paid subscription, for a complete year, as a courtesy of Elsevier. This issue therefore presents, a good opportunity to provide an updated list of Editorial board members as well as some recent news related to the Journal. In 2021, the Editorial board is currently composed of 3 Co-Editors (Peggy Shea, who is in charge of Special Issues, Jan Lastovicka and Biswajit Paul) and 20 Associate Editors, covering the following scientific fields: Astrophysics (Igor V. Moskalenko, Biman Nath, Biswajit Paul), Solar System Bodies (Ernesto Palomba), Earth Sciences (Jadunandan Dash, Richard Eckman, Jianghui Geng, Zhenhong Li, Paul Poli, Stefano Vignudelli), Earth Magnetosphere and Upper Atmosphere (Maxim V. Klimenko, Gurbax Singh Lakhina, Jan Lastovicka, Giovanni Occhipinti), Solar and Heliospheric Physics (Stefan Ferreira, Alexander Kosovichev, Peggy Shea), Astrodynamics and Space Debris (Pierluigi Di Lizia, Thomas Schildknecht, Moriba Jah, Pascal Willis), Fundamental Physics in Space and Microgravity Sciences (Claus Laemmerzahl) and Space Technology, Policy and Education (Alberto Tobias, Renuganth Varatharajoo). In 2020, Elsevier successfully implemented a new submission system (EM), providing more possibilities for authors, reviewers and editors. The transition was done efficiently in a seamless manner. Submissions can be done at any time at https://www.editorialmanager.com/aisr. Finally, I would like officially to thank here all our editors and reviewers. They spend considerable time to improve this Journal on a day-by-day basis. I would also like to express my appreciation to all authors for submitting high-quality manuscripts and to extend my thanks to the COSPAR Secretariat, and to the Elsevier team, in particular to Gemma Upton and to Lianne van der Zant for providing us with highly professional and efficient technical support.