2021 was the first year of Ichthyology & Herpetology; the journal had many successes, but it also had many challenges. Among the largest challenges were changes to our staffing—particularly the planned and unplanned departure of two of our longest serving associate editors. After 20 years as an Associate Editor, Dr. Michael Lannoo retired from journal service. Mike was always among the busiest, most efficient, and most detail-oriented associate editors. It will be hard to replace him because of his broad expertise and experience (from statistics-driven herp ecology to lateral-line morphology in fishes), but despite this being a big loss for the journal, we all wish Mike the best in his retirement. Thank you for everything, Mike. While this next change technically belongs in the 2022 report, it is appropriate that we recognize the passing of one of our current associate editors since it is a rare, solemn occasion for the journal. Dr. Donald George Buth passed away unexpectedly on 31 May 2022. In our history, dozens of herpetologists and ichthyologists have had more than ten years of service as ASIH editors or editorial board members, but just a handful of scientists have 20 or more years of service to the journal (Don Buth, Fran Cashner, Helen Gaige, Mike Lannoo, Linn Montgomery, Randy Mooi, and Jay Orr). Looking closely at these data, only Don has had more than 30 years of editorial service, and this includes 30 years as an associate editor AND an additional nine years on the Editorial Board (while not an associate editor). In a league of his own, Don spent 39 years selflessly improving the science published in Copeia and Ichthyology & Herpetology. It is impossible to imagine that anyone will ever surpass his 39 years of journal tenure with the Society, and that somehow feels appropriate for this ASIH legend. This nearly 40 years of service on top of many other ASIH service efforts (e.g., time on Long Range and Planning and the Board of Governors) accurately reflects several of Don’s strongest and most memorable traits: Don’s dedication to ASIH and the fields of ichthyology and herpetology, Don’s drive and patience to teach others how to improve their science and their scientific writing, Don’s focus and passion for education, and, finally, Don’s stubbornness to never give up on trying to improve ASIH and to always push the journal (and its Editor), the Society, and the field forward in his own unique way. RIP, Don, and thanks for making all of us better.
I would like to personally thank all of the associate editors and editorial board members. As will be described below, we have been moving toward granting associate editors more control over manuscript recommendations, and the associate editors have risen to this challenge. Our associate editors have been phenomenal this year, particularly in light of the challenges brought on by COVID-19 where reviewers were less communicative about review requests as well as less likely to submit reviews for manuscripts that they agreed to review. It goes without saying that the editors understand the stress reviewers are under, but it makes the perseverance of our associate editors that much more stellar in light of these extra challenges. The associate editors are all exceptional scientists who spend much of their time sharing their expertise to improve manuscripts and shepherd papers through the review process for ASIH. We should all be grateful for their dedicated service. Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Editorial Office, Katie Smith and Matt Girard. At this point, it would be hard for the three of us to work together more efficiently. Katie and Matt are experts in their respective fields with many years of experience, and they have unique roles where they fundamentally improve every manuscript published in Ichthyology & Herpetology.
Years ago, then-editor Chris Beachy described Copeia as a boutique journal. I didn’t get or appreciate that moniker at the time, but I now fully agree with him. We will never get a paper online faster than the mass-produced for-profit journals, and the journal and the Society have to be okay with that. We move as quickly as possible to get quality edited and copyedited, image-vetted, and typeset articles online for our members. We fundamentally value the improvements and clarity brought to manuscripts and figures by our editors and staff. We recognize that thousands of dollars and countless hours have been spent by our authors to produce the work they submit for publication in Ichthyology & Herpetology. As such, we believe that the effort to critique and improve the science of these manuscripts, to polish these accepted articles and figures, and to provide the opportunity for authors to improve their proofs following detailed editing, copyediting, and illustration modifications are worth the delay to get the best version of an author’s paper out to our broad audience. As such, Ichthyology & Herpetology chooses editing and polish over speed, and we accept that quality editing takes some time and is only possible with a team of fantastic associate editors, a production editor, and an illustration editor. As the only person who witnesses all aspects of what this team accomplishes, I can attest that these professionals provide a tremendous service to our authors. It remains an honor and a pleasure to work with all of them, and I thank all of them for their service to ASIH and Ichthyology & Herpetology.
