Widening horizons of the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand

The Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand will strongly support the new directions of Royal Society Te Apārangi. The future will embrace the wide diversity of people and of knowledge. As the flagship title of the Society, the Journal will continue to serve the research community of New Zealand/Aotearoa and the nearby Pacific. As an e-publication, we have a global reach. This year we have published our annual review issue, ‘Ngā Kete: The 2019 Annual Collection of Reviews’,  which presents the research of our Fellows and Medallists. We have also expanded our editorial board to 21, to help welcome a wider range of regular manuscripts.

Our publication, the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, will strongly support the new directions espoused by Royal Society Te Apārangi, as outlined by President Wendy Larner in her recent editorial. The future will embrace the wide diversity of people and of knowledge. As the flagship title of the Society, the Journal will continue to serve the research community of New Zealand/Aotearoa and the nearby Pacific.

We approach a decade of productive partnership with our international publishing partner Taylor & Francis. The Journal continues to change in important ways, as noted below and on our webpages. The rise of e-publishing has allowed peer-reviewed journals of learned societies, or science academies such as ours, to widen their horizons, and to receive closer scrutiny by readers and would-be authors across the globe. To further disseminate research in Aotearoa, print issues of the Journal are now distributed to the Fellows of Royal Society Te Apārangi.

The journal has endeavoured to improve its quality of content and citability. In search of quality and diversity, since 2017 we have invited researchers recognised by Royal Society (Fellows and Medallists), and recipients of other science honours (such as the Prime Minister’s Science Prizes), to submit a state-of-the-art review article providing in-depth coverage in fields where their research is highly regarded both domestically and internationally. These invited manuscripts are peer-reviewed, then published online, before compilation in print as ‘Ngā Kete: The Annual Collection of Reviews’ starting with volume 48, issues 2–3 in 2018. Thematic Special Issues handled by guest editors play an important role to showcase and highlight the research of a specific area. Such compilations are usually of lasting use to the relevant community, and of the highest quality. Some special issues enable the journal to cover disciplines that have been less represented previously.

We particularly encourage ‘regular’ submissions, because these are the Journal’s foundation. Our horizons are broad: manuscripts may address any discipline represented by Royal Society Te Apārangi whether the research focuses on New Zealand or beyond, providing that the lead author would normally be New Zealand-based, or the research would have been carried out in New Zealand. Manuscripts on exceptional or unusual or inter- or multidisciplinary themes are encouraged. We are unlikely to accept manuscripts that are purely taxonomic, or mainly descriptive, or corroborate well-established patterns and/or processes.

We expanded the editorial board early this year by appointing more editors with expertise in a substantially wider range of subjects. The 21 Associate Editors have early-career to well-established research interests in: medicine; biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology; biological sciences; engineering and computer science; physics and astronomy; psychology and neuroscience; earth sciences; social sciences; and arts and humanities. These editors are drawn from the universities (Auckland, AUT, Canterbury, Otago, Victoria, Waikato), from a Crown Research Institute, and from a R&D company. All are ready to handle your manuscript.

Thanks for their efforts to the authors and reviewers, to the editors, and to the publishing team at Royal Society Te Apārangi, and particularly to the Publishing Manager, Mr Fei He.

This editorial can be found in full at Taylor & Francis Online.

R. Ewan Fordyce (2019) Widening our horizons, Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 49:2, 71-78, DOI: 10.1080/03036758.2019.1614076