Seventy-five years of systematic biology: Looking back, moving forward

What does “systematic biology” mean today, where has it been in the past, and where is it going? We explore these questions by considering five elements – collaboration, integration, discourse, infrastructure, and society – that we think have allowed systematic biology to adapt to change and sustain growth without losing its unique identity. In the spirit of celebrating the 75th anniversary of our flagship journal, we generated a comprehensive dataset for all Systematic Biology and Systematic Zoology articles (N = 5,150) that we could locate and used bibliometric and textual analyses to illustrate ways in which our field has transformed. We offer our humble opinions on how our community can ensure that systematic biologists inherit an enlightening, dynamic, and enduring future., , ### Seventy-five years of systematic biology: Looking back, moving forward

Dataset DOI: [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.905qfttz8](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.905qfttz8)
GitHub repo: [https://github.com/mlandis/systbiol75](https://github.com/mlandis/systbiol75)

Datasets:

* `systbiol_articles_oxford_252905.xlsx`: Original Oxford dataset of *Systematic Biology/Zoology* articles published during 1952-2024. Empty fields represent missing data. This dataset was created prior to May 29, 2025. Supplementary Information contains analysis details.
* `systbiol_articles_enhanced_250717.xlsx`: Enhanced dataset of *Systematic Biology/Zoology* articles published during 1952-2024. Based on original Oxford dataset with extra columns for citation counts from Google Scholar, article types, and page lengths from the journal website, and extra articles missing from the original dataset. Empty fields represent missing data. This dataset was created prior to July 17, 2025. Supplementary Information conta..., , **Changes after Nov 24, 2025:**

* Add Supp Info document.