The Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, published by the American Chemical Society on behalf of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, is a monthly, peer-reviewed journal that covers all aspects of mass spectrometry, including fields of scientific inquiry in which mass spectrometry can play a role, including both applications and fundamentals. These fields include the chemical, biological, health, environmental and forensic sciences, omics sciences such as proteomics and metabolomics, as well as physics and geology.

The journal publishes papers on both fundamentals and applications of mass spectrometry, in addition to new instrumentation and methods development.

Papers that report on an application should have as a principal focus the use of a new mass spectrometry tool or approach to solve a qualitative or quantitative problem. Application subjects include, but are not limited to, development or validation of new methodology, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics and other 'omics related research, structural elucidation, biopolymer sequencing, automation/implementation of high throughput methods, and environmental and forensic measurements. Papers describing computer applications, new algorithms and software will also be considered.

Fundamental subjects include instrumentation principles, design, and demonstration, structures and chemical properties of gas-phase ions, studies of thermodynamic properties, ion spectroscopy, chemical kinetics, mechanisms of ionization, theories of ion fragmentation, cluster ions, and potential energy surfaces.