Looking Back on 2023—A Fruitful Year for Taxonomy

The turn of the year is a good opportunity to reflect on the past year and summarize the milestones. Taxonomy is a young and growing journal and is on its way to becoming a highly impactful and visible journal.

Currently, we have 54 editorial members covering a broad spectrum of organisms from the deep past to the recent and from the marine to the terrestrial spheres. As such, Taxonomy is a great hub for taxonomers, bringing together earth sciences and life sciences. This special position is reflected in the topics of submissions, which were handled by us during the last year.

In 2023, 29 papers were published after a strict, respectful, and fair review process. In a few cases, controversial reviews had to be discussed within the editorial board, and we tried to reach satisfactory solutions for all parties. Three Special Issues were launched: Advanced Research on Fossil Insects (edited by Mathias Harzhauser and Haichun Zhang, see: https://www.mdpi.com/2673-6500/2/4/31 (accesses on 1 January 2024)), Diversity, Distribution and Zoogeography of Coleoptera (edited by Massimo Meregalli and Pier Mauro Giachino, see: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/diversity/special_issues/Coleoptera (accesses on 1 January 2024)), and Taxonomy, Systematics and Biogeography of Spiders (edited by Antônio Domingos Brescovit and Adalberto J. Santos, see: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/taxonomy/special_issues/J692SWMXEV (accesses on 1 January 2024)). Thirty-three new species of bacteria, plants, and animals have been described in Taxonomy in 2023, documenting the need for reliable and serious journals devoted to taxonomy. Of course, papers on taxonomy and systematics—morphology-based [1,2,3] or with a focus on molecular data [4,5,6]—prevailed by far, but we also published papers with a focus on methodology [7,8].

According to the Web of Science, more than 50 papers in Taxonomy were cited in 2023, which is a good result in relation to the number of published papers. The full text reads of Taxonomy papers in 2023 was 108,310. The journal was accepted into Scopus in July 2023. Therefore, our next goal is to be included in the list of impact factor journals and thus become even more attractive and influential for the scientific community.

For more information on the development of the journal, have a look at our homepage: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/taxonomy/stats (accesses on 1 January 2024).

On average, a first decision is provided to authors approximately 28.2 days after submission, and the final acceptance to publication is undertaken in 5.6 days. This fast process is the result of an efficient team of technical editors, responsive scientific editors, and—most importantly—responsible reviewers. Therefore, I and the team at Taxonomy want to thank the editors for their work and greatly acknowledge the many reviewers for their thorough and detailed reviews, which are the foundation for developing Taxonomy into one of the leading journals in its field.

We look forward to the new year 2024 with great confidence in anticipation of numerous exciting and innovative contributions.

On behalf of the Taxonomy team, I wish you a successful year in 2024.