Editorial

The 2016 volume of Palynology is its 40^th, and the red colour of the cover this year seeks to celebrate the journal's ruby anniversary. It therefore felt appropriate to present an Editorial article to provide both a retrospective, and an informed look to the future.

The past

AASP – The Palynological Society (AASP – TPS) was founded in December 1967 as the American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists or AASP (Traverse & Sullivan 1983; Demchuk & Riding 2008; Traverse 2008). The name-change to AASP – TPS was agreed in 2008 in order to reflect the expanded scope of the science of palynology and the international membership of the society. One of the association's principal aims was to hold a peripatetic annual scientific meeting, the proceedings of which were to be published in a single volume every year. From the outset, the unique selling points of this journal were to be high-quality plate reproduction on very good paper, with no formal restriction on the proportion of display materials to text and no maximum or minimum page/word limits. The first Managing Editor was Lewis E. Stover. Seven volumes of Geoscience and Man between 1970 and 1976 and Palynology volumes 1 to 32, where appropriate, included the abstracts of presentations given at these annual symposia together with group photographs. This tradition was ceased in 2009 with volume 33 because of space constraints. Moreover, the journal is now subdivided into three parts, and hence is patently not an annual proceedings publication. These abstracts and group photographs constitute part of the living history of AASP – TPS, and it is intended that these should all be housed on the society website as part of the newsletter series (http://www.palynology.org).

Looking back, there have been four watershed events in the history of the serial journal produced by AASP – TPS. The first seven annual meeting proceedings volumes (for between 1968 and 1974) were produced on the behalf of the association by the School of Geoscience of Louisiana State University (LSU) as part of their journal Geoscience and Man. These were edited by Lewis E. Stover, Robert T. Clarke, Richard W. Hedlund and Richard L. Pierce. Geoscience and Man is a vehicle for publishing monographs, proceedings of symposia and other collections of geoscientific papers. It is still extant and is entirely supported by the friends and patrons of the LSU School of Geoscience. However, the seven ‘AASP’ issues of Geoscience and Man had non-sequential volume numbers (i.e. I, III, IV, VII, IX, XI and XV). The several apparent hiatuses in this series caused subscribing libraries serious confusion which, together with a variety of other reasons, led the then-board of AASP to decide to instigate our own journal and thus to oversee its production more closely. This significant decision was the first of the four epoch-marking events mentioned above. We were indeed fortunate that the title ‘Palynology’ was available for us to use. The first volume of Palynology was issued in 1977 and was the proceedings volume of the eighth Annual Meeting held in Houston in 1975; it was edited by the late Richard L. Pierce. The phototypesetting, printing and plates were all undertaken by Hart Graphics of Austin, Texas.

Between 1977 and 1991, AASP commissioned all production matters (i.e. typesetting, page-making and printing), and all distribution was handled by Robert T. (‘Bob’) Clarke and Vaughn M. Bryant (the Treasurer and Secretary, respectively, of the AASP Foundation). Bob mailed out copies to the membership immediately after printing, and Vaughn stored the remaining copies and sent them out as appropriate, for example when new members joined (Jarzen 2007). The Managing Editors during this era were Richard L. Pierce, Vaughn M. Bryant, Douglas J. Nichols and David K. Goodman. This was largely prior to the era of word-processing, and the manuscripts were dominantly typewritten and therefore had to be re-keystroked by professional typesetters.

The second seismic (no pun intended) event in the journal's history was triggered by the digital revolution, and was the transition of Palynology being produced entirely by the AASP Foundation in 1992 (volume 16). Bob Clarke and then-Managing Editor David Goodman decided, entirely correctly, that they were more than capable of producing and distributing our journal entirely in-house. So it was that, following editorial handling by David Goodman, accepted and word-processed manuscripts were sent to Bob Clarke who exported them into page-making software. The distribution continued to be done by Bob, so the only element in this scenario that was sourced externally was printing and several companies were used for this purpose. This was not always a smooth process; for example when volume 25 (2001) was initially printed, there were problems with some of the plates. This necessitated trimming the spines off and rebinding when the plate problems were resolved; this is why volume 25 is very slightly smaller than normal. Palynology was produced in-house in this way until 2009 (Jarzen 2007). David Goodman was succeeded by Owen K. Davis as Managing Editor in 2000.

The third principal event in the journal's history was the inclusion of Palynology in the Science Citation Index in 2005, under my editorship. This urgently-needed recognition was the culmination of several years of hard work justifying our application for this status. The impact factor increased from a relatively low base in 2005 to 0.54 in 2010. This value then increased significantly to 0.94 in 2011, and our best-ever impact factor was 1.35 in 2012. This unfortunately decreased to 0.95 in 2013, and the present level (for 2014) is 0.92. The latter figure is based on 47 cites of recent papers divided by the total of 51 recent articles. It currently places Palynology 135 out of 200 in the Plant Science journal category, and 34 out of 49 in the Palaeontology journal category. Palynology is also listed by Scopus and is available via subscription and also from several third-party distributors, including BioOne, Geoscience World (GSW) and JSTOR.

