untitled ACTA BOT. CROAT. 75 (1), 2016 S1 Social news Acta Botanica Croatica: editorial activity and scientometric analysis for the period 1998–2014 Damir Viličić, Grozdana Sirotić University of Zagreb, Faculty of Science, Department of Biology, Rooseveltov trg 6, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia Abstract – An editorial report concerning and scientometric analysis of papers published in the journal Acta botanica croatica for the period from 1998 to 2014 is presented. Since 1998, original scientifi c papers have been written exclusively in English and the accessibility and communicability have increased. The journal is included in the citation base SCOPUS (since 2007) and Web of Science – Science Citation Index Expanded (since 2008). Beginning in 2011, a partnership with co-publishers Versita – Central European Science Pub- lisher and Walter de Gruyter Open Publishing House, resulted in improved management, quality control, electronic publication and increasing visibility of the journal. The impact factor has been calculated since 2010 by Journal Citation Reports and has increased from 0.435 to 0.839. Acta Botanica Croatica is an international scientifi c journal published by the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Croatia; it is the traditional botanical journal of southern Europe. The scope of the jour- nal is fi eld (terrestrial and aquatic) and experimental botany (including plant viruses, fungi, bacteria, algae), from sub- cellular level to ecosystems. One decade after the end of the First World War, bota- nists in the Department of Botany of the Faculty of Philoso- phy of the University of Zagreb of that time established a domestic botanical journal with the intention of improving communications with the international scientifi c communi- ty and exchanging it for other botanical journals (Ilijanić 1992). The journal, named Acta Botanica instituti botanici regalis universitatis Zagrebiennsis, was founded in 1925 by Professor Vale Vouk (founder of the laboratory of plant physiology in Zagreb University, organizer of oceano- graphic institutions in Split, Rovinj and Dubrovnik). In the same period many other botanical journals were founded in Europe. Vale Vouk was the fi rst editor of the journal, until his retirement in 1957, with an interval during World War II, when the journal did not come out (Tab. 1). In the period 1957–1968, during the editorship of Pro- fessor Stjepan Horvatić whose research fi eld was the fl ora and vegetation of southwestern Croatia and the Adriatic is- lands), the name of the journal was changed to Acta Botan- ica Croatica. It was the period of consolidation of the jour- nal although it was not still regularly published. In the period 1969–1992, the journal was edited by Pro- fessor Ljudevit Ilijanić whose scientifi c interest was in the fl ora, plant ecology, plant sociology and grassland vegeta- tion in Croatia. Ljudevit Ilijanić introduced a scientifi c (concise) style of writing, and achieved international revi- sion of submitted manuscripts (one domestic and one inter- national), as well as regular, annual publication of the jour- nal. Statistical analysis of the ten-year period from 1979 to 1988 reveals that papers from 10 botanical subjects were published; they may be divided into two main groups: group A dealing with phytosociology, phytogeography, ecology and taxonomy (59%), and group B with physiolo- gy, cytology, embryology, virology and molecular biology (41%) (Jokić and Borić 1992). The difference between these two groups of papers was in the citations, which were older in group A than in group B, indicating the diversifi ca- tion of new scientifi c disciplines during that period. In the early post-war period in Croatia, after the breakup of Yugoslavia, Professor Ljerka Marković took over the editorship of the journal, from 1993 to 1997 (vol. 56). The fi eld of scientifi c interest of Professor Ljerka Marković was fl ora, expansion of neophytes, nitrophilous vegetation, ri- parian communities and grasslands. Unfortunately, for a short period the journal experienced irregularity in its fi nan- cial support, resulting in a gap in publication in 1999, just before Ljerka Marković’s retirement. Tab. 1. Editors of Acta Botanica Croatica. Editor Period Number of issues edited Volumes edited Vale Vouk 1925–1956 15 1–15 Stjepan Horvatić 1957–1968 12 16–26/27 Ljudevit Ilijanić 1969–1992 23 28–51 Ljerka Marković 1993–1997 5 52–55/56 Damir Viličić 1998–2013 32 57–72 Branka Salopek-Sondi 2014– 73– S2 ACTA BOT. CROAT. 