Re-introducing “Biogeography.News”

To better serve our goal of fostering a more equitable and sustainable global community for biogeographical research we have updated our scope to emphasize a broader authorship in society journals.

Above: A metaphor: Mill Creek, California, USA. Where the land and sea meet, large and dynamic forces shape and re-shape the environment for organisms that inhabit the intertidal zone, and beyond.

This blog was established in early 2020 and has been maintained for the past three-and-a-half years by members of the biogeography community. Our goal has always been to highlight research at the intersection of biology and geography that is scientifically important and of broad general interest. Importantly, it was intended from the outset to foster a more equitable and sustainable global community for biogeographical research. For many years these goals overlapped with an emerging emphasis at the Journal of Biogeography (JBI) and, as JBI had provided a ‘big tent’ for the biogeography community for almost 50 years, it made pragmatic sense to focus on highlighting research published in that journal as a proxy for supporting the community that orbited around it. However, the past year has shown how much JBI has departed from this blog’s mission of listening to and supporting the biogeography community. In September, we parted ways.

The past three months provided some much-needed time for reflection: on our mission, on what we learned during the year, on the implications, on how we could better serve the biogeography community. We are now pleased to announce our return, as Biogeography.News, with many of the same initiatives — early career researcher features, research highlights from the literature, news of developments in publishing affecting biogeographers — but re-orienting our focus. Instead of looking to a single journal to represent biogeography, we are now looking to the broad spectrum of journals that publish biogeographic research. Specifically, our focus will be on biogeography that is published in society journals.

Society-owned journals that publish biogeographical works include (but are not limited to):
American Journal of Botany (Botanical Society of America; published by Wiley)   
American Naturalist (American Society of Naturalists; published by U. Chicago Press)
Biogeographia (Italian Biogeography Society; published by eScholarship)
Biological Journal of the Linnean Society (eponymous; published by Oxford Academic)
Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society (eponymous; published by Oxford Academic)
Ecography (Nordic Society Oikos; published by Wiley)
    Sister journals https://nordicsocietyoikos.org/publications (published by Wiley)
Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society (eponymous; published by
Oxford Academic)
Frontiers of Biogeography (International Biogeography Society; published by
eScholarship. N.B. *not* a “Frontiers.in” journal)  
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society (eponymous; published by Oxford Academic)
Evolution (Society for the Study of Evolution; published by Oxford Academic)
Journal of Mammalogy (American Society of Mammalogists; published by
Oxford Academic)
Journal of Vegetation Science (International Association for Vegetation Science;
published by Wiley)
Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation (‘Brazilian Association for Ecological Science’
and Conservation; published by Elsevier)
Proceedings of the Royal Society, B (eponymous; published by Oxford Academic)
     Sister journals https://royalsociety.org/Journals/ 
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (eponymous; published by NAS)
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science; published by AAAS)
Systematic Biology (Society of Systematic Biologists; published by Oxford Academic)
Taxon (International Association for Plant Taxonomy; published by Wiley)

The list of societies, journals, and publishers makes it clear that the current publishing environment is complicated for biogeographers who want to support #BetterPublishing through their authorial, editorial, and/or reviewing work. While avoiding journals such as JBI and it’s sister journals (Diversity and Distributions, Global Ecology and Biogeography), which are fully owned and published by Wiley, may be a relatively straight forward decision these days, should biogeographers wishing to support #BetterPublishing also then avoid society-owned journals that are published by Wiley? (And, likewise, society-owned journals published by other large for-profit companies?) What are the relevant benefits and costs? We can dig into these issues in more detail at another time, but, in short, a rough rule of thumb is that society journals take less from and/or give more back to the community than publisher-owned journals, and some smaller publishers provide lower costs / better benefits. Many of these journals have long rich histories; others are more recent. We each have some disciplinary favorites, and a soft-spot for Biogeographia and Frontiers of Biogeography (N.B. *not* a “frontiers.in” journal!) published with the University of California’s eScholarship.

We’ll also continue to highlight biogeography, via our linked social media —
X/twitter (‘https://twitter.com/JBiogeography), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/people/Biogeographynews/100050027385851/), and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/jbiogeography/) — and including following the society journals we highlight.

With the expansion of this blog’s scope, there is much more work to be done. It is a particularly exciting time in publishing, looking to see more affordable equitable journals rising to replace JBI. With more journals to cover, we look forward to welcoming more authors. With more authors penning summaries of their recent research, we’ll need more ‘editors’ to review and format posts for the blog. There’s no greater reward than helping each other be successful. We hope you’ll join us in this endeavor …

To see how to submit a summary of your recent research to the blog, see LINK (https://biogeographynews.org/2023/12/10/how-to-contribute-to-biogeography-news/)

To join the editorial team at Biogeography.News write with a few lines about (1) your areas of expertise/interest, (2) the journal and/or geographic region you’d like to cover, and (3) your publishing history, to:
b i o g e o g r a p h y n e w s @ g m a i l . c o m