Ichthyology & Herpetology becomes an online-only publication
In 2021, as the costs of the first issue of Ichthyology & Herpetology were invoiced to ASIH and we had a sense of the membership and subscriber declines, it became clear to the Editor and Treasurer that it was time to strongly consider canceling the print version of the journal. I raised this issue with PUBC in early July, and they supported canceling the print version of the journal (not unanimously—see discussion in PUBC report). This was then brought to EXEC in advance of the JMIH EXEC meeting, and they unanimously supported canceling the print version of the journal since our contract with Allen Press was up for renewal. As such, this motion was taken to BOFG who too supported the canceling of the print journal after 2021 (not unanimously). I thought it would be ideal to present some of the relevant data and justification that led to this decision, so that it would be in the formal record of the Society. Let me start with the clear trend of declining interest in the print journal (see figure).
That graph is clear; we were losing approximately 75 paid print subscribers/members per year, and that trajectory has been remarkably steady for more than a decade. Admittedly, the decrease was starting to slow down a touch and would have slowed down or halted before zero, but at what level? Certainly, we would end up with well under 300 interested parties and likely under 200. So, we know that demand was disappearing, but the other side of the equation is how much did the print journal cost us (particularly relative to revenue)? In 2021, we paid $68,067 [$60,459 in 2020, $47,574 in 2019] to print and mail Ichthyology & Herpetology (printing of journal, mailing of journal, and production of halftone images when color-online only), and we had explicit print-issue revenue of $19,400 [$24,130 in 2020, $26,950 in 2019]. In 2020 and 2021, members chose to join the Society and pay their commensurate membership fees plus $50 for the print journal. Across all membership categories, 298 paid in 2021 [362 in 2020, 395 in 2019] for a membership and print copy of the journal. Similarly, 50 [67 in 2020, 80 in 2019] institutional subscribers each paid $90 (in addition to the $160 charge for online subscription access) for the print journal. We did not know what percentage of our printed-journal members and subscribers would cancel their membership/subscription if we stopped printing the journal, but it is safe to assume that some or many of them would cancel. Starting in 2020, that amount became less fiscally relevant because the total revenue brought in from those members and subscribers amounted to $57,850 (which was less than the $60,459 we paid to provide the print journal) and that gap widened substantially in 2021 when those revenue sources amounted to $46,050 while the printed journal costs rose to $68,067. These natural dynamics were exacerbated by everyone’s financial issues associated with the pandemic. The increase in printing charges and drop in interest resulted in a guaranteed loss of $22,017 in 2021 compared to a guaranteed loss of just $2,609 in 2020 if every member or institution only interested in the Society for access to a printed journal terminated their relationship with ASIH. Despite the apprehension of many and the profound interest in the print journal by some, there was only one decision for the Society to make (particularly in light of our financial/cash losses associated with COVID), and all the governing bodies made this difficult and impactful decision for the benefit of the Society. This decision to stop printing the journal was not a goal of my time in this position, but the circumstances made it clear that it needed to be done.
An annual budget for Ichthyology & Herpetology
As noted first in 2020, the last few years have made it clear that manuscripts being submitted to Ichthyology & Herpetology keep getting longer (despite moving ever more information to the supplemental website), and that this change has resulted in an increase in PDF/printed pages. Given this change, I raised the issue at the 2020 Executive Committee Meeting to assess concerns about the increased publishing costs associated with more information vs. delaying the publication of papers (i.e., expanding the backlog of accepted, but unpublished papers to keep spending down). The Executive Committee, at the time, recommended that we publish all the papers with minimal delay and noted that they were not immediately concerned about increased costs because of the value of a healthy journal for the Society. By the summer of 2021, the realities of the financial limitations (and more specifically cash limitations) brought on by COVID-19 and the canceling of the 2020 JMIH, the smaller in-person and virtual 2021 JMIH, and the increased publication costs associated with a more robust journal demanded changes to the journal’s publication strategy. As such, I, with the support of PUBC, EXEC, and BOFG, pushed to drop costs as quickly as possible for a quarterly journal with annual and multi-year contracts. The four changes we have made and are implementing now include: 1) to stop printing and mailing the journal (with the necessary BOFG support), 2) to reduce the journal length to approximately 800 PDF pages in 2022 (a 25% drop relative to the previous two years), 3) to renegotiate our contract with Allen Press to reduce charges for proof corrections, and 4) to restructure the contract with the Production Editor such that their salary is commensurate with the number of PDF pages published in a year rather than a fixed charge (i.e., if fewer pages are published, the Production Editor is paid less and if more pages are published, they are paid more). With these changes, the hope is that the costs associated with publishing the journal will be reduced from $171,956 in 2021 to something closer to $100,000 in 2022.
My recommendation is that the Editor, going forward, will annually present a budget to EXEC at JMIH for guidance. This may have been typical more than 20 years ago. The Summaries of the Meetings suggest that this is the case (or at least that page number targets were discussed). In my 18 years of service to the journal in various capacities, there has been little to no discussion about budgets and limiting the pages published in the journal. As the Society's goals and costs diversify with increased travel and award spending (particularly for students), the Treasurer, ENFC, and EXEC need predictable journal spending and revenue to make annual and long-term decisions. I believe strongly that the Editor should provide the Treasurer with their annual spending estimate for the following year (with 5–10% flexibility) at the JMIH EXEC meeting. In late 2021 and early 2022, I highlighted the last of these four recommendations to EXEC, which they approved. I posited that with these changes that the journal costs and revenue should roughly balance each other out at around $100,000 (excluding editor and staff reimbursements) in 2022. 2022 will be our first year without printing and mailing the journal, and 2023 will be our first year with substantive changes to our BioOne contract in nearly 20 years (see ASIH Ad-Hoc Committee to Assess BioOne Electronic Licensing Agreement and Our Publication Strategy for more information), so the projected costs and revenue may be off (i.e., harder to predict) for the next 2–3 years, but a balanced cost structure for the journal is my goal, particularly while we remain cash poor for the next few years.
Associate editors making recommendations
Before Copeia used a manuscript tracking system (prior to 2000), manuscripts were vetted with the following procedure. The Editor would receive submissions in the mail, they would assign the submissions to associate editors, the associate editors would handle the reviews, recommendations, and revisions, and then coordinate the final decision of a rejection or acceptance with the Editor. Beginning with the AllenTrack manuscript tracking system, the process changed such that the Editor would make final recommendations and decisions after each round of revision, and at any stage they could theoretically overrule the associate editor, take over a manuscript from an associate editor, or transfer a manuscript from one associate editor to another. This had the benefit that all recommendation and decision letters came from the Editor and shielded the identity of the associate editor until publication. This more hands-on approach also allowed the Editor to ensure certain standards for all manuscripts across all stages of the review cycle. The drawbacks of this system are that it slows down every step of the manuscript review cycle because the Editor is involved at nearly every stage. This slowdown also puts a much larger time burden on the Editor for little gain (i.e., I have rarely made substantive changes or recommendations during the first [or often the second] round of revisions). Finally, this system also gave associate editors less control over the scientific review process because they could always be overruled by the Editor.
With the new PeerTrack manuscript tracking system that started at the end of 2020, we were given the opportunity to return to the processing flow that existed in 1999 and earlier. In 2021, the associate editors agreed to try these revised procedures, and they were implemented in late 2021. The revised process is that the Editor receives manuscripts, they assign them to associate editors, and the associate editors assign reviewers and make recommendations that go back to the authors. Revisions come in to the Editor who then either sends the revisions back to the associate editor for further action or accepts the paper with the associate editor’s approval. The associate editors write all decision letters unless a paper is ready for acceptance or rejection. If a paper is ready for acceptance, then the Editor will go through and ensure compliance with the journal’s rules (e.g., IACUC statements, GenBank numbers, overall formatting). With this change, the Editor serves as more of a managing editor than a scientific editor. Once the paper is accepted, a final decision letter is produced by the Editor and sent to the corresponding author, the Editorial Office, and the handling associate editor. If a paper is rejected by the associate editor, the Editor is given an opportunity to look over the reviews and recommendations and can ensure that all authors are getting equitable treatment. A rejection letter is then produced by the Editor, and this means that associate editor will remain anonymous when manuscripts are rejected on the first round of review. This is definitely a benefit for more junior associate editors who could suffer repercussions for making negative decisions. So far, the revised procedures seem to be working well with a few hiccups. Decisions times are trending down, the workload on the Editor is considerably less, and I have not received any complaints from authors, associate editors, or reviewers.
