It is a pleasure to provide this update on activities at the Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology for the ISOP newsletter. It has been a busy few months for us here at JEM, with several important editorial changes and our November/December issue being finalized for production.
One exciting development has been the renewal and expansion of the Editorial Board. I am grateful that Drs. Sabine Agatha, Douglas Chalker, Kuidong Xu, Tomoyoshi Nozaki, and Richard Snyder have all agreed to remain in their existing roles, and Dr. Roberto Docampo, has returned to JEM now as an Associate Editor. I also want to take this opportunity to recognize and thank Prof. Paul Michels for his service to our community and the journal as he steps down from the board after almost 10 years. Finally, I want to welcome our new editorial board members, Drs. Elisabeth Hehenberger, Lydia Bright, Vyachislav Jurchenko, Alastair Simpson, and Laura Utz. With our new board, we are even better positioned to handle and publish papers on topics from taxonomy, phylogeny, and ecology to molecular cell biology and evolution of heterotrophic, photosynthetic, and parasitic protists.
This Fall also saw the move to the new Wiley Research Exchange system, which should provide a smoother submission process and more effective peer-review experience. This system is still new for us at the Journal and we welcome feedback on your experience to make us aware of tweaks that need to be made. The shift also gave us a chance to have a bit of fun with some protist art that I think speaks to us all at moments of the paper writing journey☺
Image credit: Anna M. G. Novák Vanclová
Our November/December issue features a great set of papers, spanning protistological topics. There are articles describing new organisms and their taxonomy from apicomplexans, metamonads, CRuMs, dinoflagellates, and diatoms. Several papers include ‘omics-level datasets to understand phylogenomics of their respective groups and provide rich datasets for future inquiry. There are also insightful microscopic, molecular parasitological, and biochemical studies to protist behaviour and physiology. The cover features a beautiful SEM image from the article by Eunji Park and Brian Leander, “Molecular phylogeny of the Lecudinoidea (Apicomplexa): A major group of marine gregarines with diverse shapes, movements and hosts.”
Notably, this will be the last issue of JEM to have a cover image selected from articles. As of the January/February issue, we will be moving to a continuous publication model. Articles will be officially published as soon as they are available, providing faster turnaround and availability for our authors and readers. Articles will be bundled into retrospective issues for archiving and data managing purposes. JEM will also be moving to a permanent cover design. This has two important implications for you. Firstly, because ‘getting the cover’ of a journal is a very real achievement (fun and worth noting on CVs), we will still be asking you to provide either a proposed ‘cover image’ or a graphical abstract in your submitted paper. For each issue, we will select an ‘Issue Highlighted Image” in lieu of a cover image to feature on the Journal webpage and in our social media streams. Secondly, we have worked hard behind the scenes and with a JEM design team to create a new permanent cover design, which we will unveil in the next newsletter and with the next issue. So stay tuned, there are exciting things ahead for JEM in the coming months.
Wishing you all a safe and restful time as we go into the Winter holiday period.
Joel B Dacks
Editor in Chief, Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology
