EJT publishes issue 250!!
2016-12-13
Today, December 12th 2016, EJT has published its 250th issue. Since issue one was published early September 2011, our journal has described more than 900 new taxa in close to 7500 pages: 839 new species, 75 new genera and 7 new (sub-) families. Since its start 5 years ago, EJT also increased its consortium to 7 institutional members, tightened its link with CETAF and obtained an ISI impact factor for two consecutive years. We can thus safely say that EJT has come of age and has become an established journal in descriptive taxonomy.
This is all excellent news, of course! However, in some ways, EJT has become a victim of its own success. Since we received our first ISI impact factor mid 2015, the number of submissions has increased exponentially, while our production capacity has not increased in the same way. Please remember that EJT is produced fully in-house by the Natural History Institutes that are member of the EJT consortium and fully finance the journal. Therefore, EJT has a fixed number of pages that can be produced annually and recently we have accepted more papers than could fit into our page budget.
This has a variety of consequences, two of which are most relevant for our contributing authors.
Firstly, the editorial board of EJT has decided to become stricter in the application of the aims and scope of our journal, concentrating almost exclusively on manuscripts that deal with descriptive taxonomy sensu stricto. This means that, for example, checklists and catalogues of museum collections will only rarely be considered and that taxonomic descriptions with limited critical mass, for example isolated nomenclatorial acts or single species descriptions, will generally no longer be considered either.
Secondly, for the first time in the brief history of EJT, we are facing a back log of accepted manuscripts. Whereas the time line between acceptance and publication was c 5 calendar weeks in 2012 (roughly one month), it has increased to, in some cases, 17 calendar weeks in 2016. This is still a good score for a taxonomic journal, but we do not want to see this time lapse increase further, hence the above decision to be more selective amongst the submitted manuscripts.
EJT is of course produced by the teams of editors and desk editors, but the true work is done by all of you, publishing taxonomists from around the world. You are our contributing authors, our willing referees and our citing readers. Without you, EJT has no meaning. Herewith, the editors and desk editors of EJT would like to thank all of you for your interest in our journal, for sending us your best manuscripts and for all the efforts you put into making EJT an ever-better journal. Let us continue our efforts together, so up to volume 500 and beyond!
This is all excellent news, of course! However, in some ways, EJT has become a victim of its own success. Since we received our first ISI impact factor mid 2015, the number of submissions has increased exponentially, while our production capacity has not increased in the same way. Please remember that EJT is produced fully in-house by the Natural History Institutes that are member of the EJT consortium and fully finance the journal. Therefore, EJT has a fixed number of pages that can be produced annually and recently we have accepted more papers than could fit into our page budget.
This has a variety of consequences, two of which are most relevant for our contributing authors.
Firstly, the editorial board of EJT has decided to become stricter in the application of the aims and scope of our journal, concentrating almost exclusively on manuscripts that deal with descriptive taxonomy sensu stricto. This means that, for example, checklists and catalogues of museum collections will only rarely be considered and that taxonomic descriptions with limited critical mass, for example isolated nomenclatorial acts or single species descriptions, will generally no longer be considered either.
Secondly, for the first time in the brief history of EJT, we are facing a back log of accepted manuscripts. Whereas the time line between acceptance and publication was c 5 calendar weeks in 2012 (roughly one month), it has increased to, in some cases, 17 calendar weeks in 2016. This is still a good score for a taxonomic journal, but we do not want to see this time lapse increase further, hence the above decision to be more selective amongst the submitted manuscripts.
EJT is of course produced by the teams of editors and desk editors, but the true work is done by all of you, publishing taxonomists from around the world. You are our contributing authors, our willing referees and our citing readers. Without you, EJT has no meaning. Herewith, the editors and desk editors of EJT would like to thank all of you for your interest in our journal, for sending us your best manuscripts and for all the efforts you put into making EJT an ever-better journal. Let us continue our efforts together, so up to volume 500 and beyond!
