Phytocoenologia: the leading journal with a focus on vegetation classification

Abstract

This annual Editorial of 2017 summarizes the developments of the journal Phytocoenologia in the two years following its re-launch in 2015. Both the Editorial Team and the topics and regions of publications are very diverse. Starting with 2015, Impact Factors and CiteScores profoundly improved compared to the previous years, which, together with some other measures, has rendered Phytocoenologia an increasingly attractive publication venue. Narrowing the scope of Phytocoenologia explicitly down to “vegetation survey and classification” was arguably one of the cornerstones of recent success. The bibliometric analyses have also allowed us to demonstrate that both in absolute numbers and with regard to the proportion of such papers, Phytocoenologia can now be considered the leading journal in the field of vegetation classification worldwide. The citation network of Phytocoenologia includes a wide array of journals, although many remain to be covered in the Web of Science, to the bibliometric disadvantage of Phytocoenologia. We shortly present the four Editors’ Choice articles of 2016 and a selection of some other outstanding contributions of that volume. The Editors’ Award 2016 goes to Rui B. Elias and colleagues for their combination of vegetation classification and distribution modelling to derive a map of the natural vegetation of the Azores. In conclusion, the Editors aim to provide a service to vegetation ecologists worldwide by maintaining and further improving the qualities of Phytocoenologia.

Full text

Phytocoenologia: the leading journal with a focus on vegetation classification
Jürgen Dengler*, Erwin Bergmeier, Florian Jansen & Wolfgang Willner
Abstract
This annual Editorial of 2017 summarizes the developments of the journal Phytocoenologia in the two years
following its re-launch in 2015. Both the Editorial Team and the topics and regions of publications are very
diverse. Starting with 2015, Impact Factors and CiteScores profoundly improved compared to the previous
years, which, together with some other measures, has rendered Phytocoenologia an increasingly attractive pub-
lication venue. Narrowing the scope of Phytocoenologia explicitly down to “vegetation survey and classifica-
tion” was arguably one of the cornerstones of recent success. The bibliometric analyses have also allowed us to
demonstrate that both in absolute numbers and with regard to the proportion of such papers, Phytocoenologia
can now be considered the leading journal in the field of vegetation classification worldwide. The citation net-
work of Phytocoenologia includes a wide array of journals, although many remain to be covered in the Web of
Science, to the bibliometric disadvantage of Phytocoenologia. We shortly present the four Editors’ Choice arti-
cles of 2016 and a selection of some other outstanding contributions of that volume. The Editors’ Award 2016
goes to Rui B. Elias and colleagues for their combination of vegetation classification and distribution modelling
to derive a map of the natural vegetation of the Azores. In conclusion, the Editors aim to provide a service to
vegetation ecologists worldwide by maintaining and further improving the qualities of Phytocoenologia.
Keywords: bibliometric analysis; citation; CiteScore; citation network; editorial; Impact Factor; International
Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS); Phytocoenologia; phytosociology; Scopus; syntaxonomy; vegetation
classification; vegetation-plot database; Web of Science.
Abbreviations: IAVS = International Association for Vegetation Science; WoS = Web of Science Core Edition.
© 2017 Gebrüder Borntraeger, 70176 Stuttgart, Germany
DOI: 10.1127/phyto/2017/0209
www.borntraeger-cramer.de
0340-269X/2017/0209 $ 4.95
Phytocoenologia Vol. 47 (2017), Issue 1, 1–11 Editorial
Stuttgart, May 2017
*Corresponding author’s address: Plant Ecology, Bayreuth Center of Ecology and Environmental Research (BayCEER), University of
Bayreuth, Universitätsstr. 30, 95447 Bayreuth, Germany; juergen.dengler@uni-bayreuth.de. Complete addresses of all authors can be
found at the bottom of the paper
When re-launching Phytocoenologia with a more focused
scope and a new Editorial Team in 2015, we could not
know whether this approach would be successful. In our
first editorial, we stated that we want “to remain one of
the major venues for vegetation typologies, but also be-
come the medium where the methodologies of our science
are developed and tested and the underlying philosophy is
debated” (Bergmeier et al. 2015). In the current editorial,
we aim at summarizing the journal’s development since
then, reflect whether we have been successful in imple-
menting our plans, analyse how Phytocoenologia is per-
forming bibliometrically in concert with other journals
and how it is embedded in citation networks and finally
highlight some of the outstanding contributions of the
last year.
Review of the last two years
The first volume after the re-launch (Volume 45) was
jointly prepared by a team of eight Editors-in-Charge.
Starting with Volume 46 we differentiated the editors
into Chief Editors and Associate Editors (Jansen et al.
2016). Through the addition of Zdeňka Lososová, David
R. Roberts and Cindy Q. Tang as Associate Editors, we
then had six Chief Editors and five Associate Editors. We
began this year with a minor re-arrangement among the
editors. After having served as Chief Editors for two
years, Monika Janišová and Pavel Krestov decided that in
the future they prefer to serve Phytocoenologia as Edito-
rial Board member and Associate Editor, respectively. We
are very grateful to Monika and Pavel for their previous
work as they contributed essentially to the journal’s suc-
cess of the first two years as well as the fact that each of
phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 1phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 1 08.05.17 10:1108.05.17 10:11