75 (1), 2016 VILIČIĆ D., SIROTIĆ G. In 1996 I, Professor Damir Viličić, moved from the In- stitute of Oceanography and Fisheries, Dubrovnik, to the Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb where I established my position as full professor and founded the laboratory for marine phytoplankton. I was asked to take over the journal and I accepted this duty. Here I give a short report of the editorial activity during my man- date which lasted from 1998 (vol. 57 which was published in 1999) until 2013 (vol. 72). Beginning with volume 57 in 1998, Acta Botanica Cro- atica improved requirements of scholarly publishing, such as editorial procedures and records, structure of (interna- tional) editorial board, regular publishing (two times year- ly). The journal was published as an entirely English-lan- guage journal. We began to use the journal management and publishing software (Online Journal System). By ful- fi lling the requirements for scholarly publishing (Marušić and Marušić 2005) the journal obtained fi nancial support from the Croatian Ministry of Science again in 2000. Impact factor was calculated in the SCOPUS base from 1999, within the portal Scimago Journal Ranking (Fig. 1). In 2008, Acta Botanica Croatica was listed in the Direc- tory of Open Access Journals and responded to the invita- tion of the International Study on Quality Assurance, orga- nized by Humboldt University, Institute for Library and Information, Berlin. After quality control, the journal was soon included in Thomson Reuters Master Journal List, and the same year Acta Botanica Croatica was included in the Web of Science – Science Citation Index Expanded. The impact factor has been calculated since 2010 by Journal Ci- tation Reports. Papers published in Acta Botanica Croatica are more and more cited in highly competent journals, in- creasing the impact factor from 0.435 to 0.839 over the time window examined (Fig. 1). Beginning in 2011, partnership with co-publishers Ver- sita – Central European Science Publisher and Walter de Gruyter Open Publishing House resulted in improved man- agement, quality control, electronic publishing and increas- ing visibility in indexing and other services. Since 2011 the number of libraries in Europe and North America where Acta Botanica Croatica content is disseminated increased to 624, i.e. 256 libraries in North America (according to ELU- NA 2016) and 368 in Europe (according to IGeLU 2016). Metapress and Springer provide »CrossCheck Service«. Accepted publications are published »on-line fi rst« with digital object identifi er (DOI). All these improvements led to the interest of authors in publishing in Acta Botanica Croatica increasing exponentially during the last two de- cades (1997–2014) (Fig. 2). The period between submis- sion and acceptance after positive reviewer and editor deci- sions has been shortened. The authors of papers appearing in Acta Botanica Cro- atica are dominantly from Croatia, with ca 83% in the peri- od 1991–1999 (Jokić and Sirotić 2002); however there has recently been an increase in the number of authors who are from other European (44%) and from non-European (37%) countries (Tab. 2). One of the journal’s focuses is research into the karstic and arid areas of southern Europe, resulting in an increasing number of publications coming from coun- tries with arid environments, e.g. circum-Mediterranean, African and Asian countries. In April 2013, the editing process was improved by the introduction of a technical editor-in-chief, subject editors and technical editors with the intention of better operation- alization of reviewing process and technical preparation of accepted papers. Fig. 1. Acta Botanica Croatica; impact factors (IF) calculated by the SCOPUS citation base (Scimago Journal Ranking), and Web of Science – Journal Citation Reports. Fig. 2. Exponential increase of submissions of manuscripts to Acta Botanica Croatica in the last two decades. ACTA BOT. CROAT. 75 (1), 2016 S3 ACTA BOTANICA CROATICA: EDITORIAL ACTIVITY AND SCIENTOMETRIC ANALYSIS 1998–2014 Acta Botanica Croatica celebrated its 90 anniversary in 2015, and entered the 10th decade of publishing. High qual- ity standards and modern scientifi c content should be a per- manent editorial goal in order for the success of Acta Bo- tanica Croatica to be maintained. References ELUNA 2016: Ex Libris Users of North America. Retrieved Feb- ruary 1, 2016 from https://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/eluna/list.php IGeLU 2016: The International Group of Ex Libris Users in Eu- rope. Retrieved February 1, 2016 from https://identity.igelu. org/igelu/members/membersList.php Ilijanić, Lj., 1992: Časopis Acta Botanica Croatica from the estab- lishment until today (in Croatian). Acta Botanica Croatica 51, 177–187. Jokić, M., Sirotić, G., 2002: The communicability of the journal Acta Botanica Croatica over the 1991–2000 period. Acta Bo- tanica Croatica 61, 221–230. Jokić, M., Borić, V., 1992: Scientifi c research in botany according to Acta Botanica Croatica (in Croatian). Acta Botanica Croati- ca 51, 169–176. Marušić, M., Marušić, A., 2005: Possibilities of governmental quality support of scientifi c journals in Croatia (In Croatian). Acta Medica Croatica 59, 285–296. Tab. 2. Affi liation of authors who published papers in Acta Botanica Croatica in the period 1991–1999 (according to Jokić and Sirotić 2002) and 2008–2015, respectively. Country 1991–1999 2008–2015 Number of papers Relative contribution (%) Number of papers Relative contribution (%) CROATIA 112 82.96 52 19.19 TURKEY 18 6.64 HUNGARY 4 2.96 17 6.27 INDIA 16 5.90 ITALY 12 8.89 16 5.90 SLOVENIA 5 3.70 15 5.54 POLAND 10 3.69 USA 8 2.95 MONTENEGRO 7 2.58 PAKISTAN 7 2.58 IRAN 6 2.21 SERBIA 6 2.21 AUSTRIA 5 1.85 BULGARIA 5 1.85 EGYPT 5 1.85 ENGLAND 5 1.85 GERMANY 5 1.85 GREECE 5 1.85 CZECH REPUBLIC 4 1.48 RUSSIA 4 1.48 SPAIN 4 1.48 SWEDEN 4 1.48 BOSNIA HERCEG 3 1.11 BRAZIL 3 1.11 JAPAN 2 1.48 3 1.11 MACEDONIA 3 1.11 SAUDI ARABIA 3 1.11 CANADA 2 0.74 DENMARK 2 0.74 MEXICO 2 0.74 MOROCCO 2 0.74 NIGERIA 2 0.74 PEOPLES R CHINA 2 0.74