Impact factor, view statistics, and Altmetric scores
The 2021 impact factor for the journal is still attributed to Copeia because it is a two-year trailing indicator (i.e., the 2021 value represents 2021 citations to articles published in 2019 and 2020 when we were still Copeia). The 2022 impact factor will be split between Copeia and Ichthyology & Herpetology, and the 2023 and beyond impact factor will be exclusively Ichthyology & Herpetology. The 2021 impact for Copeia is 1.857 [2020, 1.402; 2019, 1.160; 2018, 1.018]. This is the highest impact factor the journal has ever had (as was 2020 before it; see figure), and a large proportion of this is driven by the publication of the ASIH standard collection codes by Sabaj. Given the value and importance of these codes and that they change through time, it is recommended that Mark Sabaj be encouraged to publish updates every two years to reflect these changes and the importance of these codes to herpetology and ichthyology.
This impact factor places the journal in the second quartile of zoology journals. Of the 176 zoology journals that receive an impact factor, Copeia ranked 65th. In last year’s report, Copeia was ranked 86 out of 169. For comparison, we performed notably better than the median impact factor of zoology journals which was around 1.49. With regard to the impact factor, we performed better to much better than most other herpetological and ichthyological journals in Zoology: Herpetologica–2.653, African Journal of Herpetology–2.563, Amphibia-Reptilia–2.319, Salamandra–1.765, Asian Herpetological Research–1.516, Neotropical Ichthyology–1.470, Journal of Herpetology–1.430, South American Journal of Herpetology–1.414, Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters–1.346, Amphibian & Reptile Conservation–1.309, Ichthyological Research–1.223, Chelonian Conservation and Biology–1.209, Herpetological Journal–1.194, Acta Herpetologica–1.075, Herpetozoa–1.053, Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria–0.913, Boletim do Institudo de Pesca–0.800, Journal of Ichthyology–0.745, Current Herpetology–0.737, and Russian Journal of Herpetology–0.632. To reiterate, our impact factor for the next two years will be awkward because Clarivate will treat Copeia and Ichthyology & Herpetology independently. They do allow us to combine them into one, which I will do manually next year, but they will be reported on their websites as two independent journals and that each has only one year of citations rather than the expected two years.
Starting in 2018, we began to report the annual views of our publications across all four websites that provide access to our research: the Allen Press Meridian membership website (“Allen Press”), the BioOne website (“BioOne”), the JSTOR website (“JSTOR”), and the 50-day open-access website (“Squarespace”). Across all four websites, Copeia and Ichthyology & Herpetology had 794,758 article views in 2021. This is a lot more than years past (2020: 487,175* views [see last year’s report for explanation of *]; 2019: 496,304 views; 2018: 203,023 views). As has been discussed in previous years, what counts as a view has been in flux as the publishers have changed their manuscript systems and their accounting. For the first time, all four of our systems are reporting the same information for 2021—these numbers represent the combination of full HTML views of articles or full PDF downloads. Most of our article views were from BioOne (2021: 442,328; 2020: 268,528 views; 2019: 388,554 views; 2018: 98,534 views). Unlike years past, our second largest source of views was our Allen Press site (2021: 186,993 views; 2020: 58,082* views; 2019: 9,125 views; 2018: 4,067 views). JSTOR provided our third most views (2021: 161,375; 2020: 155,776 views; 2019: 95,655 views; 2018: 94,142 views). Finally, we have our Squarespace website where people download PDFs for our 50-day open-access links (2021: 4,062 downloads; 2020: 4,789 downloads; 2019: 2,970 downloads; 2018: 6,280 downloads). In 2021, we had 93,968 views of 2021 Ichthyology & Herpetology articles (63,048 on BioOne, 26,858 on Allen Press, and 4,062 on Squarespace, so our recent articles are dominating our downloads. This 2021 value compares favorably with the last three years (2020: 44,930*; 2019: 21,495; 2018: 12,449).
