Systematic & Applied Acarology (SAA) achieved significant growth during its second decade 2006–2015: the number of published papers increased 66.7% over that of the first decade, while the number of pages increased 94.6% (Zhang 2016). A significant event in the last decade for SAA was its coverage in ISI Science Citation Index Expanded from 2011 (Zhang 2011). This is believed to have helped the rapid increase in the submissions of manuscripts to this journal thereafter (Zhang 2014).
The first impact factor of SAA was 1.115 for the year 2013, which came out in Journal Citation Reports Science Edition in July 2014 (Zhang 2015). The impact factor of SAA for the year 2014 was 1.253 and that for 2015 was 1.378. This increasing trend further increased the reputation and popularity of SAA among acarologists: e.g. the number of papers published in 2015 was 175% of that in 2014 (Table 1). Table 1 also shows the total number of citations, average citations per paper and h-index for papers published during 2006–2015. The average citations per paper are usually more for papers published earlier, but the high value for 2013 (5.02) is an exception, which was contributed by the most cited article of the decade (McMurtry et al. 2013; Table 2). It should be noted that papers on ticks (Ixodida) made the top-cited papers in 4 of the 10 years during 2006–2015, whereas papers on each of the other orders (Mesostigmata, Sarcoptiformes and Trombidiformes) made it only 2 out of 10 years.
TABLE 1.
Bibliometric data* for papers published during the second decade of SAA (2006–2015).
TABLE 2.
Most cited paper* each year during the second decade of SAA (2006–2015).
The top 10 papers of each year contributed from 45.21% (for papers published in 2015) to 69.95% (for papers published 2006) of the total citations to all papers of that year. More papers on Trombidiformes made the top 10 list each year than those on Mesostigmata (Fig. 1).
FIGURE 1.
The numbers (mean±se) of papers on four orders of mites that are among Top 10 most cited papers of each year during 2006–2015 (Excluding papers on general subjects which can not be classified to any particular mite order). Means followed by the same letter are not significantly different at p = 0.05 (Tukey's b test after one-way ANOVA).
Acknowledgements
We thank Dr Qing-Hai Fan (Ministry for Primary Industries, Auckland, New Zealand) for reviewing this manuscript and providing constructive comments.
