Emu–Austral Ornithology in the era of Twitter: 120 years of regional ornithology and counting

This year, Emu–Austral Ornithology turns 120. As one of the oldest of the world’s ornithological journals, it has flown on through several major storms. Like the big (flightless!) bird itself (e.g. Ryeland et al. 2021), the journal has had to adapt to ever more rapid change. It continues to reflect BirdLife Australia’s policy to promote the celebration, understanding and conservation of austral birds (Buchanan and Herman 2021), and across the years has tracked significant conceptual changes in international ornithological science (Joseph et al. 2021).

The journal began embedded in an idea for a national organisation devoted to birds, hatched over several get-togethers of oologists, at which ‘nothing stronger than tea and coffee was drunk’ (Anon 1901a). In 1901, this sober clutch founded the Australasian Ornithologists’ Union (now BirdLife Australia), in hopes of uniting the region’s ornithological interests, just as the concurrent Federation sought to unite the Australian colonies. One of the objects of the new union was to publish a ‘magazine called The Emu’ (Anon 1901b), through which ‘bird students will be kept in touch with one another, original study will be aided, and an Australian want supplied’ (Anon 1901a). The choice of the name Emu was not just biological, but also political and cultural (Robin 2002).

Since hatching, Emu–Austral Ornithology (hereafter usually shortened to Emu) has survived two World Wars, the Depression and gradual shifts and more controversial changes. An example of the later was the so-called ‘revolution’ of the late 1960s, a reform intended to push the journal from semi-popular to fully scientific (i.e. of international standard) with the approach of the 1974 International Ornithological Congress (IOC), to be held for the first time in Australia (Marchant 1972; Robin 2002).

In recognition of the journal’s centenary, Robin’s ‘The Flight of the Emu: A Hundred Years of Australian Ornithology 1901–2001ʹ (2001) thoroughly synthesised its history, in the context of organisational and societal change. Two overviews appeared in the special centennial edition of the journal (Olsen 2002; Robin 2002). Earlier reviews were tackled by sometime influential editors Dom Serventy and Stephen Marchant. The former championed amateurs – until then the predominant contributors – as pioneers who built a strong knowledge base at a time when there were few trained researchers (Serventy 1972). The later took a more critical view, suggesting the journal and its contributors had not kept up with the times, notably the high standards expected internationally and by the growing professional community in Australia (Marchant 1972).

As observed by Robin (2002): ‘One of Emu’s greatest strengths is now its long history.’ In the two decades since the centenary, three detailed bibliometric analyses have been published of different aspects of the journal’s contents over time (Yarwood et al. 2014, 2019; Weston et al. 2020) and there have been two major administrative changes (Saunders et al. 2001; Herman and Buchanan 2017). These offer insights into the development of ornithology in Australia, its relationship to local and global developments in society and to the scientific and publishing worlds. Such analyses can also identify knowledge gaps or imbalances in content or contributors, and can be used to direct and guide future research effort and acceptable methodologies, and improve representation and equity.

Trends in content

A bibliometric analysis of 110 years of Emu contents (1901–2011) revealed 115 trends (long-term changes in publication over time) and 18 fads (temporary increases in publication activity)(Yarwood et al. 2014). Examples of trends included that institutional authorship all but pushed out private authorship and with it contributions by amateurs; multiple authorship increased; female authorship increased from 1960 (coincident with increased access higher education for women) and non-Australian contributions from 1970 (following the 1974 IOC); question driven research overtook descriptive research, and studies on single species and taxonomic groups became more prevalent over time. Fads included studies on geographical distribution in the 1940s and on museum specimens 1906–1913. Overall, as the authors note, the results suggest that even though the policy change of the late 1960s appeared to be a revolution (Marchant 1972; Robin 2001), detailed analysis shows that it actually produced no blip at all in the gradual long term trend towards greater scientific content.

The same dataset was analysed for phylogenetic and biological biases in content (Yarwood et al. 2019). In general, research effort across the last 120 years has been concentrated on larger, more common birds with wider ranges. Urban birds, seabirds, cuckoos and penguins were among the groups that received the most attention, while rails, button-quail, pigeons and doves, were among the least researched. Consequently, smaller, range-restricted, remote-living birds, many of which are or could become endangered, are often poorly understood, which has implications for their recognition and conservation (an issue also identified by Clarke 1997). Not unexpectedly, similar trends were on the wing internationally, for example research on urban birds increased exponentially over the last century (Marzluff 2016).