2 Dengler et al.
them was responsible for one entire issue. We are happy
to announce that, starting with 2017, Idoia Biurrun
(Spain) joined the group of Associate Editors, broaden-
ing our topical and geographical expertise. Among the
Chief Editors, always one is acting as Chair of the Edi-
tors, typically for two subsequent issues, meaning that he
both receives and distributes new submissions and is res-
ponsible for all the steps after acceptance of a paper by
the Co-ordinating Editor.
A rather unique feature of Phytocoenologia is our team
of Linguistic Editors. They are experienced vegetation
ecologists from English-speaking countries who check
and improve the linguistic quality of papers from non-
native speaking authors after acceptance. With this great
voluntary work offered free of charge to our non-native
speaking authors, we try to reduce the well-known bias
in acceptance rates and citation frequency between arti-
cles written by authors from English-speaking countries
compared to those from other countries (Tregenza 2002).
We are very grateful to Amy L. Breen, Don Faber-Lan-
gendoen, Andrew N. Gillison, Laura M.E. Sutcliffe,
Lynda Weekes and Valeria Whitworth for their tedious
service to Phytocoenologia. Last but not least, there is our
Editorial Board whose members contribute the largest
part of the peer reviews and thus ensure the high quality
of our articles and make the best out of promising sub-
missions. Currently our complete Editorial Team con-
sists of four Chief Editors, seven Associate Editors, five
Linguistic Editors and 44 Editorial Board members (three
of them being also Linguistic Editors), totalling 57 per-
sons, with a female fraction of 33%. They come from 25
countries on six continents, with the biggest shares for
Germany (10), the United States (6), Czech Republic (5)
and Spain (4) (Fig. 1). While we still strive to improve
both gender balance and geographic coverage, Phytocoe-
nologia already appears to be well on the way.
The submission rates have increased during the last
years to about 80 per year, with ever improving quality.
While the Volumes 42 (2012) to 44 (2014) of Phytocoeno-
logia had consisted of only two issues each, after the in-
augural double issue (45/1+2) we managed to return to a
regular publication frequency of four issues per year. The
publication dates of the issues in the last two years as well
as of this first 2017 issue have been behind schedule, but
by now there are enough papers “in the pipeline” to en-
sure regular quarterly publication − in the interest of our
subscribers, and to warrant beneficial effects on Impact
Factors and other bibliometric indices.
Altogether, 51 contributions have been published in
the Volumes 45 and 46, by authors of 43 countries and six
continents (Fig. 1a). Among the authors, affiliations in
Bulgaria (34), Germany (29), the United States (29), Slo-
vakia (25), Italy, Poland and Spain (each 21) prevailed
(persons who authored more than one paper were
counted each time). The study regions of the 44 contribu-
tions (except Editorials and Reports) with a geographic
context were once global (den Hartog 2016), three times
continental studies from Europe, and 40 different coun-
tries for the remaining papers (Fig. 1b). Among them,
Southern Europe (Italy 5, Portugal 3, Spain 3) and the
Balkan Peninsula (Croatia 4, Montenegro 4, Serbia 4, Al-
bania 3, Bosnia and Herzegovina 3) were particularly
well covered, but there were also four studies each from
Poland, Tajikistan, and Peru. Contributions from the
United States, various other Latin American countries,
Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Oman, Tur-
key (Anatolia), China and Thailand indicate that vegeta-
tion classification is by no means restricted to Europe.
However, the last two years also demonstrated gaps
(white areas in Fig. 1b), which we are eager to fill in
forthcoming issues, namely in Western and Northern
Europe, including Germany, Africa except the southern-
most parts, most of South and Southeast Asia as well as
Australasia and finally temperate South America.
While “normal contributions”, i.e. those not belong-
ing to a permanent Section or a Special Issue, make up 28
of the 51 articles in the last two years (55% of articles,
69.3% of pages), the two new permanent sections, Phy-
tosociological Nomenclature (3 articles, 6% of articles,
1.5% of pages) and Ecoinformatics (10 articles, 20% of
articles, 6.9% of pages) have become a regular element of
Phytocoenologia. Towards the end of 2016, we published
two Special Issues on “Palaearctic grasslands” and “Halo-
phytic vegetation”, respectively, with together 10 articles
(20% of articles, 22.4% of pages). “Research Papers” (33
articles, 86.5% of pages) were the main type of contribu-
tion, while there were four “Editorials” (3.4%), one “Re-
view and Synthesis” (2.2%), two “Reports” (0.7%), one
“Nomenclatural Proposal” (0.3%), six “Long Database
Reports” and four Short Database Reports (1.0%). This
overview demonstrates the diversity of topics and for-
mats, but also that within two years, Phytocoenologia has
been established as the major publication partner for sev-
eral Working Groups of the International Association for
Vegetation Science (IAVS; http://www.iavs.org). Our
two permanent sections are published together with the
Working Groups on Phytosociological Nomenclature
(GPN; http://iavs.org/Working-Groups/Group-for-Phy-
tosociological-Nomenclature.aspx) and Ecoinformatics
(http://iavs.org/Working-Groups/EcoInformatics.aspx),
in both cases providing a publication venue for research
items that are important references for researchers orga-
nised in these groups, but where hardly any other inter-
national journal would have been willing to publish pre-
viously. The first Special Issue in 2016 on Palaearctic
grasslands was organised by Monika Janišová, Jürgen
Dengler and Wolfgang Willner (see Janišová et al. 2016)
for the IAVS Working Groups Eurasian Dry Grassland
Group (EDGG; http://www.edgg.org) and the second
one on “Halophytic vegetation” by Erwin Bergmeier and
Joop Schaminée (see Bergmeier & Schaminée 2016) on
behalf of the European Vegetation Survey (EVS; http://
phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 2phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 2 08.05.17 10:1108.05.17 10:11

