Open access and peer reviewed, this monthly journal from Zoo Outreach Organisation has been publishing research and news about conservation and taxonomy for just over two decades
Do walls around open wells help reduce mortality of the Asiatic Lion? How do citizen science and digital art contribute to conservation? What’s the latest on the biodiversity records of insects, moss, fungus, plants, reptiles and birds? All this and more is answered in a monthly scientific journal published from Coimbatore. The Journal of Threatened Taxa (JoTT) is, according to Managing Editor B Ravichandran, “a platinum open access and print, peer-reviewed, monthly international journal on conservation and taxonomy.” JoTT, which turns 21 this month, is published by the wildlife conservation and research NGO Zoo Outreach Organisation (ZOO).
Originally called Zoo’s Print Journal (ZPJ), it was a 12-page pull out inside the popular Zoo’s Print (ZP) magazine. “The first issue was in April 1999,” recalls Sanjay Molur, the Executive Director of ZOO and Founder and Chief Editor of JoTT. “It was not difficult to get articles when we started. ZP’s popularity and regularity encouraged many people to send technical articles, which we processed for publication in ZPJ, which was peer reviewed from the beginning.” In December 1999, ZPJ also moved online. The idea was to have a “journal to promote scientific publications by wildlife and other experts involved in conservation research and action. The various species assessment workshops that Sally Walker [founder of ZOO] and I conducted in the 1990s pointed to the need for a regular peer-reviewed journal,” explains Sanjay. ZPJ was renamed JoTT in January 2009.
A special moment in JoTT’s timeline. Sanjay Molur presents Neil deGrasse Tyson, the renowned science communicator, with a copy of JoTT that featured a new species of Western Ghats frog named after him. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The reason for a journal like this “was to encourage more scientists to publish about natural history, ecology, wildlife, veterinary, taxonomy, and other allied fields of conservation from within regions of high biodiversity,” says Sanjay, pointing out that usually such regions were in countries where English was not the first language. Also access to international journals was limited. “So, Sally and I decided to set up a mechanism to encourage authors to publish scientific material after peer review free of cost.”
This has not come without its challenges; the main one being funding. “We have never been able to get a constant source of funding,” rues Sanjay. While he accepts that not putting up a paywall or charging authors to publish is not “financially savvy, our experience with assessing over 2,000 species in seven five-day workshops in 1997 to evaluate the status of many groups of wildlife in India opened our eyes to the urgent need to plug this lacuna of expensive, unreachable, unobtainable, and irregular journals. While the Internet has opened accessibility, some other issues especially to do with over-expensive publication charges or subscriptions continue and have assumed monstrous proportions.” Ravichandran, who describes funds as “either not regular or just not there”, says he would like to see JoTT funded well enough to “cater to the ever-growing requirements of additional staff, better reimbursements” so that they can continue to serve the cause of conservation.
The core team of JoTT — Sanajy Molur, B Ravichandran and Priyanka Iyer — with long-time volunteer and scientific and language editor, Dr Fred Pluthero of Toronto, Canada | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
- Sanjay explains that monographs (a detailed study of a single specialised subject) came about because some articles were either big or had too much information. “Species checklists, taxonomic details, behavioural information, ecological data, natural history notes … are equally important to be published than be a mere statistic in a paper. This prompted us to look at descriptive papers with as much interest as academically inclined papers of data analysis.”
- The first monograph was published in October 2005. The subject was Indian spiders.
- While JoTT is published on the 26th of every month without fail, monographs and special issues are published as and when they are ready.
Citizen journalism is an important part of JoTT’s oeuvre. Sanjay explains that they mentor several authors and this is reflected not just in the growth of the journal but also by the fact the former/regular authors have been publishing in other well known journals. Ravichandran adds that each article goes through multiple edits — by subject editors, language editors and copy editors — before it is finally published. “Something we all learnt from Sally Walker was an uncompromising attitude on ethics of scientific publications and mentoring first-time writers and those for whom English was not a native language to present science to the world,” he adds.
Source: https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/for-21-years-the-journal-of-threatened-taxa-has-been-publishing-research-and-news-about-conservation-and-taxonomy/article31413717.ece
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