A third study further investigated spatial gaps in research effort (Weston et al. 2020). It confirmed that effort was unevenly distributed, heavily concentrated around major cities of the southwest, southeast and mid north-east Australia, and that unfortunately those regions identified by McGill 1948 as neglected, have remained so.

Reviews of the contents of other ornithological journals and more generally (e.g. Johnson 2004; Ducatez and Lefebvre 2014; Dendi et al. 2018) have identified many similar biases and trends in the focus of research effort. For instance, Yarwood et al. (2014) concluded that changes in Emu over time were correlated with technological, theoretical, social and institutional changes. They suggested that ornithological priorities, as in all scientific disciplines, are temporally labile. Johnson (2004) came to a similar conclusion about Emu’s British sister-journal, The Ibis. Reviewing the contents of the first half of the 20th century, she concluded that rather than a progression towards more sophisticated or robust science over time, the journal had responded to shifting views about what is good science and, indeed, what constitutes the discipline of ornithology.

An example of the latter point can be found in the field now known as conservation. Over the lifetime of Emu, conservation priorities and concepts have shifted markedly. Initially, the focus was on individual birds – the fight state by state for legal protection of useful birds (e.g. destroyers of insects and snakes, gamebirds; e.g. Stephen 1907) and to stop the plumage trade (e.g. Mattingley 1907), then came the push to protect all birds (from guns, egg-collecting boys with slingshots, formation of Gould League; e.g. Longman and Leithhead 1938). This was followed by a growing awareness of the importance of preservation of habitats (bird habitat requirements/biology; e.g. Serventy 1940). The 1960s and 1970s saw the emphasis on species loss nationally (threatened species) which developed into biodiversity loss (ideas of healthy ecosystems, species-richness, national reserve system, Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999; e.g. McGrath and Bass 1999) and then on more global concerns (climate change and adaptation; e.g. Astheimer and Buttemer 2002; Chambers et al. 2005). Certainly, the threat of species loss was there all along. As early as 1914 RAOU President Alfred James Campbell asked whether three species of parrot (Paradise Parrot Psephotellus pulcherrimus, now extinct, Night Parrot Pezoporus occidentalis now Critically Endangered, and Turquoise Parrot Neophema pulchella, not currently considered threatened) were extant and if not, why not (Campbell 1914). Yet, the battle lines, interventions and information needs differed and developed across time, each worthy and pertinent subjects for papers and reports in the Emu of their era.

Have there been changes since the centenary? Eyeballing recent issues of the journal, single species and question-driven studies still dominate, as they did in 2001, and associated analytical techniques remain complex (as detected by Yarwood et al. 2019 in Emu and in Europe by; Haffer 2007). The proportion of papers on endangered species and climate change and molecular-based research seem to have increased (possibly trends, as defined by Yarwood et al. 2014), as have those on vocalisations and acoustic monitoring (possibly fads, as defined by Yarwood et al. 2014), and, perhaps, the results of remote tracking of movements. There have been more special issues with invited papers on a particular theme, which, to some extent, reflect where recent research interest and effort has been focused: malurid evolutionary ecology (2013); parrot conservation (2018); migratory shorebirds (2016); and New Guinea and Pacific islands (2019).

A major scientific advance since the centenary was the upheaval in our longstanding understanding of phylogenetic relationships between bird families, brought by advances in genomics (Joseph and Buchanan 2015). Who would have thought that owlet-nightjars were closer to swifts than to nightjars, and that scrub-tits and whitefaces were each other’s closest relatives? Although, the morphological and behavioural similarities between falcons and parrots are obvious now that those Families’ close relationship has been exposed. These profound changes in the avian family tree have major implications, particularly for comparative studies, and have inspired, indeed allowed, new, more robust research approaches (e.g. Provost et al. 2018; Kearns et al. 2019; Joseph et al. 2020; Grosser et al. 2021).

Another of the big changes in the last 20 years is the increase in scope of the journal to the whole Southern Hemisphere. Although it hoped to be Australasian right from the start, until that shift content was largely Australian with occasional contributions from the wider region. In recent years, about half of all submissions were from authors with an Australia affiliation and about one-third from South and Central America authors. Of 446 submissions received from 2017 to 2020: 49.6% were from Australasia, 35.9% from South and Central America, 8.7% from Asia, 8% from Europe, 6.5% from North America and 3.4% from Africa, with no discernible trends over that period.

