Bonn Zoological Bulletin

About Bonn Zoological Bulletin

About the Bonn Zoological Bulletin

The Bonn zoological Bulletin (BzB) was a peer-reviewed zoological journal published by Museum Koenig in Bonn, Germany — the Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig (ZFMK), today part of the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LIB). It appeared from 1950 to 2023, first under its original German title Bonner zoologische Beiträge and later under the English title by which it is catalogued here, with ISSN 2190-7307 for its modern series. According to the Leibniz Institute's own library page, the series published 72 volumes and more than 1,700 original scientific papers over its life, all freely accessible online and published at no cost to authors. In 2023 the series concluded, and its role passed to the journal Evolutionary Systematics.

Museum journals occupy a distinctive niche in zoology: they are the house journals of great natural history collections, and their pages are where new species are described, collections are revised, and regional faunas are documented. The Bonn zoological Bulletin was exactly that for one of Europe's major zoological research museums, and its archive is a permanent part of the taxonomic record — names published in its pages remain part of zoological nomenclature regardless of the journal's closure.

Journal at a Glance

History: From Bonner zoologische Beiträge to the Bulletin

The series began in 1950 as the Bonner zoologische Beiträge, the journal of the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn. Museum Koenig itself is one of Germany's major natural history research museums, built around the collections of Alexander Koenig and long devoted to specimen-based zoology — taxonomy, morphology, and faunistics — with particular strengths in vertebrates, insects, and the fauna of Africa and other regions where Bonn researchers worked. Its journal reflected that mission for over seven decades.

Under its later English title, Bonn zoological Bulletin, the journal modernised: it published in English for an international readership, made its content freely accessible online, and charged authors nothing — a diamond open-access model funded by the institution rather than by readers or authors. A companion monograph line ran alongside it: the Bonner zoologische Monographien, in publication since 1971, became the Bonn Zoological Bulletin — Supplementum from 2012 (volume 58 of the monograph series), providing an outlet for works too long and monographic in style for the journal itself.

The end of the series was an institutional transition rather than a failure. The Leibniz Institute's library page records that the Bonn zoological Bulletin published from 1950 to 2023, that it concluded in 2023, and that it transitioned to Evolutionary Systematics, a journal published with Pensoft, to which authors are now invited to submit. The museum's parent institution had itself been reorganised — the ZFMK becoming part of the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change — and the journal change accompanied that wider restructuring of Bonn zoology.

Scope: What the Journal Published

The publisher defines the journal's coverage as original research in zoology across animal behaviour, ecology, conservation, physiology, and taxonomy, with a stated focus on three areas, all concerning terrestrial animals: (1) taxonomy; (2) systematics and evolution; and (3) biodiversity and biogeography. In practice, the core of the journal was specimen-based work — descriptions of new species and genera, taxonomic revisions, identification keys, faunal inventories, and distribution studies — produced by museum staff and by the worldwide community of taxonomists who work with Bonn's and other collections.

Individual papers show the texture. A 2010 paper described a new ant species, Tetramorium boehmei, from the Kakamega Forest of western Kenya, providing a preliminary key to the species groups of a hyperdiverse genus in East Africa's easternmost fragment of Guineo-Congolian rain forest, with type material deposited at the National Museums of Kenya and the ZFMK. Another study compared the diets of two lizard species sharing the tiny Mediterranean island of Lampione, using pellet analysis to quantify resource partitioning. A 2019 paper treated the Knautia-feeding aphid species, resolving a nomen nudum in the process. Herpetology was a particular Bonn strength — the museum's herpetological school produced a special issue of the bulletin, Herpetologia Koenigiana — and amphibian and reptile taxonomy recurs throughout the archive alongside entomology, arachnology, mammalogy, and ornithology.

OpenAlex's topic mapping of the journal's indexed subset — amphibian and reptile biology, invertebrate taxonomy and ecology, evolution and palaeontology studies, Lepidoptera biology and taxonomy, and fish biology and ecology — is consistent with that profile, though, as explained below, OpenAlex indexes only a small fragment of this journal and its mapping should be read as indicative rather than complete.

Access Model and the Archive

The bulletin was genuinely free at both ends: readers paid nothing, and authors paid nothing. The Leibniz Institute's page states that the publications were freely accessible online, were listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals according to the publisher, and were available to all at no cost to authors. The complete archive — 72 volumes and more than 1,700 papers — is freely accessible online through ZOBODAT, the zoological-botanical database and digital literature library, which hosts scanned and born-digital volumes of many Central European zoological journals. For taxonomists, that archive access is the point that matters most after closure: a name or record published in the bulletin in 1965 or 2015 must remain findable and citable forever, and the ZOBODAT deposit secures it.