Phytocoenologia – leading vegetation classification journal 3
Fig. 1. Spatial distribution of (a) members of the Editorial Team in 2017, as well as (b) authors and (c) study regions of the 51
articles of the two Volumes 45 and 46 of Phytocoenologia (i.e. after the re-launch). Authors are counted under their first af-
filiation. The map of regions does not consider editorials and reports, nor articles that cover the whole globe or entire Europe
(n = 40). Among the Editorial Team members, each person is only counted once (n = 57).
Editorial team
010
Authors
035
Study regions
05
www.euroveg.org). Another Special Issue is in prepara-
tion for 2017 together with the Vegetation Classification
Working Group (VCWG; https://sites.google.com/site/
vegclassmethods/), led by Scott Franklin and colleagues.
Moreover, two of the Working Groups used Phytocoeno-
logia during the last two years to publish reports on their
activities (Willner et al. 2015; Franklin et al. 2016).
Bibliometric performance of
Phytocoenologia
Phytocoenologia is covered by two major bibliometric
databases. Since 1999, it receives an Impact Factor from
the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS) and since 2011
a CiteScore from Scopus. Both indicate the average num-
ber of citations articles of a journal from a previous time
phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 3phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 3 08.05.17 10:1108.05.17 10:11

4 Dengler et al.
window that have been received in the target year. The
main differences are that the WoS Impact Factors refer to
a 2-year window and CiteScores to a 3-year window,
while at the same time the number of journals in the Sco-
pus database is significantly larger than those in the WoS.
Before the re-launch, the Impact Factors of Phytocoeno-
logia fluctuated around a mean of 0.60 without clear
trend, while the mean of the Impact Factors 2014 and
2015 (i.e. those published 2015 and 2016) was 1.79 and
thus three times higher than previously (Fig. 2). The par-
ticularly strong change from 2013 to 2014 meant that the
relative position of Phytocoenologia in the category Plant
Sciences “jumped” from the 11% percentile to the 62%
percentile, the biggest improvement seen in any of the
204 journals of this category, followed by a slight further
increase to the 65% percentile in the following year. For
CiteScore the increase before/after the re-launch was
from 0.89 to 1.62 (Fig. 2). In both cases, the value for 2014
is not yet directly influenced by articles published after
the re-launch, but arguably by the comprehensive pub-
licity associated with the change in the journal since early
2014.
When assessing the performance of individual Phyto-
coenologia articles (data retrieved from WoS on 24 Febru-
ary 2017), it turns out that the three most-cited contribu-
tions were Deil’s review and synthesis paper (Deil 2005,
with 114 citations) and two methodological contribu-
tions by Guissan & Theurillat (2000: 98 citations) on spe-
cies distribution modelling and by Thompson et al. (1993:
92 citations) on Ellenberg indicator values. When consid-
ering the average annual citation rates, there are nine arti-
cles with more than three citations per year, including the
already mentioned articles. The other articles that were
highly attractive to our readers in the long run were four
classification papers, three from Tajikistan (S. Nowak et
al. 2013a, 2013b; A. Nowak et al. 2014) and one from
Alaska (Kade et al. 2005), i.e. two regions that are not the
“usual targets” when it comes to intensive phytosocio-
logical coverage. Moreover, there is one paper dealing
with vegetation dynamics (Bruelheide et al. 2003) and
one theoretical contribution on the association concept
(Willner 2006). If we focus on the last two years under
the new Editorial Team, the most-cited paper was the
prototypic syntaxonomic revision by Terzi (2015), which
also received the Editors’ Award for that year (see Jansen
et al. 2016), with seven citations. Five other papers al-
ready received four or more citations, including two fur-
ther classification papers (Bolpagni & Piotti 2015; López-
Sáez et al. 2015), one Long Database Report (Landucci et
al. 2015) and two items from the Section Phytosociologi-
cal Nomenclature (Willner 2015; Willner et al. 2015),
demonstrating that our permanent sections meet a desire
of the scientific community.
A bibliometric view on vegetation
classification in general
The re-launch of Phytocoenologia in 2015 involved the
transformation from a multipurpose journal in plant com-
munity ecology to one focused on “vegetation survey and
classification” as stated in the subtitle. In the following we
thus analyse how the topic of “vegetation classification”
developed in international journals over the past decades.
To do so, we assessed the Web of Science Core Collection
on 24 February 2017 with the search string TOPIC: (phy-
tosociol* OR syntaxonom* OR vegetation classification).
In total this yielded 3,322 articles from all years. All sub-
sequent analyses refer to these 3,322 articles in WoS jour-
nals (short: classification papers).
Fig. 2. Temporal development of the Impact Factor (2-year
interval; Web of Science Core Collection) and the CiteScore
(3-year interval; Scopus) for Phytocoenologia since the inclu-
sion of the journal into the respective database. Note that the
values for a given year are always published in summer of
the subsequent year, i.e. the Impact Factor 2015 is the one
that was published in summer 2016.
Fig. 3 Number of papers dealing with vegetation classifica-
tion published per year in international journals according to
the Web of Science Core Collection (for details of methodo-
logy, see text). Note that the records for the last year (2016)
are not yet complete.
phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 4phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 4 08.05.17 10:1108.05.17 10:11

