Dear partners, we attach below the message of Dr. Denise Navia, on the occasion of leaving the Presidency of the Latin American Society of Acarology, position held from 2016 until October 1 of this year. As former President, Dr. Navia will continue in the management that is beginning, contributing her experience, her ideas and her energy, as she has done so far.

mensaje despedida SLA espanhol

Dear partners, after the voting period closed yesterday for the election of the Board of Directors and representatives of the Latin American Society of Acarology, we communicate the result to you and inform you that the new Board of Directors will take office on October 1 next.

Congratulations to everybody who participated!

resultado elecciones SLA 2020

Dear partners,

Between the 14th and 15th of this month of September, you will receive an email with an interactive form to elect the new Board of Directors of the Latin American Society of Acarology (SLA), as well as the delegates of different countries, with response time up to 25 of the same month at 11:59 a.m. (Brazil time).

As a novelty, and in order to facilitate the work of the elected delegates, two representatives may be elected for Mexico and two for Brazil, given their high number of affiliates (the two countries together contribute 45% of the total partners).

IMPORTANT: If the aforementioned email has not reached you by Wednesday 16 first thing in the morning, please contact the SLA email master@slacarologia.org

In the attached file the total number of candidates proposed is detailed as well as the names of the proponents and the cases of those candidates who declined the candidacy are indicated.

Once the electoral process is finished, the result will be disseminated in the available means of the SLA (SLA page: slacarologia @ org, Instagram: @acarologoslatinoamericanos and Facebook: Latin American Society of Acarología -oficial- https://www.facebook.com/groups / 988359804947220/about).

From the current Board of Directors of the SLA, we hope to count on your valuable participation and commitment to give continuity to the growth of our beloved Society.

Greetings,

Denise Navia

President SLA

elecciones-2020-1.pdf

Because affiliation to the Latin American Society of Acarology through the form on this page had technical problems, we request those who have submitted the form, but are not listed in the Directory (http://slacarologia.org/directory/), to register by sending an e-mail to master@slacarologia.org, with the following information:

• Name
• Institution
• Direction of the Institution
• Phone
• E-mail
• Areas of interest in acarology

If possible, attach a personal photo to be added to the above data.

We greatly appreciate your interest and we regret the difficulties mentioned above.

To CLARIVATE ANALYTICS/Web of Science Group

Mme Marian Hollingsworth, Director & Editorial Relations

I write on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Latin American Society of Acarology- SLA (Sociedad Latinoamericana de Acarología), a nonprofit civil association formed by more than 270 partners from 24 countries and that main purpose is to promoting scientific research, teaching and dissemination of knowledge on mites (Acari) in our region and throughout the world. We here express our concern over and we appeal against Clarivate’s decision to suppress Zootaxa by excluding its Impact Factor from JCR.

Zootaxa is a journal of major importance to Latin American Acarology. It is regarded by acarologists as a high-quality journal worldwide respected, with editorial integrity, agile publication process, online access, and no page charges. Particularly for our field and region it constitutes an extremely important source of taxonomic information of unquestionable quality. Zootaxa is among very few journals that continues to publish papers of descriptions of biodiversity in all its forms; additionally, it is one of the very few that publish monographs, which are essential to the field of Taxonomy. Latin America has a tremendous amount of biodiversity and a large, highly-trained, community of professional taxonomists, who publish a large part of the knowledge they produce in Zootaxa. This knowledge is the basis of any attempt to conservation and to develop a sustainable economy.

Since Zootaxa publishes a large share of the world-wide papers on taxonomy, inevitably frequently cites its own papers. The size and importance of Zootaxa for taxonomy explain why ‘self citation’ is common, and why this is not a maneuver by the editors to artificially increase the citations of the journal. The stable and relatively low impact factor of Zootaxa during the past few years is additional evidence that explains why the current amount of self citation is expected.  Actually a differentiated ‘self-citation’ criteria should be adopted to IF classification of  Zootaxa and of any other journal focusing on taxonomy.

The inappropriate decision to suppress Zootaxa Impact Factor will have serious consequences on Latin American and worldwide Acarology. It will harm a career especially from young researchers that are highly dependent on the evaluation of their scientific production.  Impact Factor is the main index used for this goal. Removing Zootaxa from the JCR will be disastrous for the field of Taxonomy worldwide.

For the above, the SLA supports and requests the reinstate of Zootaxa to the list of journals with Impact Factor as soon as possible.

Denise Navia

Latin American Society of Acarology, President

21/7/2020

Dear Dr. Navia,

Thank you for your message from the SLA concerning Zootaxa.

This year, we have updated our suppression policy, including our methodology and parameters for journal self-citation. Our approach remains data-driven; we do not apply subjective interpretations and we do not assume motive. The analysis now includes the percentage of out-going (citing) journal self-citation, as well as the percentage of in-coming (cited) activity. We now compare each journal within its assigned category (or categories) – instead of to the entire JCR – to allow for subject-based differences in citation behavior. We also now consider the level of distortion of the citation network, in addition to the outcome of that distortion on journal metrics and/or journal rank.

We acknowledge that in exceptional circumstances there may be compelling editorial reasons for an atypical level of journal self-citation, which fulfils a genuine scholarly purpose. We are working with Zootaxa’s Chief Editor to resolve any appeal as we continue to improve our method of identifying and addressing citation distortion.

A decision regarding Zootaxa is expected to be made of the end of this month.

Best regards,

Marian

Marian Hollingsworth

Director, Editorial Relations

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