Frontiers of Biogeography: user survey, November 2019

We conducted an on-line survey of views about Frontiers of Biogeography in November 2019, through links provided via the journal’s Twitter Feed, via the IBS Facebook page and via email. The editors are grateful to those who responded. Here is some feedback for IBS members.

  • 9 out of 10 respondents regard the journal as an important initiative for the International Biogeography Society to support, with enthusiasm for an increased number of regular research papers.
  • 1 in 3 indicated interest in submitting a paper to the journal in the next 12 months
  • The gold open access policy was supported but survey results indicated a need for a clearer waivers policy. In a nutshell then, it is a ‘pay if you can’ model in which waivers are automatically given to those declining to pay.
  • Wish to sign up for any of the above? Follow us at:
  • Around 40% of respondents were unaware of the option for fast-track submission of articles previously (but ultimately unsuccessfully) submitted to other journals. In a nutshell, this pathway permits consideration of reviews and responses in an expedited reviews process, with the caveat that papers can only ever be ‘active’ in one journal’s review system. Explore the different methods of submission at Frontier’s submission page)
  • Those completing the survey were most interested in seeing more papers within the broad fields of ecological biogeography / macroecology, followed by conservation biogeography and historical/evolutionary biogeography
  • Respondents in the graph above were permitted to select two properties they most valued. Perceptions of journal quality gained the largest share of the votes. IBS members may wish to know that an application is pending for WoS listing; currently the journal is indexed in Scopus, SCIMago, DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) and Google Scholar.

Thank you again, to those who responded.  We encourage any who would like to find out more about submitting, or who have questions, to contact the editors via eic.frontiers@nullbiogeography.org.

Find out more about Frontiers at:  https://escholarship.org/uc/fb