British Irish Botany Ian Denholm and Louise Marsh

British & Irish Botany Ian Denholm and Louise Marsh

2011 - 2017 • Published by Maney until 2015 • Taylor and Francis thereafter This journal has ceased to be. .

Reasons for the demise of NJB • Lack of contributions, especially from academics • No impact factor • Amateurs (especially) deterred by tortuous submission, reviewing and proofing processes • Increasingly difficult to find good and punctual reviewers • T&F too big and distant for effective interactions • Editor and editorial assistant in need of therapy!

So a new approach… • On-line publication platform (ejournal) • Freely accessible to everyone (not just BSBI members) • Free of charge to authors • No formal peer review (still controversial) but scientific scrutiny by editors • As user-friendly as we can make it, encouraging contributions from amateur botanists ‘British & Irish Botany’

Open Journal Systems/Public Knowledge Project Quotes from the OJS website “Scholars need the means to launch a new generation of journals committed to open access, and to help existing journals that elect to make the transition to open access…” Budapest Open Access Initiative, 2002 “Open Journal Systems (OJS) is a journal management and publishing system that has been developed by the Public Knowledge Project through its federally funded efforts to expand improve access to research” My (Ian D) quote “Places BSBI at the forefront of a new and rapidly expanding approach to scientific publication rather than at the tail-end of an increasingly outmoded one” Several plans available with increasing flexibility but at increasing cost

We now have a website www. britishandirishbotany. org

British & Irish Botany will welcome contributions in a number of formats, including the following: Standard papers - full length formal research papers within the geographical and taxonomic remit of the journal. Short papers - these could be wide ranging but might include descriptions of single or a few observations, new discoveries (such as the first recorded occurrence of an alien), interesting observations on distribution/ecology/taxonomy etc. Forum articles - short articles that express a view on a particular topic. Intended to stimulate debate, advance ideas, etc. Reviews - reviews of botanical topics of interest to readers. Species profiles - mini-accounts of British or Irish species following the standard BSBI template for species accounts. Botanical biographies - biographies of famous botanists. Taxonomic notes - short articles covering difficult species and how to tell them apart. These could be 'commissioned' to cover Data Deficient taxa or distinguishing features not covered in standard works.

The process, in a nutshell… • Prospective authors submit online (preferred), or send copy to a dedicated email address (bib@bsbi. org) and it will be done for them. • Checked by an editor for relevance and scientific cohesion, referred to a specialist if deemed necessary • Final version copy-edited to conform to house style • Paper uploaded to website as a pdf with a clearly-stated date of publication. NO further changes are possible.

The B&IB ‘back office’ A peek behind the scenes at submissions already in the pipeline…

Short-term challenges and ambitions • Publish, by the end of 2018, 4 -5 interesting and carefully copy-edited papers that demonstrate a professional approach and establish credibility with readers and potential authors. • Expand the editorial board to include more generalist and specialist scientific editors. Views of PUBS welcome! • Establish, with the BSBI News team, complementary remits and a dialogue for deciding on the best platform for articles that might be applicable for both publications. • By the end of 2018, meet the criteria for accredition by ICBN for the valid publishing of taxonomic names and descriptions.

The bottom line! • Originally, BSBI was spending c£ 32, 000 per year on NJB • With 600 members electing to pay for hard copy, the cost reduced to c£ 13000 per year • The new B&IB package costs c£ 3, 700 per year