With this issue we present a new journal of marine biology. It is not an entirely new journal, but the result of a merger between two older journals: Sarsia and Ophelia. These have rather parallel histories. They were founded in 1961 and 1964, respectively, by the then Directors of the Marine Biological Laboratories at the Universities of Bergen and Copenhagen, respectively: Hans Brattström and Gunnar Thorson. The names of both journals have double meanings: Sarsia is a reference to the distinguished Norwegian marine zoologist Michael Sars, but it is also the name of the small jellyfish depicted on the cover; Ophelia is the name of a polychaete worm, but also refers to Shakespeare's character in the play Hamlet (that takes place in Helsingør – Elsinore in English – where the University of Copenhagen Marine Biological Laboratory is situated). Initially, the journals served primarily as “house journals”, mainly presenting work carried out in the respective laboratories, but eventually the authorship broadened and the journals became typical international journals. Even so, they maintained a close association with their respective founding laboratories.
The journals have not been unsuccessful in the sense that over the years they have both published several widely cited papers. However, the development in international scientific publishing has not been particularly favourable to small journals. And, perhaps, there already exists too many journals. The idea to merge the two journals is thus a natural one and not entirely new, but during the last year we took it seriously, and this is the result.
During recent years, Ophelia and Sarsia have maintained a somewhat diverging emphasis on the type of treated topics. Marine Biology Research intends to cover all aspects of marine biology and all geographical regions, and the main criterion for acceptance of papers is quality. In addition to original research papers, we plan to publish timely review articles as well as short communications. We hope we will serve marine biological research well in the future and invite our colleagues around the world to submit papers to Marine Biology Research.
Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to Taylor & Francis and especially to Caroline Sutton and Terje Sørlie for their enthusiastic response to our ideas and for having made this project possible. Our thanks are also extended to our colleagues who have accepted our invitation to serve as subject editors of Marine Biology Research to provide the needed expertise for realizing our ambition to produce a journal of high scientific quality.
Tom Fenchel & Tore Høisæter
Notes
Published in collaboration with the University of Bergen and the Institute of Marine Research, Norway, and the Marine Biological Laboratory, University of Copenhagen, Denmark