A change of the guard for the IJSEM Editorial Board

I always define myself as a microbial ecologist and not as a taxonomist. As I lack any formal training in taxonomy, I may not be the most obvious candidate to follow in the footsteps of all those illustrious taxonomists who have served as the Editor of the IJSEM and its predecessors the International Bulletin of Bacteriological Nomenclature and Taxonomy and the International Journal of Systematic Bacteriology over the past 62 years. However, from time to time, a microbial ecologist who isolates organisms from different ecosystems stumbles upon novel organisms that deserve to be described. Thus in the course of my career I have been involved in the description of one family, 16 genera and nearly 40 novel species of prokaryotes. My involvement in the International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes (ICSP) as Executive Secretary/Treasurer, as a past Chairman and as a member of a number of Subcommittees on Taxonomy can also be added to my credentials.

First of all, I want to thank Peter for his excellent work in this difficult role.I hope to serve the journal in the coming years as faithfully as Peter has done for the past nine years.I am pleased that Peter has agreed to continue serving the journal as an Associate Editor, so that his vast knowledge and experience will remain available to the Editorial Board.I always define myself as a microbial ecologist and not as a taxonomist.As I lack any formal training in taxonomy, I may not be the most obvious candidate to follow in the footsteps of all those illustrious taxonomists who have served as the Editor of the IJSEM and its predecessors the International Bulletin of Bacteriological Nomenclature and Taxonomy and the International Journal of Systematic Bacteriology over the past 62 years.However, from time to time, a microbial ecologist who isolates organisms from different ecosystems stumbles upon novel organisms that deserve to be described.Thus in the course of my career I have been involved in the description of one family, 16 genera and nearly 40 novel species of prokaryotes.My involvement in the International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes (ICSP) as Executive Secretary/Treasurer, as a past Chairman and as a member of a number of Subcommittees on Taxonomy can also be added to my credentials.
After seven years in which the impact factor of the journal had gradually dropped from 3.187 in 2003 to 1.930 in 2010, I am pleased to note that the 2011 impact factor has increased to 2.268.I hope to see a further increase over the coming years.The drop in impact factor was in part caused by the increasing numbers of papers published in the past years.As an illustration: 287 papers were published in 2000, 421 in 2005 and 546 in 2011.Many of these papers are descriptions of novel species that are seldom cited.A large degree of 'selfcitation' is inherent in these types of papers and can also affect the impact factor.
Being the official journal of the ICSP, the IJSEM is committed to the publication of papers on new taxa of prokaryotes.Such papers are published when the scientific content is sound in order to provide a record of the new taxa described.The members of the Editorial Board never reject papers on the basis that they may be 'uninteresting', 'for the record only' or unlikely to be cited in the future -reasons used by some other journals to reject otherwise sound manuscripts.Organisms described in the past in IJSEM may become more significant in the future and become fashionable objects of research.As the genome sequences of more and more type strains of prokaryote species become available, the analysis of these genomes may bring previously obscure species to the forefront, again increasing the number of citations.
An important difference between the IJSEM and most other journals is the way the hard-working editors and reviewers and the editorial office staff work together to help authors improve the quality of their manuscripts and to get their papers published.When an organism is novel and deserves to be described as a new taxon, the editors will work with the authors to get the descriptions right.The rejection rate for such species description papers is therefore low, and authors are encouraged to resubmit rejected papers after the additional work necessary for a state-ofthe-art description of a new taxon has been completed.
A significant achievement during Peter Ka ¨mpfer's term as Editor of the IJSEM, was his involvement in the establishment of clear and more or less uniform and accepted standards for the description of novel species of prokaryotes.The 'Notes on the characterization of prokaryote strains for taxonomic purposes' [Tindall et al., Int J Syst Evol Microbiol (2010) 60, 249-266] provide detailed instructions that show what is necessary to fully document the properties of newly isolated organisms and complete their description as novel taxa.These standards are now generally also accepted by other journals that publish papers containing species descriptions.'Polyphasic taxonomy' is the key concept; for a complete characterization of a newly discovered organism, the genotype (small-subunit rRNA gene sequence, multilocus sequence typing or even a complete genome sequence) is not sufficient.A thorough characterization of the phenotypic and chemotaxonomic properties is also needed.When following such guidelines, authors can be confident that their papers can be accepted for publication in the IJSEM.While all our editors have a considerable knowledge of matters related to chemotaxonomy and nomenclature issues, the quality of the peer review process and of accepted papers is greatly enhanced by the work of our expert chemotaxonomy and nomenclature reviewers.One of these nomenclature reviewers is Professor Jean Euze ´by, who also serves as the journal's List Editor.Jean Euze ´by has notified us that he will retire in July 2013.We will search for a suitable successor to continue the difficult tasks that Jean has performed so faithfully for many years.new methods and techniques and the evaluation of the various methodologies used in microbial taxonomy.Reviews on all aspects of systematics and the evolution of micro-organisms are also very welcome.
Being the Editor of a prestigious journal such as the IJSEM is a learning process.I hope to master the trade as soon as possible and I am looking forward to working with our excellent and highly committed Editorial Board, including new Associate Editors to be recruited shortly to replace retiring colleagues, with the staff of the Editorial Office in Reading, UK, with the Society for General Microbiology, which publishes the journal, and with the ICSP and its Executive Board, as the IJSEM is the official publication of the ICSP.And last, but not least, I look forward to working with all of the authors who submit papers containing not only descriptions of novel micro-organisms (prokaryotic as well as eukaryotic), but also new insights into the taxonomy and systematics of micro-organisms, new methods to be applied to the study of microbial taxonomy and reviews that highlight different aspects of the fields covered by the journal in order to assist them in publishing high-quality papers in the IJSEM.

Aharon Oren
Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, The Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 91904 Jerusalem, Israel Correspondence: Aharon Oren (aharon.oren@mail.huji.ac.il) The vast majority of the papers published in the IJSEM in recent years have been descriptions of new taxa of prokaryotes and eukaryotic micro-organisms.In 2011 and in the first eight months of 2012, no more than 20 papers were published in the category 'Evolution, Phylogeny and Diversity' and only two papers in the 'Methods' category.I would like to encourage the submission of papers on evolutionary topics, as well as papers on Downloaded from www.microbiologyresearch.orgby IP: 54.70.40.11On: Thu, 03 Jan 2019 11:42:19