EDITORIAL (Vol. 18, Num. 1, 2024)

In 2024, the open access peer-reviewed international journal PROTISTOLOGY celebrates its 25^th Anniversary.

On behalf of the editorial team, I invite the authors of PROTISTOLOGY to join our celebration by submitting the newest and most fascinating findings to the Journal.

PROTISTOLOGY publishes manuscripts on the broad spectrum of research issues including multidisciplinary studies involving lower Eukaryotes: protozoans, lower algae, and lower fungi. The Journal accepts original research articles (experimental and theoretical contributions), full-size reviews, short topical reviews that are supposed to be somewhat provocative for setting up and discussing new hypotheses, rapid short communications, book reviews, symposia materials, historical data, biographical notes on famous scientists, letters to the editor, comments on the articles published in PROTISTOLOGY and replies to those comments, information about past and future scientific conferences, etc.

PROTISTOLOGY is a non-profit Journal founded by protistologists for protistologists. The Journal’s language is English. All articles published in PROTISTOLOGY are permanently accessible online immediately upon publication without subscription charges or registration restrictions. We maintain a small team of professionals preparing the Journal’s issues and providing open access articles free of charge to all our readers. We share the opinion that high-quality scientific information must be free and available to everybody, irrespective of one’s income, financial status, affiliation, country of origin or residence, or any other issue. And we are delighted that at present, PROTISTOLOGY is the only peer-reviewed free of charge open access protistological journal, which is indexed in Scopus and other bibliographic databases.

Other key features of PROTISTOLOGY are: (1) reviews, overviews and theoretical manuscripts on systematics, phylogeny, evolution and ecology of protists are favorably accepted; 2) manuscripts on multicellular organisms concerning their phylogenetic, taxonomic and ecological relationships with protists are also welcomed; 3) the size of manuscripts is not limited.

Some statistics: in 1999–2023, PROTISTOLOGY has published altogether 366 articles; among them: 298 original research articles, 46 review articles and book reviews, 22 letters to editor, short communications, historical materials and opinions in dispute.

Currently, Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences provides a publication platform for the online version of PROTISTOLOGY (https://www.zin.ru/journals/protistology/). This affiliation demands maintaining particularly high quality of publications, both in terms of content and form. Meanwhile, we fully understand that some authors may have difficulties with writing their articles in English, which is not their native language. Therefore, our editors do everything possible to help the authors with the English language proofreading of the manuscripts. Besides, to enhance further language quality of the articles published in PROTISTOLOGY, we encourage the authors for whom English is not the first language to contact our editorial partner, Effective Language Tutoring Services (https://effect19.tmweb.ru/) at effectivelanguage@outlook.com for the professional English language check and manuscript proofreading prior to submission.

I must also say that I am particularly grateful to the editorial team of PROTISTOLOGY for their devotion. The deputy editors, reviewers, members of the editorial board and the editorial assistant – all perform their editorial assignments accurately, timely and altruistically, doing their best to maintain the continuous editorial process at the professional level, thus keeping high standards of publications in PROTISTOLOGY.

Finally, I cordially thank all authors who have contributed to PROTISTOLOGY during the past quarter of a century for their valuable input. Today, these publications reflect the history and evolution of the protistological science, and highlight its frontiers. They also secure the sustainable development of PROTISTOLOGY as one of the reputed scientific editions with large readership and good publication prospects in the field of protistology and far beyond.

Sergei O. Skarlato, Editor-in-Chief

EDITORIAL (Vol. 13, Num. 1, 2019)

The year 2019 marks the 20^th anniversary of the quarterly peer-reviewed Protistology (An International Journal).

During the recent two decades, Protistology astonishingly fast transformed from the merely official publication platform of the Protozoological Society affiliated with the Russian Academy of Sciences into a leading comprehensive International Journal disseminating the original and review articles on the entire spectrum of unicellular eukaryotes, including protozoans, lower algae and fungi. Our Journal made known 252 articles containing the results on morphology, taxonomy, systematics, phylogeny, evolution, ecology, biochemistry, modelling and new techniques, cell and molecular biology, and genetics of the diverse collections of various unicellular organisms.

At present, Protistology is well recognized worldwide for the broad spectrum of its content and valuable research articles that are published using the Open Access platform without page limitations. This allows for strong influence of publications in Protistology on the development of different biological disciplines by making the important scientific discoveries public and easily accessible, thus stimulating timely discussions across the attractive fields in studies of the unicellular eukaryotes.

Protistology provides a forum for sharing the opinions and discussion of new ideas, concepts and paradigms. Publication of the Congress materials in Protistology provides a good opportunity for the Congress participants to distribute their new knowledge fast to a broad readership and facilitate exchange of research results, ideas and opinions with scientists from different countries, thus promoting the internationalization of our Journal.

Protistology is currently indexed in a number of abstract and citation databases of the peer-reviewed scientific literature: Scopus, Russian Scientific Electronic Library (eLIBRARY.RU), UlrichsWeb, EBSCOhost, and CyberLeninka.

To enhance the overall quality of articles published in Protistology, we have recently established a partnership with the Effective Language Tutoring Services (ELTS), and recommend all our authors contacting the ELTS (effectivelanguage@outlook.com) for the professional English language check and manuscript proofreading prior to submission of their manuscripts to the Journal.

I am grateful to all authors of Protistology for their valuable contributions that, to a great extent, back up the sustainable development of the Journal.

I also thank the Deputy Editors, members of the Editorial Board, and the Editorial Assistant of Protistology who always selflessly perform their job and do their best to maintain the continuous publication process.