What of other author characteristics? The number of authors on each paper in Emu has, if anything, increased since Yarwood et al. (2014) first documented that trend, most if not all with a professional affiliation. The current editorial board is balanced regarding gender, however, if the latest volume (vol. 120) is any guide, male authors outnumber women 2:1. The quality and quantity of publications are among the most important measures determining career success and gender and geographical biases have been detected elsewhere. For example, in the field of ecology and evolution, female-authored papers more often rejected and less often co-authored by males than male-authored papers, and in science generally there is underrepresentation of women in the review process (Helmer et al. 2017; Fox et al. 2018; Fox and Paine 2019; Dachin et al. 2020). To date, reviews of Emu content (Yarwood et al. 2014, 2019; Weston 2020) have not addressed trends in the number and type of papers rejected. Investigation of what sort of articles are rejected can be useful to gauge relative directions of the journal and expose biases.

Administrative transitions and publishing imperatives

The past 20 years has seen flux in administration of the journal, which, for the previous century was published ‘in-house’. In large part, this has been driven by rapid international changes in scientific publishing, which has become an enormously profitable global business, disadvantaging small, independent society journals and publishers (van Noorden 2013; Larivière et al. 2015). As online access replaces hard copy reading, the importance of international accessibility to journal content is impacting on publishing contracts, and even journal names, as each journal tries to identify, garner and retain a place in the highly competitive market.

The first review of arrangements for Emu, brought on by its centenary but overdue, resulted in the journal joining the CSIRO Publishing (Saunders et al. 2001). CSIRO Publishing helped the journal to transition from its longterm publishing model, with a volunteer editor, to a mainstream scientific journal with both a national and international profile. It also brought improved accessibility and more streamlined submission and review via online electronic media, and an editor employed by CSIRO (Herman and Buchanan 2017). With the move, came a name change, to Emu–Austral Ornithology, adding the subtitle to reflect a widening of its region from Australasia to the entire southern hemisphere and the concern that bird-named journals might not be viewed seriously by the scientific world (Robin 2002). The moniker of the big flightless bird was retained, a welcome nod to its history as the fourth oldest ornithological journal in the world.

Since 2008, following two CSIRO editors, academic Kate Buchanan has filled the role of editor. She maintained stability in Emu’s editorial policy through the merger of Birds Australia with the Bird Observers Club of Australia, each with their own journal, to form BirdLife Australia, with the renamed Emu–Austral Ornithology and Australian Field Ornithology catering for different niches (Buchanan and O’Connor 2012). Then, in 2016, she shepherded through a move to Taylor and Francis, a larger, international publishing house (Herman and Buchanan 2017).

Emu’s nestmates – Ibis (founded UK 1954), Auk (USA 1884), Condor (California 1899), Ardea (Netherlands 1912), Ostrich (South Africa 1930), Notornis (New Zealand 1943) and others – journals of various regional ornithological societies, are all facing the same pressures. Ibis, journal of the British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU), has always had a subtitle, which gradually transitioned from the local to the global: from the original A Magazine of General Ornithology, to Journal of the British Ornithologists’ Union, then A Quarterly Journal of Ornithology to the current International Journal of Avian Science. As the oldest of the brood, it has not sacrificed its sacred bird (Montgomerie 2018) and continues to be among the highest impacting of the 25 or so prominent ornithological journals, with and without bird names.

As for the oldest North American ornithological journals, during the 2016 merger of their parent organisations (the American Ornithologists’ Union and the Cooper Ornithological Society, to form the American Ornithological Society) they were rebranded and refocused as complementary: The Auk: Ornithological Advances and The Condor: Ornithological Applications. Not everyone was happy with the name changes, but citation rates immediately improved (Montgomerie 2018; O’Connell 2019). The push to further raise the journals’ international stature and quality continued. Following a 2019 review and membership survey, the bird names were euthanised, leaving only the disciplines: Ornithology and Ornithological Applications (Sillett et al. 2021).

The growth of open access publishing, which shifts costs from subscribers to authors, and the advent of open peer review, may eventually have consequences for Emu and other journals (Herman and Buchanan 2017). They bring the potential for improved reach and influence of authors and papers and economic benefits for publishers, but also dangers for diversity, inclusiveness and equality of access (e.g. Tsoy 2020), and the expected improvement in citation rates do not always eventuate (Larivière et al. 2015). However, most ornithologists lack the funding to access open publishing. Currently, Emu offers a hybrid model: subscribers and members of BirdLife Australia have access to the journal and its archives, and, for a fee, authors can make their paper available to anyone online; and reviewers may choose to remain anonymous (Herman and Buchanan 2017).

Emu also has to strike a balance between ‘meeting the organisational remit, accessing an international audience, publishing the best scientific research and staying within the available budget’ (Herman and Buchanan 2017). Over the past two decades, Emu has steadily increased in the journal rankings (Journal Impact Factor; Figure 1), despite increased crowding in the market. From the third (second lowest) quartile of 15 ornithological journals in 2001, it has soared to the top quartile of the 28 highest ranking journals and is currently ranked 6th (data provided by Taylor and Francis).