Phytocoenologia – leading vegetation classification journal 5
The number of classification papers per year more or
less continuously increased since 1945 (Fig. 3). There was
a particularly strong increase between 2006 and 2010
from less than 100 articles per year to around 200 articles
in 2010 and following years. The authors of the classifica-
tion papers were based in 114 WoS territories (i.e. usually
countries, but England, Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland separate; including both former and current ter-
ritories in case of countries that split or merged during
the reporting period). Nine of the twelve territories with
the largest numbers of papers are from Europe, but they
include also Brazil, the United States and South Africa
(Table 1). Prevailing languages were English (91.8%),
Portuguese (6.8%), French (4.9%), German (2.7%) and
Spanish (1.3%), but it is evident that the prevalence of the
WoS for the English language excluded many journals
that publish classification papers. The authors of the clas-
sification papers are numerous, with 78 persons having
authored 10 or more such papers. Most of the 12 most-
published authors in this field are European-based, but
one person from South Africa and one based in Australia
are also included (Table 2).
Among all journals, Phytocoenologia has contributed
the largest number of classification papers to the WoS
(250; 7.5%), followed by the Journal of Vegetation
Science (160; 4.8%) and Acta Botanica Gallica (134;
4.0%). When considering the proportion of classifica-
tion papers among all contributions in a journal (Table
3), again Phytocoenologia is ranked first with nearly
50%, closely followed by Tuexenia. Only three more
journals contained at least 10% classification papers,
namely Folia Geobotanica (et Phytotaxonomica), Acta
Botanica Gallica and Preslia. In 2016, the divergence be-
tween journals was even bigger than in the long-term
average, with Phytocoenologia containing 92% classifi-
cation papers, Tuexenia 26%, Preslia 25% and Applied
Vegetation Science 11%, while all other journals had less
than 10%.
A closer examination of those 12 journals with an
overall fraction of classification papers above 5% (see Ta-
ble 3) reveals for half of them significant temporal trends
(for a selection, see Fig. 3). Phytocoenologia was increas-
ing (+1.8% per year) while Vegetatio / Plant Ecology
(−0.3%) and Herzogia (−2.3%) showed decreasing de-
velopments. In Folia Geobotanica (et Phytotaxonomica),
Acta Botanica Gallica / Botany Letters and Belgian Jour-
nal of Botany / Plant Ecology and Evolution the temporal
development of the proportion of classification papers
was significantly quadratic, with maxima in the late 1990s
and early 2000s. The other six journals, among them Ap-
plied Vegetation Science and Journal of Vegetation
Science, had fluctuated unsystematically over time.
Among those four journals in the set that underwent title
changes in recent decades, it is an interesting note that the
mean proportion of classification papers was always
lower under the new title, albeit not always significantly
so: Vegetatio vs. Plant Ecology (7.5% vs. 1.7%; p < 0.001),
Folia Geobotanica et Phytotaxonomica vs. Folia Geobo-
tanica (15.1% vs. 11.4%; p = 0.482), Acta Botanica Gal-
lica vs. Botany Letters (13.5% vs. 3.1%; p = 0.090) and
Belgian Journal of Botany vs. Plant Ecology and Evolu-
tion (8.9% vs. 1.0%; p = 0.012).
Table 1. Country affiliation of authors of classification papers
in the WoS. The 12 countries with the highest share are
shown, which together contributed about 75% of the total
number of papers (n = 3,322).
Country/territory # papers % of all
Brazil 361 10.9%
Germany 322 9.7%
Italy 265 8.0%
United States 263 8.0%
Spain 260 7.8%
Czech Republic 217 6.5%
France 200 6.0%
Poland 175 5.3%
England 138 4.2%
South Africa 133 4.0%
Netherlands 120 3.6%
Slovakia 101 3.0%
Table 2. The 12 authors having published the highest num-
bers of classification papers in the WoS.
Author Country # papers % of all
Chytrý, M. Czech Republic 70 2.1%
Bredenkamp, G.J. South Africa 56 1.7%
Kürschner, H. Germany 38 1.1%
Mucina, L. Australia 37 1.1%
Tichý, L. Czech Republic 30 0.9%
Schaminée, J.H.J. Netherlands 27 0.8%
Willner, W. Austria 26 0.8%
Čarni, A. Slovenia 26 0.8%
Theurillat, J.-P. Switzerland 25 0.8%
Dengler, J. Germany 24 0.7%
Mirkin, B.M. Russia 23 0.7%
Bergmeier, E. Germany 23 0.7%
phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 5phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 5 08.05.17 10:1108.05.17 10:11

