Systematic & Applied Acarology (SAA) set a new record in 2017: it published 161 papers (155 articles; 2 review papers; 2 short correspondence; 2 editorial pieces) in 2,272 pages. The number of papers published in 2017 increased 18.4% over that in 2016 (136 papers), and the number of pages in 2017 increased 32.7% over that in 2016 (1,712 pages). SAA was the largest acarological journal in 2016 (Zhang 2017b). The increase in the size of SAA in 2017 enlarged the gap between it and the second largest journal (Experimental & Applied Acarology published 103 papers in 1,409 pages in 2017).
A total of 394 authors from 233 institutions/organizations in 44 countries contributed to SAA in 2017 (based on data in Web of Science). In terms of the number of publications, the top three authors are S.G. Ermilov of Russia (26 papers), A.A. Khaustov of Russia (12 papers), and A. Seniczak of Poland (9 papers); the top three institutions are Tyumen State University of Russia (36 papers), Guizhou University of China (9 papers), Kazimierz Wielki University of Poland (9 papers), and UTP University of Science & Technology of Poland (9 papers); and the top three countries are Russia (40 papers), China (28 papers), and Brazil (24 papers). Over 200 funding agencies or organizations were acknowledged in SAA papers in 2017, the top 3 being the National Natural Science Foundation of China (18 papers), the Russian Science Foundation (8 papers), and the Innovation Team Program for Systematic and Applied Acarology (6 papers). The top three cited papers published in 2017 are on oribatid systematics and morphology: Ermilov et al. (2017), Seniczak et al. (2017), and Seniczak & Seniczak (2017). The top three most-read papers (BioOne site) published in 2017 are Zhang (2017a), Li et al. (2017), and Zhang (2017b).
The papers published in 2017 were processed by 13 subject editors (Table 1), who accepted 12 papers on average—intermediate between that in 2015 (9) and that in 2016 (17). The rapid rise of SAA during its second decade (2006–2015) led to its increased popularity, and as a result, publication was increased to eight issues in 2015 and 12 issues in 2016 (Liu & Zhang 2016; Zhang 2016). To cope with the increased submission, we added new subject editors for popular taxa (e.g. Hans Klompen for Mesostigmata and Lizel Hugo-Coetzee for Oribatida) in 2015 and again recruited several new editors in 2017 (Lidia Chitimia-Dobler & Shahrooz Kazemi to help/succeed Trevor Petney and Hans Klompen, respectively; Marut Fuangarworn to ease the load on Lizel Hugo-Coetzee, Eddie Ueckermann to ease the load on Qing-Hai Fan and Zhi-Qiang Zhang, and Rostislav Zemek to ease the load on David James and Zhi-Qiang Zhang).
Review duration was reduced from 46 days in 2015 to 30 days in 2017, and the average duration from submission to publication was more than halved—from 197 days in 2015 to 94 days in 2017 (Table 1). The rejection rate increased from 19% in 2015 to 22% in 2017.
A community of peers (127) reviewed the 161 papers published in 2017 (Sezai Adil; Mansoureh Ahaniazad; Mohammad Akrami; Maria Alberdi; Jim Amrine; Philippe Auger; Ricardo Araujo; Mohammad Bagheri; William Baker; Şule Baran; Bayra Bayartogtokh; Val Behan-Pelletier; Jenny Beard; Fred Beaulieu; Michel Bertrand; Jerzy Błosyzk; Andre Bochkov; Adrian Bruckner; Alicja Buczek; Elizeu Castro; Angsumarn Chandrapatya; Tapas Chatterjee; Jun Chen; Philipp Chetverikov; Patrick De Clercq; Louise Coetzee; Lidia Chitimia-Dobler; Leonila Corpuz-Raros; Melanie Davidson; Salih Doğan; Ismail Doker; Tobiasz Druciarek; Ernst Ebermann; Sergey Ermilov; Nazer Famah Sourassou; Qing-Hai Fan; Farid Faraji; Yaghoub Fathipour; Nestor Fernandez; Francisco Ferragut; Carlos Flechtmann; Natalia Fredes; Marut Fuangarworn; Tetsuo Gotoh; Elizabeth Grafton-Cardwell; Alberto Guglielmone; Ryszard Haitlinger; Hamidreza Hajiqanbar; R. Bruce Halliday; Michael Heethoff; Lizel Hugo-Coetzee; Liana Johann; Chuleui Jung; Shahid Karim; Shahrooz Kazemi; Mohammad Khanjani; Alexander Khaustov; Pavel Klimov; Hans Klompen; Markus Knapp; Nabi Alper Kumral; Ming Lee; Mariusz Lewandowski; Hao-Sen Li; Wen-Qin Liang; Jianzhen Lin; Evert Lindquist; Parisa Lotfollahi; Wojciech Magowski; Joanna Mąkol; Ben Mans; Dejan Marčić; Pablo Martinez; Jaime Mayoral; Alain Migeon; Ladislav Miko; Maria Minor; Sergey Mironov; Maria Moraza; Grazielle Moreira; Maka Murvanidze; Wojciech Niedbała; Roy Norton; José Palacios-Vargas; Ricardo Paredes-León; Kajal Patel; Radmila Petanović; Vladimir Pešić; Martin Pfeffer; Tobias Pfingstl; Walter P. Pfliegler; Heather Proctor; Isela Quintero-Zapata; Geza Ripka; Richard G. Robbins; Manuel de Rojas; Alireza Saboori; Yutaka Saito; Heinz Schatz; Rebecca Schmidt-Jeffris; Owen Seeman; Marjan Seiedy; Anna Seniczak; Stanislaw Seniczak; Alexey L. Sergeyenko; Andrew Shatrov; Coetzee Shtanchaeva; Katya Sidorchuk; Guilherme da Silva; Maciej Skoracki; Fryderyk Slawomira; Theodoros Stathakis; Marie-Stephane Tixier; Petr Tuzovskij; Eddie Ueckermann; Dominiek Vangansbeke; Shaoli Wang; Gerd Weigmann; Andreas Wohltmann; Bin Xia; Lixia Xie; Xuenong Xu; Yun Xu; Xiao-Feng Xue; Maofa Yang; Shisen Ye; Zhi-Qiang Zhang). Most papers were reviewed by two peers and many peers reviewed multiple papers. Some reviewers of rejected manuscripts and a few reviewers who contributed comments by email only were missed in the manuscript tracking system.
TABLE 1.
Editors and statistics for review of manuscripts submitted to Systematic & Applied Acarology during the last three years.
Acknowledgments.
To my co-editors and all the reviewers (named or missed above) for their contributions to the quality of work we publish in SAA, to Jian-Feng Liu for journal production, to Xiao-Yue Hong and Jing-Tao Sun for journal printing and mailing, to Xiao-Feng Xue for managing subscriptions, and to Anne Austin and Qing-Hai Fan for comments on this manuscript.
