News about Taxon
We are excited to provide news about our journal, Taxon. After a thorough review of proposals from four publishers, we are pleased to announce that we have selected John Wiley & Sons as our partner in publishing Taxon beginning next year. We are excited to join Wiley because of the technological expertise offered by this leading global publisher. Wiley publishes many professional society journals and thus they are familiar with the needs of organizations like IAPT. With Wiley’s help Taxon will be able to take advantage of the latest innovations in publishing scientific journals, especially with respect to online content and digital features. We look forward to offering our readers and authors the best possible experience with Taxon in the years to come. We also look forward to Wiley’s marketing and sales capabilities to get Taxon in more libraries and bring our journal and the IAPT to the attention of the diverse global audience that we hope to reach. The transition process is now underway to prepare for Wiley to begin publishing Taxon. One aspect of the transition is contacting all of the libraries that subscribe to Taxon, and Wiley has already begun working on this important task.
This is a big change for us, but one that I believe will be very advantageous to not only IAPT, but also to our authors, members, and readers. With Wiley, Taxon joins an elite group of other journals in the biological sciences, such as American Journal of Botany, Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, New Phytologist, Journal of Phycology, Biotropica, Journal of Systematics and Evolution, Molecular Ecology, and many others. We will provide additional details as the transition process progresses. For now, I will just note one exciting change that will come in 2019- color figures in Taxon will be free! This should be a valuable selling point in convincing authors to submit their best work for publication in Taxon.
Although Wiley will take over handling library subscriptions, the IAPT offices will continue to handle new memberships and membership renewals. Not having to worry about library subscriptions means that we will be able to devote more effort to expanding our membership. This remains a very high priority. Speaking of IAPT membership, members of IAPT should have received an email with news about this change on Friday, 3 August. If you are an IAPT member but did not receive the email then you should contact the IAPT office (office@iapt-taxon.org) to fix this problem so that you receive important communications from us. If you are not an IAPT member they can help with that problem too!
Patrick Herendeen
IAPT President