What is an international journal?

As revealed by its name, the Italian Journal of Zoology is obviously a national journal. Whatever the name, however, our aim is to be as international as possible but, in the meantime, we also want to promote an idea of zoology that is typically Italian. We cover, in fact, all aspects of the study of animals, from genetics to cell biology, developmental biology, taxonomy, ecology, ethology and evolutionary biology, along with the allied disciplines to these basic ones, all falling under a single umbrella: the study of animals, namely zoology. These approaches are usually treated by specialized journals and the various branches of zoology are becoming more and more separated from each other, usually forgetting about their common origin (and neglecting the connections with each other). We try to keep these various approaches as united as possible, encouraging our authors to bridge the gaps that divide too specific branches of zoology. With this editorial, I want to further urge our authors to produce articles promoting this view of zoology. And I want to encourage non-Italian zoologists who identify themselves in this way of making zoology to send us their contributions. This will turn this journal into a happy oxymoron: a truly international national journal! The only way for a journal to become international, in fact, is to publish contributions from a vast array of countries. In a Web-of-Science based analysis of the authors' nationalities in the articles published in 2009–2010, I found that out of 99 published articles, 72 had Italian authorship, and 27 were co-authored by authors from 22 countries. All continents are represented with the exception of Oceania. Authors from nine countries published more than two articles in the journal. The topics treated range from comparative immunology (e.g. Devi et al. 2010) to population genetics (e.g. Blagojevic et al. 2009), physiology (e.g. Kiran & Aruna 2010), taxonomy (e.g. Dumnicka 2010), ecology (e.g. Lesinski et al. 2010) and evolutionary biology (e.g. Gehring & Seimiya 2010). The journal is still Italian, but it is gradually turning into a tribune for the rest of the world, and we are very proud of this trend. So, zoologists from the whole world, we are waiting for your contributions of any kind dealing with general zoology! We are proud to realize that this is the first issue of the Italian Journal of Zoology in which the majority of the papers have non-Italian authors. This is the best endorsement of the Italian way of performing zoology!

Ferdinando Boero

Editor-in-Chief