A final comparison that can be made about the impact and reach of our publications is the average Altmetric score for our articles. Altmetric scores are based on an algorithm that attempts to summarize and quantify the online activity or reach surrounding scholarly content. With our increased efforts to share our publications through Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter using the 50-day open-access links, it is not surprising that our mean and median Altmetric scores have improved in 2018–2021 relative to 2017 when we did not promote our articles. In 2021, we had a typical median Altmetric score and a better than average mean. Altmetric scores are reported as year, median, mean (low–high): 2021, 7, 26.1 (1–628); 2020, 12, 25.1 (1–362); 2019, 8, 40.0 (1–1,340); 2018, 7, 17.7 (1–320); 2017, 3, 8.4 (1–162). The generally high mean Altmetric value is tied to our continued efforts to increase the visibility and reach of every paper we publish through the promotion of articles on social media.
Ichthyology & Herpetology submissions, articles, and reviewers
There were 274 new and revised submissions in 2021 (20% decrease relative to 2020). Of these, 144 were new submissions (17% decrease relative to 2020). This is an average of 23 new and revised submissions per month. The average number of submissions per month were 29 in 2020, 26 in 2019, and 22 in 2018. In terms of new submissions, February (17 new submissions) was the most active month, while October (4 new submissions) was the slowest month. Of these new submissions, 106 were led by an author from the United States and the rest were led by authors from the following 17 countries: Argentina (1), Australia (2), Brazil (7), Canada (2), China (6), Colombia (1), Costa Rica (1), Egypt (1), India (2), Japan (3), Mexico (4), Pakistan (1), Poland (1), Romania (2), Singapore (1), South Africa (1), and Spain (1). This decrease in the number of manuscripts submitted in 2021 is most likely tied to the lack of an impact factor for Ichthyology & Herpetology. Our decrease in submissions is mostly ichthyological and is mostly a reduction in submissions from countries where their institutional systems have impact-factor requirements for full credit for publications. These submissions will be down for at least another year or two, but I expect them to rebound in the summer of 2024 when the first full impact factor for Ichthyology & Herpetology is published.
In 2021, 1,112 pages of Ichthyology & Herpetology were published across four issues: May (378 pages), August (290 pages), October (260 pages), and December (184 pages). These represent an increase of 86 pages (up 8.4%) from 2020. Volume 109 included 1 review article, 3 point-of-view articles, 4 symposium articles, and 67 research articles (together these represented 929 pages or 84% of the volume). The remaining pages were distributed among Scientist Spotlights (31 pages), Historical Perspectives (30 pages), Society award announcements (22 pages), 9 book reviews (21 pages), 4 obituaries (14 pages), 3 introductory articles associated with the journal name change (7 pages), and journal back matter (57 pages). Of the 75 point-of-view, research, review, and symposium articles published, 44 (59%) were herpetological and 31 (41%) were ichthyological. For comparative purposes, these statistics for the past several years were (% herpetological/% ichthyological/% both [if present]) 51%/48%/1% for 2020, 59%/41% for 2019, and 44%/54%/2% for 2018. The proportion of herpetological vs. ichthyological publications represents the ratio of submitted manuscripts in these fields that are accepted; it is not a goal of the editorial office to balance the taxonomic distribution. Across the 75 research articles published, we had 375 [336 in 2020] authors. We do not ask for demographic information from our authors, but our best estimate of our author gender breakdown is 31% female authors and 69% male authors which is mildly better than previous years where we had 27% female authors in 2019 and 2020 and 28% female authors in 2018.
