This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Acta Societatis Botanicorum Poloniae (ASBP) establishment, and it is an opportune time to reflect on its contributions to the field of botany. The journal was founded in 1923 by a group of Polish botanists who sought to create a platform for publishing high-quality research in the field. Since then, the journal has published numerous seminal papers that have shaped the course of botany. Currently, the journal covers a wide range of topics, including plant anatomy, ecology, genetics, molecular biology, taxonomy, and systematics. Over the years, the journal has maintained high standards of quality and has been a go-to resource for botanists around the world. The ASBP has published papers by some of the most eminent botanists in the field, including Władysław Szafer, a pioneering Polish botanist and one of the founders of modern plant geography Jan Kornaś, a distinguished phytogeographer and plant ecologist.

One of the strengths of the ASBP is its international outlook. From the first issue, the papers were published not only in Polish but also in French and Latin languages, and since 1970, articles have been published exclusively in English. The journal has published papers from botanists in various parts of the world, contributing to a broader understanding of the diversity of plant life on the planet. The ASBP has also been an important forum for exchanging ideas and disseminating knowledge, which has helped to foster collaboration between botanists in different countries. The ASBP has also played a crucial role in developing botany in Poland. The journal has been instrumental in promoting research in the field and has provided a platform for young researchers to showcase their work. The ASBP, as a part of the Polish Botanical Society, has also been involved in organizing conferences, workshops, and seminars, which has helped to create a vibrant community of botanists in the country.

Looking ahead, the ASBP is ready to continue its role as a leading journal in the field of botany. The journal has adapted to changing times and has embraced new technologies to reach a wider audience. The ASBP has an online presence, and this has made it possible for researchers around the world to access its publications. The journal has also been active in social media, which has helped to promote its work and engage with its readership.

In conclusion, the 100th anniversary of the ASBP is a testament to the journal’s enduring legacy and its contributions to the field of botany. The journal has played a vital role in promoting research, fostering collaboration, and disseminating knowledge, and it is poised to continue its leadership in the field for many years to come.

The year 2023 is also a period of significant changes taking place in the editorial office of Acta Societatis Botanicorum Poloniae. After nearly a decade of work, Professor Beata Zagórska-Marek resigned from the position of editor-in-chief, which she, along with managing editor Piotr Otręba, led the journal through a turbulent and difficult period of digital transformation and the implementation of open-access. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to them and all section editors for their commitment and effort in the ASPB publishing process and development of the journal.

We are starting this year (and the next century of the ASBP) not only with a new editorial team but also on a new publishing platform, which will enable us to manage the journal more efficiently and streamline the editorial process. We hope its implementation will significantly shorten the time from submission to manuscript publication, which is an important factor in choosing the journal in which scientists want to publish their research results. Minor changes will also be introduced to the article layout, which we hope will be well-received by authors and readers.

Each article published in the new year, in addition to the classic pdf format, will also have an online version that fully utilizes the capabilities of the JATS-XML format. ASBP will also enter the new century with two new types of articles that will aggregate reports on geobotany and taxonomy, both classical and molecular.

Being under increasing pressure from human activities and recently under the negative impact of global climate changes, the dynamics and the changes of flora and vegetation in the last decades are much faster and more serious than in the previous century. Therefore the information on the occurrence of species in areas previously not occupied by them, unnoticed or misidentified with other species, is of great interest to many biologists throughout the world and continues to be published (e.g., Dudáš et al., 2022; Ellis et al., 2022; Nobis et al., 2020; von Raab-Straube & Raus, 2022). In the last issues of ASBP, there also have been published several short notes on new records of the flora of selected countries (Bulakh et al., 2022; Lipińska et al., 2022; Łazarski, 2022; Tlałka et al., 2021; Vončina et al., 2022). Thus, meeting the expectations of botanical society and at the same time trying to avoid the dispersion of information in many separate short communications, since 2023, we decided to propose a new article type, “New floristic findings” for the permanent collection titled New national and regional plant records: contribution to the flora of an Old World countries. This type of paper will be dedicated to new records of vascular plants and bryophytes that are reported as new components of the flora of selected Old Word countries (within Europe, Asia, and Africa) or, in the case of large countries, their significant regions (provinces or republics). Once a year, a new communication will be published in the journal, with all authors of the new records being co-authors of the article (the authors of individual new records will also be indicated in the record). We believe that such a collective report will have a chance to be more widely noticed in the scientific community. For each new record, the following information will be given: name of the taxon; synonyme/s; name/s of the contributing authors; the name of locality (a new record for …), name of the country, name of the province, latitude and longitude; brief details of habitat; the name of collector and date of collection; the name of the herbarium in which the voucher specimen is deposited; a paragraph regarding the taxonomy of the species as well as a paragraph regarding the distribution and ecology of the species. It is also worth admitting that the proposed here, “New national and regional plant records …” which the first part is published in the current volume (Nobis et al., 2023), is, in a sense, a reference to the first issue of the ASBP, in which professors Bogumił Pawłowski (1923) and Władysław Szafer (1923) published their “new records of vascular plants” found in Poland at that time, pointing at the same time to the need for geobotanical research, which after 100 years is still up to date!

The method of molecular species identification using DNA sequence variability, known as DNA barcoding, has been dynamically developing in the research field for two decades since the publication of Hebert et al. (2003). Currently, one of its most promising and thriving research directions is so-called super-barcoding, in which complete organellar genome sequences are successfully used as DNA barcodes (Li et al., 2015; Nock et al., 2011; Ślipiko et al., 2022; Yang et al., 2013). As in the case of standard, short barcoding sequences, the crucial issue for applying this method in practice is creating a reference database containing sequences of chloroplast and mitochondrial genomes. Intending to simplify the publication of organelle genome sequences as much as possible, in 2023, ASBP starts a series of articles published under the title: “Recent advances in super-barcoding of plants and fungi.” The Editorial Team would like to cordially invite all the Authors to publish their data on new complete plastome sequences as well as mitogenomes as part of one collective publication issued at the end of each subsequent calendar year. Such a publication will consist of many parts, each devoted to the genome of a different species. Authors who wish to publish a genome in this way will be indicated as contributors of a given plastome or mitogenome and at the same time as co-authors of the entire multi-author publication. Thanks to collective publication, this report will also have a chance to be more widely noticed in the scientific community. In order to ensure a common form of individual submissions and, to some extent, also common content, we provide two template files - one for the description of the chloroplast genome, the other for the mitogenome - which will help to collect information on the research material, methodology, and the results obtained. In the template, there are also some guidelines on the information that should be included in the description of the published genome, which, we hope, will maximally facilitate the editing of submission and shorten the time of its preparation.

The Editorial Team hopes for a wide response and looks forward to the submissions from Authors.