The BCI Centenary Collections

2022 marks 100 years since the founding of the International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP) – now BirdLife International, the largest international partnership for nature conservation. Throughout its centenary year, BirdLife is celebrating this milestone in various ways, culminating in the BirdLife Global Partnership Meeting and World Congress in Cambridge and London this September.

Ever since its launch as BirdLife’s official journal in 1991, Bird Conservation International (BCI) has promoted worldwide research and action for the conservation of birds and the habitats upon which they depend. It provides stimulating, international and up-to-date coverage of a broad range of conservation topics, using birds to illuminate wider issues of biodiversity, conservation and sustainable resource use. As the importance and awareness of these issues has risen, BCI’s reputation has grown. It is now ranked 3^rd out of the 28 leading ‘Ornithology’ journals globally, with an Impact Factor of 2.287.

To mark the centenary, Cambridge University Press and BirdLife International are pleased to release ten specially curated collections of papers from the BCI ‘back catalogue’, each of which will be made freely available for one month, from March to December 2022. Each collection will comprise 10 to 20 papers on particular themes, including many of BCI’s ‘greatest hits’ in terms of lifetime citations and Altmetric attention scores. Where possible, each collection will be accompanied by a short article on the BCI blog, introducing the theme and explaining its importance for bird conservation.

As well as celebrating BirdLife’s centenary, we trust that making these collections available will serve to share relevant topics with a wider audience, and demonstrate where progress has been made, as well as highlighting challenges that remain and newly emerging issues. In some cases, BCI has become the ‘go to’ journal for publishing papers on certain themes, and some collections tell a story in themselves. We hope they stimulate further research and conservation, and even more quality submissions to BCI.

Of course, none of these collections would be possible without the commitment and contributions of many different people over the years. We therefore thank all the authors who have chosen to publish their research in BCI, as well as the editors, copy editors, staff at Cambridge University Press and others whose hard work has made the journal into the success it is today, as well as the subscribers who continue to make it viable. We look forward to BCI, BirdLife International and bird conservation flourishing over the next century.

Chris McEntee, Publisher, STM Journals, Cambridge University Press