In 2021, we invited 371 reviews; 92 of those review requests were declined (24.8%), 57 review requests were ignored (15.4%), and 16 reviewers that accepted an invitation to review were terminated because of extensive delays (4.3%). Therefore, we had 206 reviews from 165 reviewers which was down significantly from the previous years (338 reviews from 258 reviewers in 2020, 296 reviews from 232 reviewers in 2019, and 274 reviews from 228 reviewers in 2018). This decrease could be explained by three things: fewer submissions, an increase in desk rejections from editors (necessitating fewer reviewers), and fewer reviewers because of a modest decrease in manuscripts going out for review multiple times. In total, 55.5% of review requests resulted in a peer review that helped the journal editors make a decision on a paper. Across all reviews, 134 reviewers were from the United States and the rest were from the following 26 countries: Argentina (3), Australia (7), Belgium (1), Brazil (14), Canada (12), China (2), Costa Rica (1), Czech Republic (1), Denmark (1), Finland (1), France (1), Germany (1), India (1), Italy (2), Japan (1), Malaysia (1), Mexico (5), Republic of Korea (2), Russian Federation (1), Singapore (1), South Africa (3), Sweden (2), Switzerland (1), Taiwan (2), United Kingdom (4), and Venezuela (1). We do not ask for demographic information from our reviewers, but our best estimate of our reviewer gender breakdown for 2021 was 29% female reviewers and 71% male reviewers. While not remotely equal, this was the most equitable distribution we have had since we began estimating this statistic (24–25% female from 2018–2020). The directionality and magnitude of this trend toward comparatively more female reviewers is similar to the trend for female authors. While this trend toward equity is small, I am happy that it is at least in the right direction. Finally, the average number of days a reviewer took to respond to an invitation to review was 1.2 days. The average number of days it took a reviewer to complete a review was 25.4 days (compared to 25.6 days in 2020, 29.5 days in 2019, and 26.2 days in 2018).
Ichthyology & Herpetology awards
It is my pleasure to note that Ichthyology & Herpetology nominated Chantel Markle and collaborators’ paper, Multi-scale assessment of Rock Barrens Turtle nesting habitat: effects of moisture and temperature on hatch success. 109:507–521, for the BioOne Ambassador Award this year. We appreciate her stellar contribution to Ichthyology & Herpetology.
Every year, Ichthyology & Herpetology recognizes some of the excellent papers published in the journal. Historically, these best papers have been announced in the second issue of the year and listed in this report. Starting in 2021, we began announcing these awards at the Business and Awards Meeting (BAAM) at our annual meeting. Interested parties should attend the BAAM, look at the Summary of the Meetings, or read the award announcements that follow this year’s JMIH.
Ichthyology & Herpetology editing and acceptance statistics
Generally, performance statistics for the editorial staff for 2021 were similar to previous years. For comparison, performance statistics for 2021 (means) are followed by values for 2020 in brackets. The average time from submission to associate editor assignment was 11 [8] days. The average time from submission to reviewer invitations was 12.5 [16] days. The average time from submission to initial editor decision was 51 [55] days.
The following table provides information on the handling editors. These data include the number of manuscripts handled, the within-year rejection rate for new submissions and revisions, the average time to decision on new submissions (from associate editor assignment to associate editor decision), and the overall average time to decision on new submissions and revisions (from associate editor assignment to associate editor decision). Please note that all editorial desk rejections from the Editor (Leo Smith) are included in my manuscript statistics, so I didn’t shepherd 40 papers through the review process; it is just how these data are captured by the system. If these data are compared to previous years, the handling editor time to decision values are, on average, similar with some handling editors being faster or slower than in previous years.
For manuscripts that were submitted in 2021 and reached a decision date in 2021 (151 manuscripts), the rejection rate was 29.1%, which is intentionally higher than previous years to reduce the journal backlog as we reduce the number of published PDF pages to 800. The rejection rate was 21.7% in 2020, 21.0% in 2019, and 22.3% in 2018. Additionally, we can look at all acceptance and rejection numbers for all papers in 2021. In 2021, 105 manuscripts were accepted, and 45 manuscripts were rejected (30% rejection rate). This rejection rate was similar to the 26.7% rejection rate in 2020, the 33.6% rejection rate in 2019, and the 45.5% rejection rate in 2018.
