First of all, I would like to thank my predecessor as Editor-in-Chief of Tijdschrift voor Entomologie (TvE) Dr Herman de Jong, for his great job since 2014. During his time as editor, the journal became indexed by Scopus along with other scientific indexes. We are glad to keep Dr de Jong on the team as Editorial Board member.
Since I took over his position in 2019, further changes have been introduced to the journal and its Editorial Board: Dr Menno Reemer, who served the journal as an expert of Diptera, announced his withdrawal from the Board in 2020. We would like to express our deep gratitude for his valued service and contributions.
Two new members have joined TvE’s Editorial Board in return: Dr Dmitry Telnov of the Natural History Museum, London accepted my invitation and has taken up editorial duties since 2020. Dr Telnov has been a very active coleopterologist with an impressive publication record and hence will attend to manuscripts on terrestrial beetles. We are also very glad to have Dr Martin Ebejer, National Museum Wales, Cardiff newly on board, who joins us as Associate Editor for manuscripts on Diptera. We warmly welcome both colleagues to the editorial team.
Much to our regret, I must announce that Dr Erik van Nieukerken will slowly suspend his long-term and outstanding services for TvE, which gave distinction to the journal for decades. Dr van Nieukerken already joined the Editorial Board in 1986 when he was employed at the Leiden Museum. Soon after, in 1989, he became Co-Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor (a joint role at that time) jointly with Dr Jan van Tol. After Dr van Tol’s retreat in 1998, he almost continuously served as sole Editor-in-Chief (and Managing Editor) until 2013, with only a short interruption around 2008–2009. From 2014 until now, Dr van Nieukerken served as Associate Editor. I personally greatly appreciate his editorial experience and advice and his unselfish editorial engagement far beyond the usual standard.
In my role as Editor-in-Chief during the last two years, our main goal was to get the publication of TvE back to its regular annual schedule. This target was successfully reached this year, irrespective of additional problems that we encountered due to a personnel change of the production team. Consequently, the compilation of article proofs needed longer than usual and repeated rework. Online papers will continue to appear throughout the year as advanced articles (brill.com/view/journals/tve/aop/issue.xml), but we decided to have the printed hard copy of TvE published in a large single issue in 2021.
The inconsistencies with the imprint of publication dates of articles, which we encountered particularly in 2020 and earlier, seem to be resolved after further coordination with Brill and its production team. The first publication date is of particular importance in taxonomic papers containing nomenclatural acts. Due to the missing final page numbers, advanced online articles should still be cited as “in press” (see for instance: brill.com/view/journals/tve/163/1/tve.163.issue-1.xml). Take note that printed versions of the same articles were occasionally released in the following year. We currently elaborate ways in which early online releases will constitute published works (see https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.219.3944). In line with this, we have already implemented a registration policy for accepted manuscripts with ZooBank. The link to the ZooBank registration is now included in all taxonomic and systematic papers below the abstract. In order to ensure accuracy, the registration is kindly done by the Managing Editor, Dr Hubert Turner. Registration by individual authors is not encouraged but is not excluded.
Furthermore, I am taking measures to reverse the trend of the decrease in submissions to the journal. While our main target authors are still well-established senior scientists (particularly taxonomists), who appreciate the long heritage of the journal, we have been attracting an increasing number of junior scientists as authors. Nevertheless, several papers had to be rejected due to mismatch with the scope of the journal, or insufficient quality. It is my further goal to slightly adjust the scope without compromising quality. I see most potential for taxonomic papers, DNA barcoding and faunistics (given substantial new information, e.g., new country records, is presented).
In close coordination with representatives of Brill and the Nederlandse Entomologische Vereniging (NEV), we aim to publish one paper per year dealing with any new scientific or technical development of broader interest for the entomological community. Such papers might be published as invited “Opinion”, “Review”, or “Editorial” and shall be provided open access on the TvE webpage. This aims at increasing public interest in the journal and consequently the number of citations, given that the dominating taxonomic papers in TvE are naturally cited only by a limited and highly specialized scientific readership. The editorial team is also open to suggestions for such invited contributions.
The first paper of this type is a paper by Christian Molls on user experiences with ObsIdentify, an animal and plant identification app, and its related online services. Along with a regional test of the app on beetles, the paper provides insight in the functioning and proper use of the app and briefly evaluates its current usefulness and limitations.
Besides several taxonomic contributions in TvE 164, we publish an interesting paper by Hans Klaus Pfau with a detailed disquisition of the functional morphology of the Ephemeropteran mesothoracic flight apparatus. The solely morphological approach also revisits insect wing evolution, a contentious issue that hopefully will stimulate further scientific discussion.
A few minor adjustments to author guidelines for TvE will be implemented in 2022.
The SAGE 2021 conference, which was announced in TvE 163 (doi.org/10.1163/22119434-20202092), is updated as follows: Due to the continued pandemic situation, the Fourth International Conference on Southeast Asian Gateway Evolution (SAGE 2022) was postponed for one year and it is now scheduled for August 8–12, 2022 in Manila. Registration is open. Please see sage2022.org/ for details.
Except for the above-mentioned invited contributions, book reviews, announcements and other editorials, a general open-access publication scheme is not granted to members of NEV or members of the editorial team. However, as confirmed during a recent editorial meeting with Brill, any paper published in Tijdschrift voor Entomologie will be made freely accessible (open access) about two years after its original publication. This currently affects all articles up to Vol. 161 (2018) and is a great advantage for both authors and readers. All older volumes (up to Vol. 140) are open access in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL; biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/10088). An index to the articles is available on the NEV website (nev.nl/publicaties_cat/tijdschrift-voor-entomologie/tijdschrift-voor-entomologie/).
We are looking forward to receiving more interesting manuscripts, including monographs. The latter should be discussed with the editors in good time beforehand.
