About Journal of Systematics and Evolution

Journal of Systematics and Evolution

The Journal of Systematics and Evolution (JSE) is an English-language, bimonthly peer-reviewed journal of plant systematics and evolution, hosted by the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and published by Wiley on behalf of the Botanical Society of China and the Institute of Botany. It covers all issues related to plant systematics and evolution, including plant taxonomy, phylogenetics and evolutionary biology, and it is indexed in the Science Citation Index. Its editors-in-chief are Song Ge of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Jun Wen of the Smithsonian Institution, a pairing that reflects the journal's deliberate bridging of Chinese and international plant science. Few Chinese journals can claim as long a pedigree: JSE traces its history to a botanical journal of the 1920s, was established in 1951 as Acta Phytotaxonomica, and for decades, under the title Acta Phytotaxonomica Sinica, served as one of China's principal venues for publishing new plant taxa and nomenclatural changes.

That history matters because of what the journal's field does. Plant systematics is the science of naming, classifying and reconstructing the evolutionary relationships of plants — the foundation on which floras, biodiversity inventories and conservation priorities rest. China is one of the most plant-rich countries in the world, and the work of documenting its flora has been carried on for a century by the institute that hosts this journal. JSE is where much of that work, in its modern molecular form, now meets an international readership.

Origins in the 1920s and Acta Phytotaxonomica

The journal's own retrospective accounts trace its lineage to the 1920s journal Contributions from the Biological Laboratory of the Science Society of China, Botanical Series, described as an influential Chinese journal of its time. In 1951 it was established as Acta Phytotaxonomica, and it later carried the fuller title Acta Phytotaxonomica Sinica, with the Chinese title Zhiwu Fenlei Xuebao. Some bibliographic records date the continuous history from 1963, reflecting the journal's publication history under that title; the editors' retrospective, "Journal of Systematics and Evolution: Looking forward," presents the longer lineage through 1951 to the 1920s predecessor, and the journal itself treats that lineage as its heritage.

For most of the twentieth century, the journal's core business was taxonomy in its classical form: the description of new species, new varieties and new sections, revisions of genera, and the nomenclatural changes through which plant names are stabilised. Surviving issues of Acta Phytotaxonomica Sinica from the 1980s and 1990s are filled with exactly this work — new taxa of families such as Moraceae, Urticaceae and Compositae described from Chinese provinces, with type specimens deposited at the herbarium of the Institute of Botany in Beijing. That record made the journal indispensable to anyone working on the Chinese flora.

From Acta Phytotaxonomica Sinica to JSE

The adoption of the English title Journal of Systematics and Evolution marked the journal's repositioning for an international, molecular-era readership. The change was more than cosmetic. Classical taxonomy asked what species exist and how they should be named; modern systematics additionally asks how species are related, using DNA evidence to build phylogenies, and how evolutionary processes — hybridisation, polyploidy, adaptation to extreme environments — have generated plant diversity. A title naming both systematics and evolution announced that the journal would publish that full programme, in English, for readers worldwide.

The transition is visible in bibliometric studies of Chinese botany. A twenty-year survey of Chinese vascular plant novelties published between 2000 and 2019 found that new taxa and nomenclatural changes from China appeared in 188 journals, but that 85 percent of the articles appeared in just 26 journals — with the Journal of Systematics and Evolution, identified by its former title Acta Phytotaxonomica Sinica, among the leading venues. The journal thus retained its historic role in documenting new Chinese plant diversity even as its scope broadened into phylogenetics and evolution.

Publisher, Sponsors and Editorial Leadership

JSE is published by Wiley on behalf of the Botanical Society of China and is sponsored by the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing, where the journal is hosted. The Institute of Botany is China's national centre for plant science, home to major herbaria and to the State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, whose researchers have long been associated with the journal's pages.

The dual editorship embodies the journal's international orientation. Song Ge is a plant evolutionary biologist of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, while Jun Wen, of the Smithsonian Institution in the United States, is a leading systematist with long-standing research on Asian plant groups. Having one editor-in-chief in Beijing and one in Washington places the journal inside both the Chinese botanical community that founded it and the global systematics community it now addresses, and it signals to authors on both sides that submissions will be judged by the standards of the international field.

