Systematic and Applied Acarology (SAA) published 46 papers in 2013. During the last eight years, the number of papers per year increased with increasing journal frequency: biannual (2006) 28 papers; triannual (2007–2012) 35 papers; quarterly (2012–2013) 49 papers. During the first decade, it was annual with on average 27 papers per year (Zhang 2005). The coverage of SAA in ISI Science Citation Index Expanded from 2011 (Zhang 2011) has helped the rapid increase in submission during last two years. Based on the citation data in ISI database, my estimate for the first Impact Factor for SAA (2013) is that it will be more than 1.10 (the official figure will be available in June 2014).

During 2007–2012, the number of new species published per year in SAA was 19 on average, with a range of 17–30 (Liu et al. 2013). In 2013, 26 (or 56.5%) of the papers described a total of 34 new species from 11 countries (Table 1), with the top three country being Iran (12 species), New Zealand (5 species) and China (4 species). The shelf life of new species from discovery to description is 12 years on average (Table 1), which is slightly lower than the average for new invertebrates described in 2007 (Fontaine et al. 2013). The shelf life of new species from developed countries (mean 36.6; s.e. 10.1 for Australia, New Zealand, USA and Japan) is about ten times as long as that from developing countries (mean 3.4; s.e. 0.5); the difference is highly significant (Mann-Whitney U = 47; p = 0.008). However, Fontaine et al. (2013) reported that the country of origin (the GDP) of the new species was not significantly correlated with the shelf life of new species in 2007.

TABLE 1.

New species described in Systematic and Applied Acarology 2013: Type locality and shelf life.

Continued