Publication news

It's been a productive year for The ISME Journal, handling 1,431 submissions and publishing 158 articles. Our journal metrics remain high, with a 2021 impact factor of 11.2. The Editors in Chief (EiCs) and Senior Editors kept time to decision on manuscripts without review to 3 days, and time to decision with review to 43 days, which reflects well on the journal and its hard-working editorial team. EiCs Jillian Petersen and Lisa Stein met with the Senior Editors and Editorial Board members at ISME 18 in Lausanne Switzerland to discuss progress with the journal and plans for the coming year. One outcome of this meeting will be upcoming special collections issues containing fresh editorial and perspective content in 2023 – stay tuned. In addition, we are making a push for reviews (i.e., both regular reviews and Winogradsky reviews) and perspectives, thus we encourage our ISME community to support our society journals as top destinations for data publications and those highly citable literature reviews. We are also thankful for ISME membership assistance with selecting our beautiful new cover image for 2023, by Dr. Mette Svenning, featuring cells of Arctic methanotrophic bacteria!

Our incoming submissions remain high and the papers we publish are performing well in terms of attracting citations, news articles, and social media mentions. With a spectacular new cover image for 2022, and recently refreshed Senior Editor and Editorial Board Member teams, we are well positioned to improve even further in the coming year.

At the end of last year, Kazuya Wantanabe stepped down as Editor in Chief after seven years of stellar service to The ISME Journal. We extend our heartfelt thanks for his dedication to our journal and help with maintaining our high standards. Thank you Kaz - you will be missed.

We are also excited to announce that Jillian Petersen, Associate Professor in the Division of Microbial Ecology at the University of Vienna, is our incoming co-Editor in Chief. Jill is highly active with ISME as a member of the International Board and founder of the Early Career Scientist Committee. She is fascinated by the rapid evolution of scientific publishing practices and is convinced that society journals (such as ours) have an important role to play in shaping the future of scientific communication. Welcome to the team, Jill!