Scope: Taxonomy, Phylogenetics and Evolution

The journal states simply that it covers all issues related to plant systematics and evolution, and its published content fills out that formula. Taxonomic papers describe new taxa and revise difficult groups, continuing the Acta Phytotaxonomica tradition. Phylogenetic studies use molecular and morphological evidence to reconstruct relationships within families and genera, frequently for groups centred in China and East Asia. Evolutionary papers address the processes behind plant diversification, including the origins of lineages, biogeographic patterns across Asia, and adaptation. The journal also publishes work relevant to floras and checklists, through which systematics feeds directly into biodiversity documentation.

China gives this scope unusual weight. The country's flora is exceptionally rich, with deep representation of ancient lineages and high endemism, especially in the mountains of the southwest. Systematists working on that flora confront questions — about refugia during ice ages, about rapid radiations in alpine genera, about the assembly of East Asian forests — that are of general evolutionary interest, not merely national inventory. JSE is one of the principal journals in which those questions are worked out in English.

Publication Model and Frequency

JSE is a bimonthly journal, publishing six issues a year, and its contents are peer reviewed. Its move to Wiley placed it on the same platform as the other society journals Wiley publishes for Chinese academies and institutes, giving it standard international production, online hosting and library distribution. The journal publishes in English, which distinguishes it from the Chinese-language botanical journals with which it shares its institutional home and allows its taxonomic and phylogenetic results to be cited directly by systematists worldwide.

Within its field, the rhythm of a bimonthly systematics journal suits its content: taxonomic revisions and phylogenetic analyses are substantial, reference-heavy papers that accumulate into a durable record rather than fast-moving news, and the journal's backfile — extending through Acta Phytotaxonomica Sinica — remains in active scientific use, since names and classifications published decades ago retain nomenclatural force.

Indexing and Standing

The journal is indexed in the Science Citation Index, as its sponsoring institute notes, placing it among the internationally visible Chinese botany titles. Its standing in the field rests on three mutually reinforcing assets: the century-deep lineage through Acta Phytotaxonomica and its 1920s predecessor; the sponsorship of the Institute of Botany and the Botanical Society of China; and an editorship shared between the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Smithsonian Institution. For a specialist journal, that combination is distinctive — few systematics journals anywhere are edited jointly across the Pacific.

Its role in the documentation of Chinese plant diversity is independently attested by the bibliometric record noted above: when researchers counted where twenty years of Chinese vascular plant novelties had actually been published, JSE under its former name stood among the small set of journals carrying the great majority of that work. A journal can claim centrality in its field on many grounds; having published a substantial share of a megadiverse country's new species is among the most concrete.

Readership and Use

The journal's readers are plant systematists, taxonomists, evolutionary biologists and flora writers, together with conservation scientists and ecologists who depend on reliable classifications and names. Herbarium-based researchers use its taxonomic papers and its backfile when identifying specimens and revising groups; molecular systematists use its phylogenies; biogeographers use its accounts of East Asian lineages. Because plant names published in the journal have formal standing under the rules of botanical nomenclature, its archive functions as part of the permanent infrastructure of botany, consulted long after publication.

For international readers, JSE is also a guide to the state of Chinese botany itself: to the groups being revised, the regions being explored and the methods being adopted by the large systematics community centred on the Institute of Botany in Beijing.

Place in Chinese Botany

JSE belongs to the family of journals through which China's national botanical institutions communicate. Its host institute leads the documentation of the Chinese flora, and the journal's history runs in parallel with that project, from the Science Society of China's botanical series in the 1920s, through the founding of Acta Phytotaxonomica in 1951, to the molecular systematics of the present. Read in that light, the journal is not simply a periodical but a century-long record of how Chinese plant science has organised, named and explained the country's plant diversity.

Its current form — English-language, Wiley-published, jointly edited from Beijing and the Smithsonian, and indexed in SCI — represents the internationalised phase of that record. The Journal of Systematics and Evolution continues to publish new taxa in the tradition of Acta Phytotaxonomica Sinica, while also serving as a general journal of plant phylogenetics and evolution, from its editorial home at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing.