Kukila Volume 24 is published

In May 1985, 38 years ago, the very first Kukila as a scientific ornithological journal was published with a word of welcome by Minister of State Emil Salim, introduction by Chairman of the Indonesian Ornithology Society Pak H.M. Kamil Oesman and editorial by chief editors Professor S. Somadikarta and Derek Holmes. In October 2000, Derek Holmes sadly passedaway, leaving a huge emptiness in the Indonesian ornithologists’ community. It lasted untilJuly 2003, after Dr Richard Noske had taken over the challenging task of managing Kukila as chief editor until publishing of Kukila was continued.

As the management of the Indonesian Ornithologists’ Union IdOU changed in 2011,  itwas decided in 2012, that in order to overcome problems with Kukila’s publication in print,its management and publication shifted to a digital platform with open access using the Open Journal System (OJS), accessible through https://kukila.org. This transition to digital format was successfully completed within a year with generosity contribution of Nick Brickle, as aneditor member with supervision of Yoki Hadiprakarsa, the Director of IdOU. Presently, allvolumes of KUKILA have been fully digitized and are publicly accessible free of charge.

Pak Richard’s continuous efforts, insistent chasing of both authors and co-editors, andpainstaking editing of a large number of scientific papers in the following twenty yearsresulted in 12 volumes of Kukila, whose h-index of 16, based on citations, made it to the top 10 of influential Indonesian scientific journals in 2018. This went along with a shift from anexclusively foreign authorship of the very first Kukilas in the 1980s, to a sharp increase of Indonesian authors in the 1990s, a trend that has continued ever since with the majority of submissions to Kukila nowadays coming from Indonesian ornithologists.

Since 2020 Kukila’s management is gradually being taken over by a re-organizededitorial team. After a period of facing various technical problems, the present volume of Kukila is the first to be published since the team’s installation (three-year pauses after major editorial successions seem to be inevitable ….), handling and final editing of the papers have for a large part still been Pak Richard’s achievement though.

With the long-awaited publication of a truly international paper on hornbills in Malaysian Borneo, and a paper on the endangered White-rumped woodpecker of Java,  bothco-authored by Pak Richard, we are excited to have Kukila back on the rails again and usherin a new era of interesting and important publications.

October 2023

The Editors