6 Dengler et al.
Citation network of Phytocoenologia
The WoS also allows analysis of the extent to which Phy-
tocoenologia is connected to other journals via reciprocal
citations (Table 4). Like most other journals, Phytocoen-
ologia is most connected to itself. The next most-con-
nected journals with Phytocoenologia are Journal of
Vegetation Science, Plant Biosystems, Applied Vegetation
Science and Tuexenia. Among the 14 journals that got
more than 10 citations each from Phytocoenologia in
2015 were six journals that are not yet included in the
WoS, most importantly Plant Sociology, Revista Peru-
ana de Biología, Acta Botanica Malacitana, Feddes Re-
pertorium and Lazaroa. Given the considerable topical
overlap, one can assume that these journals likely also
frequently cite Phytocoenologia. Thus their non-inclu-
sion in the WoS creates a bias against our journal because
for most other journals covered nearly all highly cited
journals are also in the WoS. Fortunately, most of these
journals are already included in Scopus, rendering this
Table 3. The 12 journals in the WoS with a proportion of classification papers above 5% (note that Folia Geobotanica addi-
tionally appears under its former name Folia Geobotanica et Phytotaxonomica). For each journal, the total number of papers
indexed in WoS as well as the classification papers among them are given, followed by the proportions of the latter among
all 3,322 classification papers in WoS and among all indexed articles in that journal.
Journal name Total papers Classification
papers
% of 3,322 % in journal
Phytocoenologia 513 250 7.5% 48.7%
Tuexenia 128 50 1.5% 39.1%
Folia Geobotanica et Phytotaxonomica 445 66 2.0% 14.8%
Acta Botanica Gallica 1,054 134 4.0% 12.7%
Preslia 340 41 1.2% 12.1%
Folia Geobotanica 530 61 1.8% 11.5%
Plant Biosystems 1,413 122 3.7% 8.6%
Belgian Journal of Botany 376 30 0.9% 8.0%
Applied Vegetation Science 860 68 2.0% 7.9%
Vegetatio 1,655 107 3.2% 6.5%
Herzogia 265 16 0.5% 6.0%
Journal of Vegetation Science 2,754 160 4.8% 5.8%
Ciência Florestal 778 42 1.3% 5.4%
Fig. 4. Proportion of classification papers in selected journals of the WoS over time. The journals with the black lines showed
a significant linear trend, those with grey lines a significant quadratic trend and those without lines irregular fluctuations with-
out significant temporal trend.
phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 6phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 6 08.05.17 10:1108.05.17 10:11

Phytocoenologia – leading vegetation classification journal 7
Table 4. The 20 journals that are most connected to Phytocoenologia via reciprocal citations for publication year 2015, based
on data from WoS. Journals are listed by decreasing connectance, which is the mean of proportion of citations in Phyto-
coenologia 2015 that went to that journal (all years) and the proportion of citations from all WoS journals in that year to Phy-
tocoenologia (all years). In the second column, the Impact Factor of the respective journal is given, and in the last column the
“direction” of citations: =: equal numbers of citations in both directions; >: more citations from Phytocoenologia to that jour-
nal than in the other direction; <: more citations from that journal to Phytocoenologia than in the other direction; double
symbols: imparity by a factor of 5 or more.
Citations from
Phytocoenologia
Citations to
Phytocoenologia
Connectance
Journal name IF 2015 Cites % of 1289 Cites % of 503 Mean Direction
Phytocoenologia 1.828 83 6.4% 83 16.5% 11.5% =
Journal of Vegetation Science 3.151 81 6.3% 14 2.8% 4.5% >>
Plant Biosystems 1.360 20 1.6% 18 3.6% 2.6% >
Applied Vegetation Science 2.308 22 1.7% 11 2.2% 1.9% >
Tuexenia 0.795 5 0.4% 16 3.2% 1.8% <
Plant Sociology / Fitosociologia NA 20 1.6% 1.6% NA
Plant Ecology / Vegetatio 1.490 21 1.6% 3 0.6% 1.1% >>
Revista Peruana de Biología NA 14 1.1% 1.1% NA
Acta Botanica Malacitana NA 12 0.9% 0.9% NA
Feddes Repertorium NA 12 0.9% 0.9% NA
PLOS One 3.057 ≤ 1 0.0% 9 1.8% 0.9% <
Journal of Arid Environments 1.263 7 0.5% 6 1.2% 0.9% >
Folia Geobotanica (et Phytotaxonomica) 1.433 22 1.7% 0.0% 0.9% >
Lazaroa NA 11 0.9% 0.9% NA
Botany Letters / Acta Botanica Gallica 0.776 6 0.5% 6 1.2% 0.8% =
Preslia 2.711 16 1.2% 2 0.4% 0.8% >>
Biological Invasions 2.855 ≤ 1 0.0% 8 1.6% 0.8% <<
Archives des sciences physiques et
naturelles
NA 10 0.8% 0.8% >>
Journal of Biogeography 3.997 14 1.1% 2 0.4% 0.7% >>
Biodiversity and Conservation 2.258 6 0.5% 5 1.0% 0.7% >
database less biased. Lastly also the direction of citations
is informative. For example, Journal of Vegetation Sci-
ence received nearly six times as many citations from
Phytocoenologia than it provides to our journal. On the
other hand, Tuexenia provides three times more cita-
tions to Phytocoenologia than it receives from the latter.
While the citation balance is in general related to the
mean reputation difference, there are several higher-
ranked journals than Phytocoenologia which neverthe-
less show a “net export” of citations, e.g. PLOS One and
Biological Invasions.
Outstanding papers in Phytocoenologia
2016
In 2016 Phytocoenologia published 29 articles from a
large variety of study regions and vegetation types as wit-
nessed also by our cover images (Fig. 5). In each of the
four issues, the Chief Editors have selected one particu-
larly convincing contribution as the Editors’ Choice arti-
cle, which means that its content became Free Access for
one year. Among those four articles we finally voted for
one to get the Editors’ Award 2016. In the following we
present this one and the three runner-ups.
The Editors Award 2016 goes to Rui B. Elias and col-
leagues for their study in which they combine vegetation
classification and predictive distribution modelling to
produce a well-founded map of the natural vegetation of
phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 7phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 7 08.05.17 10:1108.05.17 10:11

