The Memoirs of the AMS series is devoted to the publication of research in all areas of pure and applied mathematics. The Memoirs is designed particularly to publish long papers or groups of cognate papers in book form, and is under the supervision of the Editorial Committee of the AMS journal Transactions of the AMS. All articles submitted to this journal are peer-reviewed. To be accepted by the editorial board, manuscripts must be correct, new, and significant. Further, they must be well written and of interest to a substantial number of mathematicians. Papers appearing in the Memoirs are generally at least 80 and not more than 200 published pages in length. Papers less than 80 or more than 200 published pages require the approval of the Managing Editor of the Transactions/Memoirs Editorial Board.

All contributions will be initially assessed by the handling editor for suitability for the journal. Typically, the editor seeks a number of expert opinions to assist in the process. Papers deemed suitable by the handling editor are discussed within the board to determine whether or not the submission should be sent for full review. After a full review process, the submission may be discussed again within the board, and a recommendation to accept may be made to the journal's leadership.

Since 2022, the journal is implementing stringent backlog reduction measures, and therefore comparison with published manuscripts does not indicate the standards expected of manuscripts under review.

The Memoirs typically consists of six published volumes per year, each containing four or more numbers. Each number contains either a single monograph or a group of related papers. As part of the backlog reduction measures mentioned above, for 2024 and 2025, The Memoirs will consist of 12 published volumes per year, each typically containing for or more numbers. This represents an 100% increase in content over previous years, in order to clear the backlog discussed above.