The member countries with most contributions are Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands and Spain. Of non-sponsoring countries with many articles the UK, USA, Russia, Chile and Argentina are mentioned. The distribution of countries is reported to be similar to that of previous years. A slight drop in the contributions from Germany is noted. The division between different sections is commented on.
Cosmology is still small but increasing.
A new section on planetary systems is discussed. This is a small decrease from the previous year. J. and Astron. J. increased their number of pages. Comparing trends from previous years regarding the number of published articles and pages per article the projected number of pages for 2001 was estimated to be in the range 19000 to 20000.