An Electronic Submission Service Introduction Astronomy and Astrophysics is moving towards electronic submission of papers. Current proposals involve the use of computer facilities available at the institutes where the editors reside. In return, they should receive an email with instructions. As a last resort option, authors could be permitted to submit PostScript or PDF files. An outline of the ESS is given in figure 1 .
Authors submit their paper via email , ftp , or Web uploads .
The ESS processes the submission, and makes it available through the Web, in PostScript and PDF format, in a password protected area. Authors and editors are informed of a successful submission by an automatically generated email message, providing them with an identifier and a password, unique to each manuscript. The editors consult the referees, and the referee that agrees to read a particular paper is provided with its URL , identifier, and password. The referee reports his findings to the editor by email. The ESS should distinguish submissions for Letters , Main Journal , and Supplement Series , so they may be handled by the appropriate editor.