The many faces of zoology

Previously, the Italian Journal of Zoology was divided into sections, covering the manifold approaches of zoology. Sections, however, were often unbalanced, with rather few contributions based either on molecular or genetic analyses (e.g. Marracci et al. 2008; Vijaykumar et al. 2008), or on morphology (e.g. Das & Nag 2008; Longo & Trovato 2008), whereas faunistic (e.g. Christoffersen 2008) and taxonomic (e.g. Curini‐Galletti et al. 2008) contributions prevaled, together with ecological papers (e.g. Vanin & Masutti 2008), followed by contributions on faunal management (e.g. Gaubert et al. 2008), or on ethology (e.g. Zampiga et al. 2008). Reviews (e.g. Marracci & Ragghianti 2008), were mostly occasional.

One aim of the Journal is to gain more balance. As explained in a former editorial, whenever possible, a review article on a general topic will open each issue, followed by articles covering all aspects of zoology, starting from sub‐organismal approaches, then passing to contributions on organisms and species, and closing with ethological‐ecological contributions. Applied zoology papers are welcome, especially in the field of faunistic management; the Journal is not devoted to purely zootechnical topics.

The Editors are focussed on enforcing brevity and clarity. Rejection rates are increasing due to the high quality of a substantial number of papers, making it easy to fill each issue. In this way, we can be selective enough to keep our standards as high as possible, and the backlog will be reduced. Accepted papers are published on our website (www.tandf.co.uk/journals/ijz) as soon as they are ready.

We are pleased to see that, in the 2008 volume, 23 papers out of 49 were authored by non‐Italian zoologists. Attracting contributions from abroad, enhancing internationalization, is another of our main aims. The reference to Italy in the title of the Journal is linked to the zoological tradition of the country, but the tribune is open to the whole scientific community.

Reviewers are thanked for their work, in the interest of the authors and of the Journal. I hope that the authors will be more and more satisfied with the way their work is enhanced by the Journal: they are the main resource of the Italian Journal of Zoology.

Our goal is to inform zoologists about exciting new things in their field. Zoological knowledge, however, is a long‐term investment. In this period of global change, for instance, old papers reporting on the biodiversity of the past are extremely valuable. They allow the detection of the response of biota to change. Those purely descriptive papers are now the basis for inference about the effects of climate change. Today, they are invaluable, whereas most papers that were “exciting” ten years ago may have lost some appeal.