Seven up! Frontiers of Biogeography, 2015

Abstract

editorial ISSN 1948-6596 Seven up! Frontiers of Biogeography, 2015 Since publication of the first issue 1 of Frontiers of Biogeography in September 2009, and movement to eScholarship 2 —the University of California’s open access publishing system—in March 2012, the readership and content of the journal have gone from strength to strength. As of February 2015 (the latest month for which statistics are available), Frontiers’ articles have been viewed almost 46,000 times. The readership per issue has grown ~325%, from ~2,000 views in the three month period following publication of the first fully online issue in early 2012 to over 6,500 views in the three month period following publication of the most recent issue in December 2014 (Fig. 1). The top ten articles have so far been viewed a to- tal of ~12,500 times; the next 10 most-popular articles have been viewed a total of ~5,000 times to date. These online views translate into citations. Six of the ten most viewed articles are also in the top ten cited articles. Using Harzing’s Publish or Perish software (Harzing 2007) drawing from the Google Scholar database, we can estimate a statis- tic that approximates Thomson Reuters’ Impact Factor TM —i.e. the mean number of citations in 2014 to research papers published in 2012 and 2013—for Frontiers at around 2.9, which im- proved upon the 2013 citation rate of 2.6. The ten most cited articles have garnered a mean of nine citations each (ranging 5–14 citations per article) in other quality, peer-reviewed journals, including leading journals in biogeography (e.g., Journal of Biogeography, Diversity and Distributions), popu- lation genetics (Molecular Ecology), applied and basic ecology (Biological Invasions, Oikos), multi- disciplinary sciences (e.g., PNAS), and systematics (e.g., Taxon). These kinds of achievements, while still small steps, cannot be accomplished by a journal alone; they take a community. More than 200 bio- geographers from over 28 countries have au- thored or co-authored articles submitted to Fron- tiers of Biogeography since September 2009. Over 125 biogeographers have reviewed articles for Frontiers of Biogeography since January 2012. Ap- proximately 40 biogeographers have served on the editorial team. Together we have published 239 articles on biogeography. Thank you all! Thus, we are en route to our goal: to be a leading forum for the dissemination of ideas and understanding in biogeography among members of a broad audience. In part, this is because Fron- tiers of Biogeography is biogeography's only libre open access, peer-reviewed, society journal, a status that embodies our belief that biogeography by biogeographers (sensu lato) provides the best model for disseminating quality information to scientists of all kinds (Dawson et al. 2014). While the trend of other societies partnering with for- profit publishing houses continues (Inouye and McCarter 2015), we are free to focus on benefits to the scientific community. In the coming year, we look forward to again bringing you even more Figure 1. Number of views of Frontiers of Biogeography articles during the three month period following publi- cation of each issue, since moving to eScholarship in March 2012. The total number of views is now approxi- mately 46,000. 1 http://www.biogeography.org/html/fb/FBv1i1.html 2 http://escholarship.org/uc/search?entity=fb;volume=4;issue=1 frontiers of biogeography 7.1, 2015 — © 2015 the authors; journal compilation © 2015 The International Biogeography Society