Abstract
After 42 years of continuously publishing the Revista Mexicana de Astronomía y Astrofísica, we cast a short retrospective view on its history and we share our plans for the future. RMxAA was founded in 1974. Founding editors were P. Pishmish, E. Mendoza and S. Torres-Peimbert. RMxAA has published original research papers in all areas of astronomy, astrophysics and related fields. Until 1994 RMxAA also published the proceedings of astronomical conferences held in México and Latin America. Since 1995 a Series devoted exclusively to such proceedings was founded, RMxAC, Revista Mexicana de Astronomía y Astrofísica (Serie de Conferencias). All papers submitted to RMxAA are sent to internationally recognized experts to be strictly refereed. RMxAA is included in Current Contents, Science Citation Index and other relevant international indexes. Both publications are fully integrated into the ADS. Their contents have always been freely available to the general public. All this ensures a wide international visibility, comparable to that of the best astronomical journals. The impact factor of RMxAA has varied over the years, mostly as a consequence of small number statistics. The average impact factor is about 2.4, far larger than that of all but a few Latin American scientific journals. The editorial independence of RMxAA, the fact that there are no page charges for authors, and that the printed version is distributed free of charge to astronomical libraries all over the world motivate us to look forward with optimism to many more years of publication. In view of recent developments in the scientific publishing field, we have applied to obtain the DOI for the published papers, and are in the process of becoming an all-electronic publication.