8 Dengler et al.
an archipelago (Elias et al. 2016 in Issue 2). Their study
area, the Azores Islands, has been extremely prone to an-
thropogenic pressure, and sound knowledge of the diver-
sity and potential distribution of the native communities
of these islands is an important prerequisite for effective
conservation measures. The authors conclude that Laurel
forests, similar to those in Madeira and some Canary Is-
lands, occur in lowland and submontane areas, while
most extant natural forests in the Azores are in fact tem-
perate montane cloud forests, ecologically more similar
to tropical montane cloud forests.
Vymazalová et al (2016; Editors’ Choice in Issue 1)
studied the effect of sampling season on the numerical
classification of deciduous forests and dry grasslands.
They found that classifications of plots sampled in spring
and summer, respectively, tended to be more similar
when the vernal species (i.e. geophytes and therophytes
only developed in spring) were excluded from the data
analysis. This comes, of course, with some cost as there
might be important diagnostic species among the vernal
species. Relevés comprising both spring and summer as-
pect seem to be rather scarce in phytosociological data-
bases, which reminds us that newly sampled, high-qual-
ity data are still important, even in the age of large data-
bases containing millions of legacy plot data.
Kuzemko (2016; Editors’ Choice in Issue 3) used a
large vegetation-plot database and modern classification
methods to prepare the first comprehensive high-rank
classification of the utilized meadows and pastures in the
forest and forest steppe zone of Ukraine. This revision
covers more than 300,000 km² and the author was able to
provide statistically supported diagnostic species as well
as distribution maps for the seven distinguished alliances.
Peinado et al. (2016; Editors’ Choice in Issue 4) sur-
veyed the halophytic vegetation transecting the temper-
ate and the boreal zone of North America’s Pacific coast.
Apart from a full account of plant communities and zo-
nations of salt marshes they showed that the supralitoral
halophilous communities show relationships with the
zonobiomes. The conventionally adopted term ‘azonal’
for the general character of this kind of vegetation is thus
not entirely adequate. The work has been made compara-
ble to relevant standards of US National Vegetation Clas-
sification and syntaxonomy. Further, they provide a key
to the halophytic associations of western North America.
There are several more papers beyond those four Edi-
tors’ Choice articles that warrant highlighting. We are
particularly happy that a first contribution in the article
category “Review and Synthesis”, which we newly
launched in 2016, was already published in the same year:
den Hartog (2016) provides a global overview on our
knowledge on sea-grass communities, a fascinating vege-
tation type that occurs in shallow waters of all oceans,
and translates this in a comprehensive syntaxonomic
scheme. The Supplements S5 of Stupar et al. (2016) and
S4 of Swacha et al. (2016) are good examples of how plant
community types derived in a classification can be made
much more tangible to our readers by detailed and beau-
tiful photographs. We hope that such longer supplements
become standard in the future, but we also encourage our
authors to use our option of presenting one or two photo
plates in the printed article, depending on its length. Long
Database Reports have meanwhile become an established
element of nearly every issue of Phytocoenologia, helping
to make regional and national vegetation-plot database,
as indispensible tools for broad-scale vegetation classifi-
cations, more visible and rewarding their contributors
and managers appropriately. Particularly remarkable da-
tabases presented last year were the Balkan Vegetation
Database (Vassilev et al. 2016) and the Alaska Arctic Vege-
tation Archive (Walker et al. 2016), both run by large
consortia and filling major gaps in the data coverage of
continental to global databases.
Fig. 5. The covers of the four issues of Phytocoenologia Volume 46 (2016) represent the diversity of vegetation types and
regions covered in the journal and, with their colour photos, greatly contribute to its attractiveness.

phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 8phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 8 08.05.17 10:1108.05.17 10:11