A verification caveat belongs here. Although the publisher's page describes the series as DOAJ-listed, DOAJ search-API checks carried out for this profile — by ISSN 2190-7307 and by title — returned no matching record. Directory listings for ceased journals are sometimes removed or lapse, so readers who need to demonstrate the journal's historical DOAJ status for a specific purpose should go to the publisher's statement and the DOAJ's own records rather than rely on this profile either way.

Bibliometric Profile — and Its Limits

Publisher's figures are the authoritative output record: 72 volumes and more than 1,700 original scientific papers between 1950 and 2023 (Leibniz Institute library page).

Scopus / SCImago. SCImago-derived summaries give the journal an SJR of 0.278 and an h-index of 14, with Scopus coverage from 2012 to 2023 and quartiles of Q3 in each of its categories — Animal Science and Zoology (Q3), Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics (Q3), and Insect Science (Q3) — and record it as cited by 45 articles over the three years preceding 2024. Museum taxonomy journals characteristically show modest citation indicators: their papers are used for decades as identification and nomenclatural references, a form of influence that two- and three-year citation windows capture poorly. An h-index of 14 within a 2012–2023 Scopus window, for a journal whose archive reaches back to 1950, should be read with that structural caveat.

OpenAlex. OpenAlex's record under ISSN 2190-7307 (source S207257760) is fragmentary: it holds only 8 works and 108 citations, with an h-index of 5, concentrated in scattered years. Set against the publisher's count of more than 1,700 papers, that is plainly a partial record — the journal's long German-titled history and much of its archive sit under other records or outside OpenAlex's source matching. This profile therefore does not use OpenAlex totals for this journal, and it flags the discrepancy deliberately: automated profiles that copy OpenAlex numbers for the Bonn zoological Bulletin will understate its output by two orders of magnitude.

Two stored-data corrections also follow from the sources above. The earlier Journals World template for this post labelled the journal Q2; the SCImago-derived record gives Q3 as its best quartile. And the same template's coverage dates (2012–2023) describe only the Scopus window, not the journal's true 1950–2023 run — the publisher's dates govern.

The Successor: Evolutionary Systematics

From 2023, the publisher directs authors to Evolutionary Systematics, published with Pensoft. The successor continues the Bonn tradition's centre of gravity — taxonomy and systematics — in a modern open-access journal format. For clarity: Evolutionary Systematics is a separate journal with its own ISSN, its own editorial structure, and its own record on this site; it is not a retitling that makes the two journals interchangeable, and citations to the Bonn zoological Bulletin must keep the bulletin name, volume, and year exactly as published. Authors with a taxonomic manuscript that would once have gone to Bonn should now read the successor's author guidelines — while remembering that other museum and society taxonomy journals also compete for the same manuscripts, and the choice should be made on scope, review quality, and archiving, not habit alone.

Why the Journal Still Matters After Closure

A closed journal is not a dead one. Zoological nomenclature is cumulative and permanent: every species name, type designation, and taxonomic act published in the bulletin remains part of the formal record governed by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, and working taxonomists cite the bulletin weekly. Faunistic papers from Bonn expeditions remain primary data for distribution mapping and conservation assessment, increasingly so as digitised archives such as ZOBODAT make them text-searchable. The bulletin's 73-year run also documents the history of a great collection — what Bonn's curators collected, where they worked, and how specimen-based zoology changed from the post-war decades to the molecular era, a transition visible in the journal's own shift from German to English and from print subscription to free online publication.

For collection managers and librarians, the practical points are: keep the title in catalogues under both its English title and Bonner zoologische Beiträge; link the archive through ZOBODAT; and treat the Supplementum (formerly Bonner zoologische Monographien) as part of the same publication family when shelving or digitising.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Bonn zoological Bulletin still publishing? No. The series ran from 1950 to 2023 and concluded in 2023; the publisher directs authors to Evolutionary Systematics.

What was its original title? Bonner zoologische Beiträge. The English title Bonn zoological Bulletin is the later form of the same series.

What is its ISSN? 2190-7307.

Who published it? Museum Koenig, Bonn — the Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig, now part of the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change. An earlier directory record on this site stored the publisher as a bare number ("4398"); that was a data artefact and is corrected here.

Was it open access? Yes — freely accessible online and free for authors, according to the publisher. Its archive is on ZOBODAT.

How much did it publish? 72 volumes and more than 1,700 original scientific papers (publisher's figures).

