Five decades of biogeography: A view from the Journal of Biogeography

The first issue of Journal of Biogeography (JBI) was published by Blackwell Scientific in March 1974. Volume 1 summed to 279 pages over four issues, and its remit was broad— biology, geography, palaeontology, genetics, human modification of the environment, effects on biotic distributions, their medical relevance, and more (Watts, 1974). Although other journals carried some biogeographical papers (e.g. see Cowell & Parker, 2004), JBI remained the sole journal dedicated to publishing biogeography until the early 1990s when two sister titles— Biodiversity Letters and Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters— were created to accommodate growth in the field (Figure 1), the rise of global environmental concerns (Stott, 1991) and momentum captured in newly coined concepts such as ‘biodiversity’ (Stott, 1993). These sister journals metamorphosed into the now more familiar titles Diversity and Distributions (DDI) and Global Ecology and Biogeography (GEB) in the late 1990s to publish the burgeoning studies of, respectively, biological invasions (Richardson, 1998) and macroecology (Whittaker, 1999). Throughout, JBI continued to act as the most inclusive venue for biogeography, its content shifting through the years as the interests of authors and readers waxed and waned. The commitment to represent the full breadth of biogeography has remained a constant since (Linder, 2016; Whittaker, 2005), as has the commitment that JBI should be a journal about biogeography, by biogeographers, and for biogeographers both as authors and as readers (Linder, 2016). Changes in biogeographical journals also have reflected changes in publishing. JBI, for example, transitioned from its initial subA4sized format to A4 in 1989 (Whittaker, 2014). The editorial introducing GEB also noted the adoption of email for handling reviews, encouraged authors to submit electronic versions of revised manuscripts ‘by disk’, and referred to the journal website as a key source of information; papers could be downloaded as PDF files, and HTML versions were on the immediate horizon (Whittaker, 1999). A halfdecade later, ‘OnlineEarly’ was imminent, allowing digital publication online before print issues and citation using the Digital Object Identifier (DOI); referral pathways, to transfer articles among sister journals, were starting to take shape (Whittaker, 2005). Around the same time, Online Supporting Information was enabled, which accompanied >80% of articles in JBI a decade later (Whittaker, 2014); the proportion for research articles is now >95%. Linder (2016) remarked on the emergence of data repositories, the surge of papers relying on ‘recycled’ data, and the need for recognition of data authors, deposition of new data, and policies for data access. These have been part and parcel of a suite of doubleedged issues that have risen to prominence over the past decade. For example, Open Access publication, which should democratize science, has encouraged predatory journals and raises questions about equity of access and profiteering (Carey, 2016; Linacre, 2022); the speed of the publication process, which can accelerate progress, also exacerbates pressures to ‘publish [prolifically] or perish’ and degrades the quality of science, community and ‘work– life’ balance (Hortal et al., 2019); ‘cascade’ journals that should reduce workload by reusing editorial and peer reviews, oftentimes refer articles to inhouse open access journals with high article processing charges (Hortal et al., 2019) and balkanize science prepublication; and misunderstandings of peer review and editorial processes can exacerbate cries for change that may inadvertently undermine efforts to maintain or increase equity (Dawson et al., 2014). These, and other issues (e.g. Meynard et al., 2021), continue to challenge us today, a point to which we return when discussing the journal's philosophy on publishing.