Celebrating Judith Masters and introducing a memorial fund to support scholars under-represented in biogeography

Judith Masters was many things for many people. A selection of these things—and her educational and professional history—is outlined in tributes by the International Primatological Society (IPS, 2022), Tattersall and Delpero (2022), Wilcox (2022) and Andrews et al. (2023). There is also a record of Judith in her own words (Linden, 2020). For the Journal of Biogeography (JBI), Judith was a long-time colleague, author, reviewer and an associate editor (Figure 1). In recent years, she also became the leading advocate for scholars who are under-represented in biogeography. This role came to the fore during discussions and preparation of a virtual issue on Women in Biogeography, for which she co-authored an editorial (Meynard et al., 2021). Her role grew subsequently as she critically shaped the Global Biogeography Initiative at JBI (Dawson et al., 2023) and was the first volunteer for a shadow editorial board intended to help under-represented authors prepare research and be more successful when submitting to JBI. Judith's commitment came from a long history of seeing, experiencing and addressing intersectional inequity (Linden, 2020; Masters et al., 1986). It was thus a great tragedy and loss to her multiple communities, past, present and future, when Judith with her partner Fabien Génin were killed in their home in Hogsback, Eastern Cape, South Africa in October 2022 (Dayimani, 2022). Judith was secondarily a biogeographer, being cardinally a primatologist. Nonetheless, her geographical and taxonomic knowledge—the core of good biogeography—was paramount and in demand. She began reviewing papers for JBI in 2006, long before she became an Associate Editor with the journal in 2010—brought onto the team by then Editor-in-Chief, Robert Whittaker, for her expertise in Africa–Madagascar, primates, and historical and island biogeography—and subsequently contributed as an author (Masters et al., 2014, 2021; Meynard et al., 2021). During her prematurely ended tenure as an Associate Editor, Judith handled 230 original submissions (and 244 revisions thereof) written by authors from at least 60 countries. Of manuscripts with a recorded final decision, 76 were accepted and 41 were rejected, an acceptance rate that was higher than average for the journal, reflecting Judith's compassionate and rigorous approach to editing. Judith's personal enthusiasm and intellectual drive manifested in an abundant preparedness to help and offer insightful comments. She had an incisive intellect, was good at critically reviewing theory and was always very pleasant with it. Judith also called things as she saw them and communicated regularly with chief editors on aspects that concerned her. These correspondences had a way of opening up discussion of broader issues. One example concerned Article Processing Charges (APCs). At the time—it must have been late-2021 or early-2022—APCs for JBI were ca. US$4500 per article. While this seems like a lot of money to most people, Judith made clear the disparities in relative unaffordability, observing with her characteristic down-to-earth insight that a single article in JBI was essentially the same cost as the new home extension she was helping to build for a friend. The comment exposed, in searing contrast, the simple fact that for substantial portions of the world, journals' APCs verge on insultingly exorbitant for an electronic commodity of as-yet-to-be-proven actual worth, relative to a physical structure of immediate and long-standing essential benefit. Judith's perspective shepherded us through initiatives to make the journal more representative of biogeography. While contributing to compiling a suite of papers previously published in the journal into an online Virtual Issue highlighting the contributions of women biogeographers (Figure 2), Judith stood out in emphasizing intersectional issues, including for women in developing nations, institutional differences within nations, and, by extension, non-women biogeographers in developing nations. Judith's advocacy and probing questions became a strong influence on the formation and development of the Global Biogeography Initiative, which kicked off with a Virtual Issue in January 2023 (Dawson et al., 2023; Figure 2). Judith would consistently recalibrate misunderstandings about inequities, or highlight risks such as the disempowerment of emerging researchers by conflating science and pseudoscience, the tendencies for initiatives to enrich a small already relatively benefited subset, and unintended but nonetheless emergent neo-colonialism during well-intended diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. In our most recent correspondences—ever pragmatic, humble, honest and generous—several weeks before her death, Judith commented that while, at 67 years, she was looking forward to retirement and a quieter life, she would still like to continue with the journal, especially to help students. Likewise, as an author, Judith was enjoying something of a rejuvenation. She was enthused that her Africa-Madagascar landbridge paper (Masters et al., 2021) had been cited 13 times already. She quipped that finally something she was doing seemed important to others, and that all her adult life she had ‘worked on unpopular, cryptic animals (lorisoid primates), with a global readership of about 12!’ She noted the ‘project ha[d] given [her] a second wind!’ and thanked the journal for giving her an opportunity. To honour Judith's memory, and to provide opportunity and wind in the sails for others, JBI has established the Judith Masters Fund for Scholars Under-represented in Biogeography. A key attribute of this support is to increase access by starting with efforts at the earliest stages of biogeographers' careers and work. Moreover, the efforts should start close to home. It is our intent to collaborate with local and regional institutions, as well as national and international organizations, to make sure that the funds are used as effectively as possible to increase the global reach of under-represented groups of biogeographers. Daniel Aslanian, Laurie Godfrey, Katey Hedger, Peter Linder, Christine Meynard, Anna Nekaris, Marina Rabineau, Michelle Sauther, Krystal Tolley and Martin Villet kindly shared many memories, essential information and/or comments on drafts of the manuscript. Jordan Taylor detailed Judith's contributions as a reviewer and editor with Journal of Biogeography. Margaret Donnelly helped negotiate the memorial fund at Wiley. Permits were not required for this article. The authors have no conflicts of interest. Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.