The Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society is a quarterly scientific publication of The Lepidopterists’ Society. It contains refereed scholarly papers on the behavior, biology, conservation, ecology, evolution, genetics, morphology, physiology, systematics, and taxonomy of moths and butterflies. The Journal has been published continuously since 1947 and is indexed by several leading scientific databases. The impact factor of the Journal averages around 1.0.
Notice to all international subscribers
At the 2025 Annual Meeting in Sierra Vista Arizona, the Executive Council of the Society voted unanimously to end the mailing of all hard-copies of the Society’s publications to members outside of the United States. This change will take effect beginning of the calendar year 2026. The large increase in international postage fees, coupled with the increase of printing costs—on top of the decline in reliability of many postal services, means the Society can no longer sustainably absorb these costs. International members who wish to receive hard copies will be asked to pay the full cost of postage on a case-by-case basis. To compensate for the loss of the publications, membership fees will now be simplified. We have eliminated tiered pricing for international members, reducing all regular membership fees to $45 regardless of country of origin (and $60 for sustaining).
All US members of the Society will receive a printed copy of the Journal four times a year. The Journal is also available online at the following links below (must be signed-in for access).
A Future of Open Access!
Beginning in 2026, The Lepidopterists’ Society will participate in a pilot Subscribe to Open (S2O) program through our publishing partner, BioOne. Subscribe to Open is a publishing model that will provide a practical path to opening access to The Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society new content while safeguarding the subscription revenue that The Lepidopterists’ Society relies upon to fulfill its mission. What does this mean for our authors and readers? If BioOne’s annual offer is successful – meaning that subscribers continue to support the cost-effective collection as in the past – then current-year content of The Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society (along with 70 other participating titles) will be made Open Access and freely available to any user worldwide. If enough subscribers do not renew, then content will remain gated when accessed via BioOne, as in the past. The offer will recur annually throughout this three-year pilot. An important note to our membership is that the content in the Journal will remain openly accessible to you through our website via your log-in credentials.
Why has the Executive Committee of the Society chosen this path? We believe that the open sharing of research should be a universal public good. Broadening access to The Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society to anyone worldwide is a transformative prospect, and S2O publishers have reported meaningful increases in usage. Moreover, we feel strongly that open access should not require our authors to pay prohibitive publication charges. Any articles made open access via the offer will remain open access in perpetuity. We are proud to be one of 54 society and independent presses participating in BioOne’s pilot, marking the largest number of nonprofit publishers under a single S2O offer to date. For further information about S2O, other publisher participants, and the libraries supporting this endeavor, please visit the BioOne S2O webpage.
2010–Present
Articles published in 2010 and after are available via BioOne. You must be a member of the Society or belong to a subscribing institution to access articles from the past 5 years. If you are a member of the Society, please login to the website using the “Account” link up in the header.
Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society hosted by BioOne (Must be logged into this site to see the link below!)
1947-2009
Older Journal articles are open access and available to anyone. Open access to the Journal (prior to 2010) is the result of ongoing work by Keith Summerville, David Lohman, Larry Gall and their colleagues, and is currently hosted by the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University on behalf of the Society.
Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society hosted at Yale
If you would like to publish in the Journal, please read the Author Instructions.
For Society members affiliated with institutions, page charges are $50 per Journal page. For authors without institutional support, page charges are $25 per Journal page. For authors who are not members of the Society, page charges are $100 per Journal page. Authors will be charged a full page price for any partially filled pages. Authors unable to pay page charges for any reason should apply to the editor at the time of submission for a reduced rate or free publication. Authors of Tributes and Obituaries are exempt from page charges. Color photos and illustrations can be printed for minimal cost (usually $10 extra per page).