Publication interests and priorities for Insect Molecular Biology

Insect Molecular Biology (IMB) publishes high-quality research related to the molecular biology of insects. We are a society journal, overseen by the Royal Entomological Society, which publishes IMB as part of its mission to enrich the world with insect science. Many of the IMB editors are also members of the Royal Entomological Society, working to support its mission. When you publish in or review for IMB, you are also supporting this mission.

IMB seeks to publish research on a variety of subjects in molecular biology using a range of model systems. Common topics are the molecular genetics of development, insecticide resistance, behaviour, neurobiology, sociality, reproduction, immunity, genomics, ecology, evolution and symbiont interactions. Focal insects include the models Drosophila and Tribolium, as well as a range of less-studied, but economically important insects. Importantly, IMB also considers manuscripts that focus on non-insect arthropods, such as ticks and spiders.

We say a reluctant good-bye and a hearty thank you to Dr. Mark Paine, who served in the Editor-in-Chief role for 6 years. We have a vibrant, diverse and high-profile global editorial board to ensure publication of high-quality original research and review articles. We are still keen to recruit new Associate Editors to the board, so please look out for recruitment opportunities coming up.

IMB is a strong supporter of transparency, scientific rigour and reproducibility, and we will shortly be requiring authors to deposit their data at the revision stage and make this available to editors and reviewers.

IMB welcomes both original research and review papers. Original research papers can be in long or short format. Please see the information under ‘Instructions for Authors’ to understand the distinction between the two. Review papers should be timely and should comprehensively review the focal field. For either submission type, the Editors-in-Chief and the Review Editor are happy to correspond regarding pre-submission inquiries.

IMB also welcomes proposals for special issues. Special issues are an excellent way to make a larger impact with your work. Wiley has support services in place to help Guest Editors through every stage of the process.

We particularly encourage submissions or special issue proposals that address the grand challenges in entomology (Luke et al., 2023). Methodological techniques came out strongly as a challenge as did conservation and anthropogenic impacts. Works addressing these areas and in scope for IMB are welcome.