Last year, Experimental and Applied Acarology (EAA) has (again) experienced an increase in the number of submissions (an all-time high of 237 manuscripts received). Starting with the 2013 volume, the publisher allows us to publish on average 120 papers per year. Indeed, the realized rejection rate in 2013 was 47 %. The impact factor was 1.725 in 2011 and has gone up to 1.847 in 2012 and this ranks the journal 22nd on the list of all 87 journals in the field of Entomology (source: ICI Journal Citation Reports 2012). While this provides EAA with a solid position among the journals focusing on arthropods, the challenge will be to maintain this outcome and further improve upon it.
Special issues remain to be a key feature of EAA because they provide reviews on a variety of topics of particular relevance to Acarology. In 2013 a fine example was the special issue on ‘Ecology and Genetics of Acari Invasions’ (Volume 59, Issue 1–2 in February 2013). Special issues serve to bring together information that is otherwise scattered over many journals, books and reports (not all of which are easy to access) and to review the current state of knowledge. For the future we specifically welcome ideas for special issues that establish some level of Integrative Acarology. Thus, as an example, we would prefer to see reviews on soil-, bark- and leaf-inhabiting predators associated with plants and their pests, or an issue devoted to the epidemiology of ticks—we look forward to receiving any other suggestions you may have.
For the journal to improve, first priority should be given to reduce the time from submission to first decision and to publish high-quality papers. Second priority is to solicit more papers in topical areas that could be better represented in the journal, especially articles in the ‘omics’ sciences (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics). Other measures are to urge the authors to provide their original data and the details of statistical treatments in files supplementary to the article and to stimulate authors to supply short illustrative video-films, when appropriate and of sufficient quality—for 2013a, b, c see the papers by Tomasz Marquardt and Yukie Sato for fine examples and for 2014 see the paper by Karen Muñoz. Thanks to the hard work of the two Managing Editors, Frans Jongejan for papers on Ticks and Jan Bruin for papers on Mites, I trust we can achieve these goals.