Kreiter, Serge ¹ and Migeon, Alain ²

¹✉ CBGP, Institut Agro Montpellier, INRAE, CIRAD, IRD, Univ Montpellier, Montpellier, France.
²CBGP, INRAE, CIRAD, IRD, Institut Agro Montpellier, Univ Montpellier, Montpellier, France.

2025 - Volume: 65 Issue: 1 pages: 1-2

Editorial

Welcome to a new step in the Acarologia history: the first issue of the New Acarologia only in electronic format!

Long-time readers know that Acarologia, founded in 1959 by Marc André and François Grandjean (André, 1959), is the longest publishing journal devoted exclusively to the Acari. Professor Marc André was the first editor-in-chief (1959-1966) and then, it was Max Vachon that took the torch as editor-in-chief of the journal, from 1966 to 1979. He was then succeeded by Yves Coineau (1980-1996), followed by Michel Bertrand who led Acarologia into the 21^st century (1997-2009). Throughout these years, the editors have maintained the quality of the research presented and the initial objectives of the journal. Their motivation, enthusiasm, hard work and passion for acarology have ensured the survival of the journal and helped to keep acarology alive as a scientific discipline.

The journal began a new era in 2010! Acarologia celebrated its golden anniversary with the publication of its 50^th issue (Kreiter, 2010). Fifty years is a long life span for any journal and the previous format of Acarologia was definitely showing its limits. Science has moved on, bringing with it an explosion of knowledge on mites and ticks, both in the sheer numbers of known taxa and in the development of new methodologies and technologies that have revealed previously unsuspected levels of complexity and biological details. We were thinking about renewing Acarologia when Michel Bertrand announced his wish to retire. We decided that this would be the perfect occasion to build up the new Acarologia.

As many of you may know, the current editorial team of Acarologia has been constituted under the presidency of Serge Kreiter and its change has coincided with the publication of this 50^th anniversary volume (Kreiter, 2010). The new managing editorial team is supported by a scientific international editorial board composed of eminent acarologists from all over the world.

The editorial committee was enlarged several times and the scientific international editorial board has changed three times during these 15 years. And the journal changed drastically its format. The new format was Diamond Open Access, totally free of charges for the authors and free of charges for access to journal articles and download.

In 2013, we obtained again an impact factor for the journal which has increased since.

In 2016, all papers since 1959 were numerised and added in order to be available online for all acarologists of the world.

In 2017, all accepted papers started to be published in html format in addition to the publication of pdf format.

In 2018, a new design for the covers of issues and the published papers have been adopted.

The challenge for the new Acarologia was to respond to rapid communication and fast-pace technological advances with a journal that was both responsive in publishing new research and widely available to acarologists from across the globe. And, as written by Dr. Vikram Prasad in the International Journal of Acarology: Acarologia has recovered its old glory (Prasad, 2011)!

After 15 years of Diamond Open Access, 2025 is a new step in the evolution of your journal. With a considerable reduction of subscriptions for hard copies nowadays, and consequently a significant shortage of funds, we have decided to stop publishing hard copies and to publish articles only online, in electronic format, free of any charges as before.

We hope that in the future Acarologia will continue to distinguish itself by publishing high quality research from a variety of modern disciplines. In this way, we hope to follow the example set by Michel Bertrand and show that acarology is a modern science and that the study of mites can be used to illustrate and illuminate all the major problems in biology.

We are honoured and proud to introduce you to this New Acarologia format.

In the name of the managing editorial team and the international editorial board, we also would like to give our warmest thanks to the Acarology Community for trusting in Acarologia, and for their enthusiasm and support of the journal over the last 64 years. Now, and for the years that follow, we would also like to extend our gratitude to all authors who support, and will continue to support, Acarologia through their contributions of high quality scientific manuscripts.

Acarologia is and will remain a leader in open science, held by the community of acarologists, for the Acarology Community.

Enjoy the reading!

Serge KREITER, Editor-in-Chief of Acarologia, and Alain MIGEON, Manager and Editor, on behalf of the Managing Editorial Board

anager, on behalf of the Managing Editorial Board

References

1. André, M. 1959. Avant-propos. Acarologia, 1(1): 1–3. https://www1.montpellier.inrae.fr/CBGP/acarologia/article.php?id=4091
2. Kreiter, S. 2010. Welcome to the new Acarologia. The 50^th anniversary volume. Acarologia, 50(1): 3-4. https://doi.org/10.1051/acarologia/20101959
3. Prasad, V. 2011. Acarology News, National and International Meetings. International Journal of Acarology, 37(4), 355-358. https://doi.org/10.1080/01647954.2011.583509

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