Ichthyology & Herpetology production costs
As the costs associated with publishing Ichthyology & Herpetology have been a point of discussion over the last several years, I have included and will continue to include the relevant costs paid to Allen Press below so that Governors can track the changes with the journal. All data will be presented for 2021 followed by 2020 data in brackets. When examining the increases in 2021, it is important to remember that we published 86 additional pages over 2020 (or an increase of 8%), making 2021 our second largest volume ever.
The explicit revenue for Ichthyology & Herpetology in 2021 was $141,847 [$142,393]. The breakdown for this revenue is: $83,706 [$78,148] for electronic publication (BioOne $72,342; JSTOR $11,364), $19,400 [$24,130] for printed issues of Ichthyology & Herpetology (members $14,900; subscribers $4,500), $22,720 [$27,040] for online subscriptions to Ichthyology & Herpetology, and $16,021 [$13,075] for open-access fees/high-resolution proofs/figures, back issues, page charges/etc. This explicit revenue value assumes that no revenue from memberships (beyond the printed journal if paid for) and special publications is attributable to Ichthyology & Herpetology.
The total cost of Ichthyology & Herpetology in 2021 was $171,956 [$155,895]. The majority of this spending was paid to Allen Press. We paid Allen Press $137,933.40 [$130,030.80] for the production and distribution of Ichthyology & Herpetology and for access to their manuscript submission and tracking systems. The breakdown of these costs are as follows: printing Ichthyology & Herpetology—$55,342.65 [$52,215.13]; typesetting and figure processing (for both online PDFs and printing)—$43,463.23 [$36,661.01]; Ichthyology & Herpetology online—$18,184.88 [$17,572.32]; mailing Ichthyology & Herpetology—$8,280.86 [$7,830.03]; proof corrections—$4,331.96 [$7,497.32]; manuscript tracking system—$4,559.02 [$5,159.46]; Ichthyology & Herpetology management, renewals, and warehousing—$3,363.40 [$2,544.67]; and other publication and design costs—$407.40 [$550.86]. Finally, the Editorial Office cost $34,022.45 [$27,302.37] for the contract of the Production Editor, software for the Editorial Office, website charges, trophies for best paper award winners, and reimbursements to editor, associate editors, and staff for meetings and memberships. It is worth noting that the Editorial Office cost in 2020 was unusually low because of a salary reporting correction from the previous year and limited meeting reimbursements to the members of PUBC. As such, I note for comparison that 2019 was more typical when the Editorial Office had a cost of $38,443.
One item that we began monitoring last year is the cost of the Allen Press Meridian site relative to institutional subscriber income. This is because BioOne can now provide journal access to Society members. I raised this at the 2020 and 2021 Executive Committee meetings, and it was tabled. This new member benefit (that is not currently enabled) means that we should annually compare institutional subscription revenue to the cost of Allen Press’s Meridian Ichthyology & Herpetology online. In 2021, institutional subscription revenue was $22,720. This institutional subscription revenue was $4,535.56 more than the $18,184.44 that we spent on Ichthyology & Herpetology online. As these numbers approach each other, which is the trajectory they are on (particularly given the loss of institutional print revenue [$4,500 in 2021]), we will need to seriously consider whether the Allen Press Meridian site is worth the money. The Editor should continue to report this comparison annually, and Governors should raise concerns when warranted, given that the Allen Press Meridian site contract is typically renewed every three years (last renewed in 2021). There are benefits to having multiple independent sites, one of which we control, but how much is redundancy worth as the costs overtake the revenue?
Epilogue
I would like to end this report by again remembering Don Buth. I can’t speak for Bob Johnson, Mike Douglas, Scott Schaefer, or Chris Beachy, but, to me, it often felt like I wrote this report specifically for Don and generally for ASIH. Don pored over this annual report and always found issues in it to exempt at the Board of Governors meeting. In 2021, Don emailed and said that he had no concerns with my 2021 report. Looking back, it was a highlight of my time as Editor because I cared deeply about his opinion on editorial and procedural issues. In contrast, submitting this first report after his passing and thinking about the fact that he will not be looking over my shoulder and editing me now and in the future is, without a doubt, one of the lowest points.