Phytocoenologia – leading vegetation classification journal 9
Conclusions and outlook
We showed that Phytocoenologia performed very well in
the two years after its re-launch, both in terms of geo-
graphical and topical diversity and with respect to biblio-
metric indices. While our journal always had a higher
fraction of classification papers than nearly any other in-
ternational journal, it has now established itself as the one
journal with the by far highest absolute number of clas-
sification papers and the biggest share of them in the
overall portfolio. In contrast to almost all other interna-
tional journals where the proportion of classification pa-
pers currently decreases or stagnates, the proportion of
classification papers in our journal increases in parallel to
the increase of Impact Factor and CiteScore. We hope
that our topical niche together with other advantages
(such as free linguistic editing of accepted articles as well
as the possibility of longer articles with extensive vegeta-
tion tables and colour photo plates) help us also in the
future to attract fascinating studies on the diversity of
vegetation all over the globe. In addition to first-time
vegetation surveys of understudied regions and broad-
scale syntaxonomic revisions, we encourage particularly
three types of submissions: (a) methodological and con-
ceptual studies; (b) Review and Synthesis papers, and (c)
classifications on higher level of integration, such as units
of the potential natural vegetation (e.g. Elias et al. 2016),
formations or biomes. Our vision is to constantly in-
crease the quality and outreach of our journal to the ben-
efit of vegetation science in general, and the IAVS and its
working groups in particular.
Author contributions
J.D., as the currently acting Chair of Editors, planned and
drafted this Editorial and carried out the bibliometric analy-
ses, while all other Chief Editors contributed individual ele-
ments and revised the whole text.
Acknowledgements
We thank Andy Gillison for linguistic editing of our text.
References
Bergmeier, E. & Schaminée, J.H.J. 2016. Classifying halophytes
and halophytic vegetation – an Editorial. Phytocoenologia
46: 333−338.
Bergmeier, E., Dengler, J., Janišová, M., Jansen, F., Krestov, P.,
Roleček, J., Walker, D.A. & Willner, W. 2015. Re-launch of
Phytocoenologia: new profile for the classic vegetation eco-
logy journal. Phytocoenologia 45: 1–10.
Bolpagni, R. & Piotti, A. 2015. Hydro-hygrophilous vegetation
diversity and distribution patterns in riverine wetlands in an
agricultural landscape: a case study from the Oglio River (Po
Plain, Northern Italy). Phytocoenologia 45: 69–84.
Bruelheide, H., Jandt, U., Gries, D., Thomas, F.M., Foetzki, A.,
Bürkert, A., Gang, W., Zhang, X.M. & Runge, M. 2003. Ve-
getation changes in a river oasis on the southern rim of the
Taklamakan Desert in China between 1956 and 2000. Phyto-
coenologia 33: 801−818.
Deil, U. 2005. A review on habitat, plant traits and vegetation of
ephemeral wetlands – a global perspective. Phytocoenologia
35: 533–705.
den Hartog, C. 2016. Sea-grass communities: structure, distri-
bution and classification. Phytocoenologia 46: 397−414.
Elias, R.B., Gil, A., Silva, L., Fernández-Palacios, J.M., Azevedo,
E.B. & Reis, F. 2016. Natural zonal vegetation of the Azores
Islands: characterization and potential distribution. Phyto-
coenologia 46: 107−123.
Franklin, S.B., Hunter, J.T., De Cáceres, M., Dengler, J., Lan-
ducci, F. & Krestov, P. 2016. Introducing the IAVS Vegeta-
tion Classification Working Group. Phytocoenologia 46:
5−8.
Guissan, A. & Theurillat, J.-P. 2000. Equilibrium modeling of
alpine plant distribution: how far can we go? Phytocoenolo-
gia 30: 353−384
Janišová, M., Dengler, J. & Willner, W. 2016. Classification of
Palaearctic grasslands. Phytoenologia 46: 233−239.
Jansen, F., Bergmeier, E., Dengler, J., Janišová, M., Krestov, P. &
Willner, W. 2016. Vegetation classification: a task of our time.
Phytocoenologia 46: 1−4.
Kade, A., Walker, D.A. & Raynolds, M.K. 2005. Plant commu-
nities and soils in cryoturbated tundra along a bioclimate
gradient in the Low Arctic, Alaska. Phytocoenologia 35:
761−820.
Kuzemko, A.A. 2016. Classification of the class Molinio-Ar-
rhenatheretea in the forest and forest-steppe zones of
Ukraine. Phytocoenologia 46: 241−256.
Landucci, F., Řezníčková, M., Šumberová, K., Chytrý, M.,
Aunina, L., Biţă-Nicolae, C., Bobrov, A., Borsukevych, L.,
Brisse, H., (…) & Willner, W. WetVegEurope: a database of
aquatic and wetland vegetation of Europe. Phytocoenologia
45: 187–194.
López-Sáez, J.A., Alba-Sánchez, F., Sánchez-Mata, D., Abel-
Schaad, D., Gavilán, R.G. & Pérez-Díaz, S. 2015. A palyno-
logical approach to the study of Quercus pyrenaica forest
communities in the Spanish Central System. Phytocoenolo-
gia 45: 107–124.
Nowak, A., Nowak, S., Nobis, M. & Nobis, A. 2014. Vegeta-
tion of solid rock faces and fissures of the alpine and subnival
zone in the Pamir Alai Mountains (Tajikistan, Middle Asia).
Phytocoenologia 44: 81–101.
Nowak, S., Nowak, A. & Nobis, M. 2013a. Weed communities
of rice fields in the central Pamir Alai Mountains (Tajikistan,
Middle Asia). Phytocoenologia 43: 101–126.
Nowak, S., Nowak, A., Nobis, M. & Nobis, A. 2013b. Weed
vegetation of cereal crops in Tajikistan (Pamir Alai Mts.,
Middle Asia). Phytocoenologia 43: 225–243.
Peinado, M., Aguirre, J.L., Ocaña-Peinado, F.M. & Delgadillo,
J. 2016. A phytosociological survey of the halophytic vegeta-
tion of North America’s temperate-boreal Pacific coast.
Phytocoenologia 46: 357−382.
Swacha, G., Kącki, Z., & Załuski, T. 2016. Classification of Mo-
linia meadows in Poland using a hierarchical expert system.
Phytocoenologia 46: 33–47.
Stupar, V. Brujić, J. Škvorc, Ž & Čarni, A. 2016. Vegetation
types of the thermophilous deciduous forests (Quercetea
phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 9phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 9 08.05.17 10:1108.05.17 10:11