The fourth and latest landmark in our journal's evolution came in 2009 when the association was approached by the Taylor and Francis Group (T&F) with a view to taking over the production and distribution of Palynology. This company was founded in 1798, and has become one of the leading academic publishers. The T&F group has a global reach, publish around 2,200 journals and are associated with over 500 learned societies. Taylor and Francis were, at that time, seeking to significantly expand their portfolio of environmental science journals. This was a very percipient approach because I was acutely aware of the rapidly increasing expectations of what is required of a serious scientific journal. When Palynology was instigated in 1977, phenomena such as altmetrics (non-traditional metrics, such as the number of social media shares), impact factors, league tables, online submission, review and editorial handling, online publication prior to printing, open access (both gold and green), ORCIDS (alphanumeric codes that uniquely identify an author), and digital object identifiers (doi) numbers were not even pipedreams. However, in the several years prior to the approach from T&F, I was increasingly being asked about aspects such as doi numbers and online publication. In 2009, an author insisted on online publication as soon as the paper was typeset. So Bob Clarke and I simply asked Owen Davis, the then AASP webmaster, to place a downloadable pdf at an appropriate place on the website (with no password protection). Over the years, AASP – TPS had shown that a small-yet dedicated scientific organisation could produce a respected international journal with an ISSN number and an impact factor, and have it included in various journal consortia such as GSW. However, we could not hope to undertake all of the many and varied specialised value-added trappings of modern scientific publishing without a specialist partner such as T&F. The company also offered far more effective and efficient printing, distribution and marketing operations than AASP – TPS could ever hope to achieve. Despite a little opposition, it soon became clear to AASP – TPS that a synergy with T&F would be hugely beneficial, and agreement on a long-term rolling contract was rapidly reached. This major change meant that volume 33 (2009) was the final ‘self-published’ issue of Palynology, and the first issue published by T&F was volume 34 (2010). We transitioned from a single issue distributed every December to two parts published each June and December. By 2015, substantially increased submission rates stimulated a change to three parts annually, with issues distributed each March, July and November. The current annual page budget is approximately 420. Taylor and Francis also maintain an online archive of high-quality scans of all previous issues of the journal prior to 2009 which is available to all members of AASP – TPS.

The future

Having presented this (hopefully) objective and succinct historical account, what about the years to come? AASP – TPS and T&F are currently both in good corporate health, and we are confident of ‘business as usual’ for the foreseeable future. However, we are not ruling out further expansion of the journal although this is not envisaged during the next few years. Nonetheless, history tells us that we cannot, and should not, stand still. It is clear that scientific publishing will continue to develop and evolve rapidly in future years. The continued use of printed media is constantly debated and online-only journals are on a rise which is relentless. Younger researchers typically store their libraries of articles and books as pdfs using cloud storage or external hard drives instead of archiving analog copy on creaking bookshelves and in bulging filing cabinets, which are still favoured by their more-mature colleagues. We certainly do not rule out Palynology becoming online only in the future; indeed many would regard this as an inevitability. AASP – TPS are fortunate to have T&F to provide expert advice on any responses to recent trends.

Looking forward, I am keen to attract submissions to Palynology that are (wherever possible) applied, diverse, high-quality, impactful, novel, provocative and relevant. We retain a broad vision and are happy to accept excellent manuscripts across a wide spectrum including obituaries, review papers or articles on systematics/taxonomy and techniques. Age (as they say) is not a factor, and potential authors may submit manuscripts on Proterozoic to modern palynomorphs and anything in-between. We will also happily consider multidisciplinary tracts and articles on topics such as aeropalynology, botany/palaeobotany, forensic palynology, history and mellissopalynology, or indeed manuscripts that may be regarded as peripheral or perhaps somewhat risky by the more corporate publishers. All palynomorph groups are welcome, including some of the more (shall we say) esoteric ones such as foraminiferal test linings or scolecodonts. The length of individual articles is also not an issue, nor should authors feel constrained by the numbers of plates they submit. Specifically, Palynology will take relatively lengthy works such as Williams et al. (2015), and we are equally sanguine about very short (one-page) papers. Extremely long manuscripts can be alternatively accommodated in a Supplement to Palynology or in the AASP Contributions Series. For example, in 2012, an author-funded Supplement to volume 36 was issued in honour of the late Douglas J. Nichols.

The mission of AASP – TPS, as originally stated in 1967, is ‘to promote the science of palynology (especially as it relates to biostratigraphy), to foster the spirit of scientific research and to disseminate information relating to palynology’ and we have always absolutely adhered to this paradigm. The editorial policy of Palynology is driven solely by AASP – TPS and will not be affected by any external considerations such as attempting to artificially enhance the impact factor. However, this is not to say that we are entirely indifferent to the various metrics applied in the maelstrom of modern scientific publishing. The association would naturally aspire to a high impact factor for Palynology, but not at the expense of rejecting relevant and scientifically worthy papers which may of course increase in impact in the future. Palynology is owned by palynologists, run pro bono by palynologists and, of course, is read by palynologists. AASP – TPS is not some kind of ‘evil empire’ driven by the bottom line, but is a small not for profit organisation (a registered charity in UK parlance). We are driven solely by our mission to promote palynology, and our zeal to represent and serve the palynological community worldwide. Palynology offers all the benefits of a modern scientific journal, and (to use culinary analogies) is both ethical and organic!

In conclusion, my message to palynologists everywhere is please consider submitting your papers to Palynology. They will be reviewed fairly, expeditiously, objectively and rigorously, based on scientific merit alone. Please do not feel constrained by either the length or the subject material, and feel free to suggest potential reviewers. If you have any questions, do contact me directly; I will always be happy to try to help you. The principal contact at T&F is Andrew Kelly, who is the current Managing Editor for Earth and Environment Sciences journals (email: [email protected]).