What were its metrics? SCImago-derived summaries: SJR 0.278, h-index 14, Q3 in its categories, Scopus coverage 2012–2023. OpenAlex's record for the title is fragmentary (8 works) and should not be used for this journal.

Can I still cite it? Yes — citations to a ceased journal remain valid permanently, and its taxonomic acts retain nomenclatural standing.

Verification Notes

This profile is anchored to the Journals World record for post 21774 (title, slug bonn-zoological-bulletin, ISSN 2190-7307). Sources actually consulted: the Leibniz Institute library page for the bulletin (publication run, volumes, paper count, scope, free access, 2023 conclusion and successor — fetched in full); NHBS's description of the Supplementum series and its former monograph title; article-level records on ZOBODAT and Zenodo illustrating the journal's content; the OpenAlex source record S207257760 (used only to document its incompleteness for this title); DOAJ search-API checks by ISSN and title (no record returned); and SCImago-derived summaries for SJR, quartile, and Scopus coverage. Figures are attributed in the text, and where sources conflict — quartile labels and coverage dates in older records — the publisher's and SCImago-derived values are identified as the basis used.

Inside the Archive: How Taxonomy Papers Work

Readers unfamiliar with museum journals sometimes ask why a single new-species description matters enough to anchor a paper. In zoological nomenclature, the description is the legal act that makes a name exist: it fixes the name to a designated type specimen held in a stated collection, provides the diagnosis that separates the new taxon from its relatives, and enters the permanent record that every later worker must consult. A substantial share of the bulletin's 1,700-plus papers perform exactly this act, alongside the revisions, keys, and checklists that keep the accumulated mass of names usable. The ant paper from Kakamega Forest cited earlier shows the working pattern: field collection in a threatened forest fragment, comparison against type material and the literature, designation and deposition of types split between the National Museums of Kenya and the ZFMK in Bonn, and a preliminary identification key so that ecologists — not only ant specialists — can use the result.

The bulletin also carried the longer syntheses that collections make possible: regional faunas, revisions of genera across their ranges, and diet, distribution, and natural-history studies built on specimen series, such as the Lampione lizard diet study in the archive. Its herpetological strength reflected Bonn's curatorial history; the special issue Herpetologia Koenigiana, produced as a festschrift within the bulletin, gathered the output of the herpetological school built up at the museum over four decades. Amphibian and reptile taxonomy, entomology — including groups such as aphids, where Bonn published nomenclatural clean-up work resolving a nomen nudum — and the systematics of other terrestrial invertebrates and vertebrates fill out the run of 72 volumes.

The Collection Behind the Journal

A museum journal cannot be separated from its collection. The Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig — founded on the private museum of Alexander Koenig and developed into a federal research institute within the Leibniz Association, now reorganised as part of the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change — holds the specimen base from which the bulletin's authors worked and against which their identifications were checked. When a Bonn paper designates type material "deposited at ZFMK", that is a promise that the specimen will be curated permanently and made available to future researchers; the journal and the collection are two faces of one institution. The bulletin's conclusion in 2023 and the direction of authors to Evolutionary Systematics should be read in that light: the museum continues, the collection continues to grow and to be studied, and only the publication vehicle changed, moving from an in-house series to an established open-access journal published with Pensoft.

For researchers tracing a name or a specimen today, the practical route runs: the original paper in the ZOBODAT archive; the type and specimen records of the Bonn collection; and, for the taxonomic standing of a name, the relevant group-specific catalogues that index the bulletin's contents. Libraries receiving enquiries about the title should note both title forms — Bonner zoologische Beiträge for the earlier decades and Bonn zoological Bulletin for the modern series — since catalogues and citations use both, and a search under only one form will miss part of the run.

What Kind of Manuscripts It Took — and Where They Go Now

Historically the bulletin welcomed original research articles, reviews, and scientific notes in its focus areas — descriptions and revisions, faunistic and biogeographic studies, and ecological, behavioural, and physiological work on terrestrial animals, with specimen-based taxonomy at the centre. Long monographic treatments overflowed into the Supplementum, the former Bonner zoologische Monographien. Authors preparing such work today should follow the publisher's direction to Evolutionary Systematics, whose model — open access with professional production by Pensoft — continues the bulletin's free-to-read principle, though authors should check that journal's current charges and requirements directly, since the bulletin's no-cost-to-authors model does not automatically carry over to a different publisher's title. Whatever the venue, the standards the Bonn tradition represents remain the test: types properly designated and deposited, diagnoses explicit, keys workable, and specimens — not only sequences — anchoring the conclusions.