Acta Societatis Botanicorum Poloniae – One Hundred Years of Evolution in Form and Content (1923–2022)

Abstract

Acta Societatis Botanicorum Poloniae (ASBP) is the oldest journal of the Polish Botanical Society, published since 1923. Over the past 100 years, it has played an important role in the development of botany in Poland. The journal has undergone various modernizations throughout its history, culminating in the transition to an exclusively digital format in 2016.

The journal has published 3,728 articles totaling 46,197 pages. The average length of an article has decreased from 18.5 pages in the interwar period to 13.6 pages from 1952 to 1989, and to 8.65 pages in the years preceding the transition to digital format. Recently, the average length has been increasing. Conversely, the number of authors per article has grown. Initially, articles were single-authored, but post-World War II, the average number of authors gradually increased.

From its inception, the journal has published works by women. In the interwar period, women authored 109 (26.6%) of the 410 articles from Poland, involving 112 female authors (25.6% of Polish authors). These articles primarily covered plant physiology (34 articles), with fewer focusing on cytology (23 articles) and microbiology (20 articles). In the post-war period, 1,855 articles (62.48% of Polish articles) were published exclusively by women. By 1956, women authored more than half of the articles from Poland. Women’s articles were characterized by several features: in the interwar period, they were longer than the average article, and post-World War II, they more often addressed emerging, laboratory experimental fields of botany rather than older fields or those requiring significant physical exertion, particularly in field research. Over the century, women authored 52.49% of all articles in the journal.

Most articles published in ASBP were by Polish authors (85.6%), with fewer (10.8%) written collaboratively by authors affiliated in Poland and abroad. Over the past century, the most foreign authors came from the United States of America (52), the People’s Republic of China (51), and India (48). In Poland, during the interwar period, the University of Warsaw (118 authors) dominated, followed by the Jagiellonian University (80) and the University of Poznań (51). Post-World War II, most articles were submitted by authors from the University of Wrocław (317), the University of Warsaw (296), and the Jagiellonian University (276). Outside of Poland, ASBP was most frequently cited by authors affiliated in the United States of America (883 citations), followed by the United Kingdom (826 citations) and the People’s Republic of China (822 citations).

Throughout its century-long existence, the journal’s articles have primarily focused on plant physiology (36.7% of all articles), with biochemistry being slightly less common (22.9%). However, the last 12 years have seen a shift towards ecological issues. Until recently, Polish botanists’ motto was to publish their groundbreaking discoveries first in Poland. Consequently, canonical results such as Wacław Gajewski’s research on the cytogenetics and evolution of the Geum genus, and the world’s first description of a periclinal chimera in gymnosperms were announced in ASBP. Zygmunt Hejnowicz presented the discovery of cambial morphogenetic waves, and Tomasz Wodzicki – the auxin transport model, which was nearly a decade ahead of global models. One of the world’s first articles on lichenicolous fungi was also published here. Notably, no articles on pseudoscientific topics, such as the so-called new Soviet genetics, i.e., Lysenkoism, were published.

ASBP – the journal of the Polish Botanical Society – has come a long way over the past hundred years, evolving from a periodical of a local scientific society to a journal of considerable prestige on the international stage.