Effects of editorial periodicity on taxonomic publications

Abstract

The editorial system of scientific journals has grown from a printed system in which articles were disseminated in paper journals and offprints to the digital format of the present day, allowing for rapid scientific dissemination of an exploding number of manuscripts every year. With this growing number of publication options, researchers have several possibilities for publication and will vary their selection criteria according to particular interests, notably, journals’ indexation level. However, in cases where several journals have similar indexing levels, authors consider other factors, such as costs and speed of publication. Well-indexed open-access journals, often free for authors, abounds in Latin America. Unfortunately, these journals often threaten the work of taxonomists with their practice of accumulating accepted but yet unpublished manuscripts assigned to “future issues”.