10 Dengler et al.
pubescentis) in the Western Balkans. Phytocoenologia 46:
49−68.
Terzi, M. 2015. Numerical analysis of the order Scorzoneretalia
villosae. Phytocoenologia 45: 11–32.
Thompson, K., Hodgson, J.G., Grime, J.P., Rorison, I.H., Band,
S.R. & Spencer, R.E. 1993. Ellenberg numbers revisited.
Phytocoenologia 23: 277–289.
Tregenza, T. 2002. Gender bias in the refereeing process? Trends
in Ecology & Evolution 17: 349–350.
Vassilev, K., Pedashenko, H., Alexandrova, A., Tashev, A.,
Ganeva, A., Gavrilova, A., Gradevska, A., Assenov, A., Vit-
kova, A., (…) & Vulchev, V. 2016. Balkan Vegetation Data-
base: historical background, current status and future per-
spectives. Phytocoenologia 46: 89−95.
Vymazalová, M., Tichý, L. & Axmanová, I. 2012. The role of
vernal species in vegetation classification: a case study on de-
ciduous forests and dry grasslands of Central Europe. Phy-
tocoenologia 46: 9−20.
Walker, D.A., Breen, A.L., Duckenmiller, L.A., Wirth, L.W.,
Fisher, W., Raynolds, M.K., Šibik, J. Walker, M.D., Hennek-
ens, S.M., (…) & Zona, D. 2016. The Alaska Arctic Vegeta-
tion Archive (AVA-AK). Phytocoenologia 46: 221−229.
Willner, W. 2006. The association concept revisited. Phytocoen-
ologia 36: 67–76.
Willner, W. 2015. Proposal (20): to conserve the name Aceretalia
pseudoplatani Moor 1976 against Tilietalia Moor 1973. Phy-
tocoenologia 45: 185–186.
Willner, W., Theurillat, J.-P., Čarni, A., Pallas, J. & Weber, H.E.
2015. Guidelines for proposals to conserve or reject names of
syntaxa. Phytocoenologia 45: 183–184.
Author addresses
Dengler, J. (Corresponding author: juergen.dengler@uni-bayreuth.de)1,2, Bergmeier, E. (erwin.bergmeier@bio.uni-goettingen.de)3,
Jansen, F. (florian.jansen@uni-rostock.de)4 & Willner, W. (wolfgang.willner@vinca.at)5,6
1 Plant Ecology, Bayreuth Center for Ecology and Environmental Research (BayCEER), University of Bayreuth, Universitäts-
str. 30, 95447 Bayreuth, Germany
2 German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Deutscher Platz 5e, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
3 University of Göttingen, Albrecht-von-Haller Institute of Plant Sciences, Vegetation & Phytodiversity Analysis, Untere
Karspüle 2, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
4 Landscape Ecology and Site Evaluation, University of Rostock, Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 6, 18059 Rostock, Germany
5 Vienna Institute for Nature Conservation and Analyses, Giessergasse 6/7, 1090 Vienna, Austria
6 Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research, University of Vienna, Rennweg 14, 1030 Vienna, Austria
Reviewers for Phytocoenologia in 2016
We sincerely thank those 72 colleagues who through their reviews during the last year contributed to keep the scien-
tific standards of Phytocoenologia high (* = more than one review):
Aho, Ken
Alvarez, Miguel
Ambarlı, Didem
Apostolova, Iva*
Averyanov, Leonid*
Axmanová, Irena
Berg, Christian*
Biurrun, Idoia
Blasi, Carlo
Brown, Leslie
Chepinoga, Victor
Chytrý, Milan*
Comer, Pat
Crespo, Manuel
Culmsee, Heike
Daniëls, Fred J.A.*
Deil, Ulrich
del Rio, Sara
Di Pietro, Romeo
Dimopoulos, Panayotis
Dítě, Daniel
Ermakov, Nikolai*
Evans, Doug
Ewald, Jörg
Fidelis, Alessandra
Freitag, Martin
Galan de Mera, Antonio
Gavilán, Rosario
Gellie, Nicholas
Gigante, Daniela*
Gillet, François
Gillison, Andrew
Giorgis, Melisa*
Guarino, Riccardo
Hájek, Michal
Hájková, Petra
Heinken, Thilo
Herrera, Mercedes
Jandt, Ute
Jarolímek, Ivan*
phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 10phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 10 08.05.17 10:1108.05.17 10:11

Phytocoenologia – leading vegetation classification journal 11
Kącki, Zygmunt
Kikvidze, Zaal
Kuzemko, Anna*
Landucci, Flavia*
Lengyel, Attila
Li, Ching-Feng
Loidi, Javier
Marceno, Corrado*
Merdas, Saifi
Mucina, Ladislav
Nakamura, Yukito*
Naqinezhad, Alireza*
Neshataeva, Valentina*
Nobis, Michael P.*
Noroozi, Jalil
Nowak, Arkadiusz*
Onipchenko, Vladimir
Roberts, David
Šibík, Jozef*
Slezák, Michal
Šumberová, Kateřina
Sýkora, Karlè
Tsiripidis, Ioannis
Tzonev, Rossen
Valachovič, Milan*
Walker, Donald A.
Weekes, Lynda
Welss, Walter
Wesche, Karsten*
Yamalov, Sergey
Yoshikawa, Masato
Zelený, David
phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 11phyto_47_1_0001_0011_editorial_0209_CC.indd 11 08.05.17 10:1108.05.17 10:11