Figure 1. Emu’s Journal impact factor over the past twenty years (data from Web of Science)

As digital articles replace paper journals, altmetrics provide a real-time measure of online social engagement with the research and are starting to rival impact factors as a measure of reach and influence (Piwowar and Priem 2013; Donald 2016); also see Figure 2. Neither type of metric is always objective, realistic or comprehensive, and both can produce distortions and imbalances, and have met with resistance (Fox et al. 2016; Shuttleworth and Charnley 2016; Dreybrodt 2020; Triggle et al. 2021). In recognition of the growing importance of social media, since the move to Taylor and Francis, Emu has had a Communications Editor to disseminate journal content (Herman and Buchanan 2017). Academics can also support publishers/journals and share their research findings via social media (Dudley and Smart 2016). Emu, like Ibis, offers authors of accepted papers priority access to the BOU blog, which can boost the journals’ and authors’ altmetric scores. This resulted in an increase in the number of science blogs for Ibis from 6 in 2012 to 32 in 2015, the latter attracting over 25,000 reads (Donald 2016; https://bou.org.uk/blog/write-for-the-bou-blog/).

Figure 2. Altmetrics of Emu Austral Ornithology over the past 20 years: in total and for the four main contributors (data from Taylor and Francis). The figures for 2021 are to August 2021

As well as blogs, mass media sites such as Twitter feed into this ocean of online information. The system becomes self-feeding; for example, online mentions have been shown to predict future citations in the ornithological literature (Finch et al. 2017). Finch et al. collated Altmetric Attention Score (AAS), which quantifies the attention received by a scientific publication on various online platforms including news, blogs and social media, for articles that were published in 10 ornithological journals between 2012 and 2016. Over the five years the AAS increased about sevenfold, 75% contributed by Twitter, and citation rates for a selection of over 1000 articles doubled from 2.6 to 5.5 per article. Emu came in seventh of the ten journals (Finch et al. 2017). Since that analysis, Emu opened a dedicated Twitter account (in 2016) and the annual number of mentions of its content in Tweets has increased more than tenfold over the past decade (Figure 2).

Looking forward

Future content for Emu Austral Ornithology will showcase significant ornithological research across the southern hemisphere (Joseph et al. 2021). Its concern will be increasingly with conservation, in line with BirdLife Australia policy (Buchanan and Herman 2021). Yet, because much research effort on birds comes from academia, at arm’s length from the journal’s parent ornithological society, the fate of the journal will also be influenced by what universities and academia look like in the future (e.g. Higgitt 2016). An unfortunate certainty is that the current two to four-year post-graduate model of research investment in Australian birds will continue to limit the longevity and diversity of research projects. As now, only a brave few will venture beyond well-established projects, common, accessible species and locations, which does not bode well for the information needs of the increasing flock of threatened species or advancing our understanding of ecology and evolution (e.g. Clarke 1997; Weston 2007; Yarwood et al. 2019; Culumber et al. 2019).

Citizen science is increasingly popular and online platforms such as Birdata and eBird, hold ‘a big-data treasury’ for scientists/conservationists (Hart et al. 2020). In the future, better-designed citizen science projects, aided by technological advances, could conceivably make a greater contribution to the scientific literature than has been the case (e.g. Dendi et al. 2018; Hart et al. 2020; Mesaglio and Callaghan 2021; Schulwitz et al. 2021). Another certainty is that as new and more advanced technologies – such as in molecular technology, drones, remote monitoring and Artificial Intelligence – and new analytical approaches become available and affordable, they will be embraced by researchers.

The onrush of open access brings with it new and ever more sophisticated use of media, new platforms, new forms of engagement and new audiences (e.g. Barbour 2019; Sopinka et al. 2020). As access increases for ornithological journals it may help to reverse the currently low likelihood that scientific evidence is used to inform decisions in conservation and policy (Pullin et al. 2004; Saltelli and Giampietro 2017) and improve inclusivity and diversity (Fox and Paine 2019; Lundine et al. 2019; Sopinka et al. 2020).

So, what will the Emu of the future look like as a publication? At the very least it will still present the results of robust research in a form that will be findable and accessible for centuries to come. It is entirely possible that it will evolve into a living journal, with articles that can be built on, part of a system where audiences can be targeted, with more sophisticated analysis of reach and influence, and increasingly linked to the wider world via the likes of Twitter.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).