Developing Systematic Entomology and expanding its scope

The year 2024 was Systematic Entomology's best yet in terms of number of submissions, superseding 2023 as previous record year for submissions. In 2024, we published 41 articles with corresponding authors from 20 countries around the world and the majority of our submissions were received from China and the United States. We are delighted to see such a global representation in the journal. Over 50% of our articles in 2024 were published open access for the first time. It is positive that more people can read, share and reuse our content than ever before. However, we recognize that it is important to ensure that all authors, whether or not they have funding for open access or transformative agreements (through their research institute or university), can publish in our journal, and OA remains optional.

We published two excellent review articles in 2024. The first, Beutel et al. (2024), sheds new light on early beetle evolution, highlighting coevolution with flowering plants. The second, Zhang et al. (2024), presents a synthesis and new perspective for the systematics of Hymenoptera in light of new approaches to study morphology and molecular data. These articles also happen to be our most read of the year.

Another article that was frequently downloaded and received nice media attention was Rodriguez et al. (2024), with their description of a new sawfly genus and species, Baladi warru, Rodriguez, Frese & McDonald described from an incredibly well-preserved fossil along with pollen grains from its host plant. We have also published two interesting opinion articles, one in defence of binomial nomenclature (Vereecken et al., 2024) and another on how we might overcome our bias towards adult male specimens in the study of arthropod systematics (Caterino & Recuero, 2024).

Some of our recently best cited articles include an update to scarab beetle phylogeny using transcriptomics (Dietz et al., 2023) and an article highlighting the lack of complete data for insects in GBIF (Garcia-Rosello et al., 2023).

In 2024, along with the other Royal Entomological Society (RES) journals, we awarded the first of our updated best article awards. These are now awarded yearly to early career entomologists, and we were delighted with the standard of all our winning articles. The future of systematic entomology is looking strong. Our 2021 winner was Dominic Evangelista focusing on Blaberoidean cockroach phylogenomics (Evangelista et al., 2021). Our 2022 volume winner was Mukta Joshi on species delimitation in a parapatric species pair of Melitaea Fabricius butterflies (Joshi et al., 2022). Finally, our 2023 winner was Victor Noguerales, who used innovative machine learning methods for beetle identification (Fujisawa et al., 2023).

The broad range of articles published over recent years across all aspects of insect systematics highlights the strength of our field. Taxonomic research and novel methods in monitoring and identification of insects are important, as outlined by the recent work on grand challenges in entomology published in our sister journal Insect Conservation and Diversity (Luke et al., 2023). While Systematic Entomology does not publish purely descriptive studies, the journal has maintained a balance between studies using cutting-edge phylogenomic and macroevolutionary approaches and those integrating more traditional methods including morphology and emphasizes the importance of translating phylogenetic results into robust and up-to-date classifications. Supporting taxonomy and systematics will be a key part of the Royal Entomological Society strategy for 2025–2028. Look out for future RES news on this.

We have recently expanded our scope and started accepting papers covering arachnids (excluding mites at the moment) and myriapods. This will better align Systematic Entomology with the taxonomic scope of other RES journals and broaden our appeal as an outlet for impactful research on major terrestrial arthropod groups. We look forward to seeing submissions from a greater portion of our community and increasing our readership.

We have also recently said goodbye to two fantastic Editors-in-Chief, Marianne Espeland and Christiane Weirauch. We are delighted to welcome Christopher Owen and Emmanuel Toussaint to the team in their place. We are also delighted to announce that Ligia Benavides will be joining the EiC team to commission and handle non-insect arthropod submissions.

We are excited about the future of the journal and look forward to interacting with our community. Presubmission enquiries are welcome particularly on non-insect arthropod submissions—please contact any of the journal EiCs, or the Royal Entomological Society.

Finally, we are pleased to announce that from 2026 the journal will move to a continuous publication model. This means that articles will be published directly into an issue as soon as they are ready, with one fixed citation. This is a positive move in particular for authors who are publishing new nomenclatural acts, as they will no longer need to update ZooBank records when articles move into an issue. A consequence of this change means that we will no longer publish print journal issues. Although we currently print very few issues, this change will have a positive impact on our environmental impact.