Protistology proceeds to be open to broad audience of researchers from all over the world, and their participation in the advancement of this International Journal is most welcome.

We invite the authors of Protistology to join our celebration by submitting their new multidisciplinary findings on eukaryotic microorganisms as original articles (experimental and theoretical contributions), full-size reviews, short topical reviews (which are supposed to be somewhat "provocative" for setting up new hypotheses), rapid short communications, book reviews, symposia materials, historical materials, obituary notices on famous scientists, letters to the Editor, chronicles of the past scientific meetings, information about the future conferences and other events, comments on the published articles and replies to those comments.

Join us in celebrating the richness of the scientific heritage that arose from the pages of Protistology during 20 years of serving the International Protistological Community, and explore our portal for new articles, opinions, ideas and perspectives that highlight the scientific accomplishments and the promising future of Protistology!

Sergei O. Skarlato, Editor-in-Chief

EDITORIAL (Vol. 7, Num. 1, 2012)

In 2011, after several months of discussions about the perspectives of an International Journal Protistology, a group of active protistologists from St. Petersburg finally succeeded in formulating the needs for some changes and reorganization of the Editorial Board accompanied by certain improvements aimed at keeping the Journal at the forefront of its field. For the sake of optimally serving the needs of its authors and readers, we have agreed to better provide quality control over the contents of manuscripts submitted to the Journal, their scientific English language and general managing procedure. Moreover, while most of us retain the interest in publishing "classical" papers on eukaryotic microorganisms, we believe that modern biological work should become in future very much a part of Protistology. Finally, I was asked to act as the Editor-in-Chief of our Journal since January 1, 2012.

The overall operation of a present-day scientific journal is a time-consuming task of exceptional complexity, especially when the editors serve purely as volunteers. Nevertheless, we decided to start this work taking into account that Protistology is supposed to play a major role in the present and future activities of our Protozoological Society affiliated with Russian Academy of Sciences.

At the first phase of reorganization, it was decided to share the duties and responsibilities of the Journal processing within the Strategic Editorial Team (SET) which will be composed of the Editor-in-Chief and three Deputy Editors: Andrew Goodkov, Yuri Mazei, and Irena Telesh. SET will be assisted by other members of the Editorial Board who will be involved in providing focused and timely refereeing and participate actively in maintaining the quality of our Journal in every aspect. Additionally, in near future we are planning to enlarge the Board of Reviewers.

We are glad to announce that since 2012, the Journal is fully peer-reviewed and included in the catalogue of the Russian Scientific Electronic Library (eLIBRARY.RU).

We are pleased as well as honored by the kind decision of the Protozoological Society affiliated with Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Cytology of Russian Academy of Sciences, and Penza State Pedagogical University to co-sponsor the Journal for the next two years. The logotypes of these institutions are now at the back side of the Journal's front cover.

At present Protistology is one of the five "organism-oriented" journals for researchers of protistan material. Our Journal will continue to publish manuscripts on the whole spectrum of lower Eukaryote cells including protozoans, lower algae and lower fungi. Protistology will publish original papers (experimental and theoretical contributions), full-size reviews, short topical reviews (which are supposed to be somewhat "provocative" for setting up new hypotheses), rapid short communications, book reviews, symposia materials, historical materials, obituary notices on famous scientists, letters to the Editor, comments on and replies to published papers. Chronicles will present information about past and future scientific meetings, conferences etc. Comments will be not refereed; however they may be selected, edited, or rejected as considered appropriate by Editors. Authors are asked to provide suggestions for referees in their field.

Traditionally, Protistology will continue to be an open access journal which is published both on-line and as hard-copy version. Accepted papers will appear on-line in PDF format before the final version is available in print.

The on-going reorganization procedure gives me the opportunity to thank Sergei Karpov, Sergei Fokin and those of our colleagues that have served enthusiastically their terms on the Editorial Board of Protistology for many years and have kindly agreed to support this joint action. I also thank the members of the Board of Reviewers who had agreed to support the Journal in this role.

We encourage protistologists to publish with us on multidisciplinary topics, and invite participation of our non-Russian colleagues. We continuously need your support to maintain the quality and status of Protistology, and we welcome your manuscripts and suggestions.

Sergei O. Skarlato, Editor-in-Chief

The protistology is a long established discipline within biology, but one which has been recently revitalised. Scientific activity in this area increases year by year. There are many reasons for this situation. The first of all is the recognition by an increasing number of biologists, that such general problems as the origin of eukaryotic cell and the origin of multicellular organisms as well as many problems of cell biology may only be solved in the context of protistology.

There are just 4 journals dedicated exclusively to the protistological questions: Acta Protozoologica, European Journal of Protistology, Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology and Protist. Today this is not enough for this a quickly developing topic. An additional journal has the ability to bring a greater number of protistological papers to our attention. We share the view that protistological journals should publish manuscripts on any topic of protistology whether it concerns the genetics of model algae or hydrobiological questions.

Russia is one of the traditional centres of protistology. More than 70 years ago there was a special protistological journal "The Russian Archive of Protistology" (Archives de la Societe Russe de Protistologie), which was printed out since 1922. It has been established on the base of Russian Protistological Society by G. Epstien and J. Leontjev. The foreign editorial board included at that time M. Hartmann, A. Pascher, J. Oltmanns, E. Laveran, E. Chatton, R. Ross and P. Manson. Unfortunately, the journal has been closed by political reasons in 1928. That journal played a great role in the formation of Russian school of protistology, which is presented now by many scientists working on parasitic and free-living unicellular organisms.

All these reasons permitted us to rebirth in Russia an International Journal "Protistology".