Acarological publications in the last 150 years: historical trends and an assessment of current journals

Abstract

Next month, the 14th International Congress of Acarology will be held in Kyoto, Japan (14–18 July), and Journal Citation Reports® (JCR) will release the 2013 impact factor for journals. I am using this opportunity to provide an overview of acarological publications in the last 150 years and also an assessment of acarological journals. Acarologists were traditionally affiliated and associated with entomologists and other zoologists, and their publications are scattered in many different journals and books. The first specialist journal, Acarologia, did not start until 1959 (Table 1), and the First International Congress of Acarology was held just half a century ago (Flechtmann 2011). Beginning in the 1950s, the number of papers on the Acari started to increase rapidly (Fig. 1), and reached a peak of over 13,000 during the 1980s. This level of very high output continued for the next 25 years, with over 12,000 papers per decade (while the data for 2010–2014 is for less than half a decade, based on current data, the total for this decade is predicted to be similar to the last two decades). The number of new taxa of Acari in the publications for each decade followed a similar trend, but peaked at just over 10,000 during the 1970s and 1980s. This was followed by a rapid decline (about 25% decrease) in the 1990s FIGURE 1. Numbers of papers and new taxa on the Acari published during the last 150 years. The number of papers was based on the search result of “Acari*” in the online edition of Zoological Record. The number of new taxa was based on metrics search of “Acari” at http://www.organismnames.com/ (data as of 12 June 2014).