1. Mycologia is the financial lifeblood of the MSA:

   Mycologia is owned by the Mycological Society of America, and we contract out publication to Taylor & Francis. When a library or an individual purchases a subscription to Mycologia, much of that money returns directly to our Society. Last year, Mycologia provided more than $100,000 to the Mycological Society of America. That’s over 50% of our Society’s total revenue (excluding investment dividends), and it funds our annual meeting, website, and travel and research grants (many for postdocs and students). Some other societies also publish mycological journals (or journals that include mycological research) notably the British Mycological Society (Fungal Biology, Fungal Ecology, etc.) The German Mycological Society (Mycological Progress) and the American Phytopathology Society (Phytobiomes Journal, Plant Disease, etc.), and we can presume they also use proceeds from their journal subscriptions to support society activities. Yet other journals are published by organizations for profit, and this is BIG BUSINESS, netting publishers millions of dollars while relying on researchers to provide content, edit and review that content, and then purchase that content via subscriptions or Open Access fee models. One example is the Journal of Fungi, published by MDPI (a company with a business model best googled). Even if you’re too broke to spend big at the annual MSA auction, submitting a solid manuscript to Mycologia is a phenomenal service to the Society. Raising our journal’s profile translates directly to raising funds for MSA.

2. Mycologia editors are expert mycologists and MSA members: 
   Mycologia is for us, by us. Our editorial board is made up of more than 25 of the world’s leading fungal researchers with expertise ranging from taxonomy to ecology to industrial applications of fungi. No journal can compete with our knowledge and network of expert reviewers. Sick of having reviewers ask you to tree out ITS sequences across phyla? Or to run your filamentous fungal experiments in liquid media? WhY Is YouR PHyLogeNY mIssINg tHe DiSCOmyCEtes? Ever been asked to isolate a mycorrhizal fungus? Our editors know better.

3. Mycologia makes it easy to submit and publish.
   Ever spent hours on a submission website uploading individual figures and captions?  Ever had to go back to your citations and abbreviate a journal name to conform to some journal standards?  Ever had to do this BEFORE your paper is even sent out for review? What a waste of time. Mycologia will accept your manuscript for review in any reasonable format (including your bioRxiv submission). We care about the science, not about maximizing profits for publishers. With options for Open Access and no charge for the first color figure in print (all are free online), we make it easy to communicate your results. The average time from submission to first decision on manuscripts is just 26 days.

4. Mycologia is a well-known, highly cited journal, covering (nearly) all aspects of fungal biology.
   Mycologia has been in continuous publication since 1909 (Fig. 1). It is fully indexed by the major databases (CLARIVATE, Scopus, AGRICOLA, MEDLINE), and has a respectable impact factor of 2.96. According to Google Scholar (accessed September 2023), five papers have garnered more than 1,000 citations each, including 3,411 citations for “A method for designing primer sets for speciation studies in filamentous Ascomycetes”, by Ignacio Carbone and Linda Kohn. Some of the most read articles in the last three years cover topics like rocks as a refuge for fungi in dry lands, cell wall-associated effectors in plant colonizing fungi, alternative photobionts of lichens, a novel zombie fungus lineage, phylogeny of powdery mildews, and fire as a driver of fungal diversity.

5. MSA members read Mycologia.
   There are thousands of academic journals, and it can be increasingly difficult to find, access, and cite relevant literature. No need for Sci-Hub.As an MSA member you have full online access to the most recent Mycologia as well as the entire journal archive back to William F. Murrill’s “Illustrations of Fungi” (Mycologia 1 [1]:1) (Fig. 2); a good number of colleagues – like you – scanned this issue’s table of contents to see what’s new in the field. Our proverbial pond is comparatively small and these readers are disproportionately likely to be your grant reviewers, tenure letter-writers, or champions on search committees. Our members also read Mycologia to access articles like the annual Karling Lecture, reviews, or the Presidential Address–content that you will only find in our Society’s flagship journal.

Of course, there are myriad considerations in play when choosing a journal. We hope that publishing in Mycologia provides a win-win for fungal biologists and the Society we support.