Eye for Detail: Papers in Pensoft journals sport a new look

Readers at some of the journals published by Pensoft, who have downloaded/printed a publication or ordered a physical copy of a journal issue over the last few weeks, might be in for a surprise concerning the layout of the PDF format of the articles. 

Research papers published in ZooKeys demonstrating the former (left) and the current (right) article layout seen in the PDF format. 

Even though it’s been years since online publishing has become the norm in how we are consuming information – including scientific publications – we understand that academia is still very much fond of traditional, often paper-based, article layout format: the one you use when accessing a PDF file or a print copy, rather than directly scrolling down through the HTML version of the article. 

Even if today large orders of printed volumes from overseas are the exception, rather than the rule, we know we have readers of ours who regularly print manuscripts at home or savе them on their devices. Trends like this have already led to many journals first abandoning the physical- for digital-first, then transitioning to digital-only publication format.

Meanwhile, it is true that needs and demands have fundamentally changed in recent times. 

As we speak, readers are accessing PDF files from much higher-quality desktops, in order to skim through as much content as possible. 

In the meantime, authors are relying on greater-quality cameras to document their discoveries, while using advanced computational tools capable of generating and analysing extra layers of precise data. While producing more exhaustive research, however, it is also of key importance that their manuscripts are processed and published as rapidly as possible.

So, let’s run through the updates and give you our reasoning for their added value to readers and authors.

Revised opening page

One of the major changes is the one to the format of the first page. By leaving some blank space on the left, we found a dedicated place for important article metadata, i.e. academic editor, date of manuscript submission / acceptance / publication, citation details and licence. As a result, we “cleaned up” the upper part of the page, so that it can better highlight the authors and their affiliations. 

Bottom line: The new layout provides a better structure to the opening page to let readers find key article metadata at a glance. 

Expand as much – or as little – as comfortable

As you might know, journals published by Pensoft have been coming in different formats and sizes. Now, we have introduced the standard A4 page size, where the text is laid in a single column that has been slightly indented to the right, as seen above. Whenever a figure or a table is used in a manuscript, however, it is expanded onto the whole width of the page.

Before giving our reasons why, let’s see what were the specific problems that we address.

Case study 1

Some of our signature journals, including ZooKeys, PhytoKeys and MycoKeys, have become quite recognisable with their smaller-than-average B5 format, widely appreciated by people who would often be seen carrying around a copy during a conference or an international flight.

However, in recent times, authors began to embrace good practices in research like open sharing of data and code, which resulted in larger and more complex tables. Similarly, their pocket-sized cameras would capture much higher-resolution photos capable of revealing otherwise minute morphological characters. Smaller page size would also mean that often there would be pages between an in-text reference of a figure or a table and the visual itself.

So, here we faced an obvious question: shall we deprive their readers from all those detailed insights into the published studies?

Case study 2

Meanwhile, other journals, such as Herpetozoa, Zoosystematics and Evolution and Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift, had long been operating in A4 size, thereby providing their readers with a full view of the figures in their publications. 

Yet, the A4 format brought up another issue: the lines were too long for the eye comfort of their readers. 

What they did was organise their pages into two-column format. While this sounds like a good and quite obvious decision, the format – best known from print newspapers – is pretty inconvenient when accessed digitally. Since the readers would like to zoom in on the PDF page or simply access the article on mobile, they will need to scroll up and down several times per page. 

In addition, the production of a two-column text is technologically more challenging, which results in extra production time.

Bottom line: The new layout allows journals to not sacrifice image quality for text readability and vice versa. As a bonus, authors enjoy faster publication for their papers.

Simplified font

If you have a closer look at the PDF file, you would notice that print-ready papers have also switched to a more simplistic – yet easier to the eye – font. Again, the update corresponds to today’s digital-native user behaviour, where readers often access PDF files from devices of various resolutions and skim through the text, as opposed to studying its content in detail.

In fact, the change is hardly new, since the same font has long been utilised for the webpages (HTML format) of the publications across all journals.

Bottom line: The slightly rounder and simplified font prompts readability, thereby allowing for faster and increased consumption of content. 

What’s the catch? How about characters and APCs?

While we have been receiving a lot of positive feedback from editors, authors and readers, there has been a concern that the updates would increase the publication charges, wherever these are estimated based on page numbers.

Having calculated the lines and characters in the new layout format, we would like to assure you that there is no increase in the numbers of characters or words between the former and current layout formats. In fact, due to the additional number of lines fitting in an A4 page as opposed to B5, authors might be even up for a deal.

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One Ecosystem selected for inclusion in the Web of Science

Seven years after its official launch in May 2016, the One Ecosystem journal has successfully completed the rigorous quality and integrity assessment at Web of Science.

Scientific papers published in One Ecosystem from 2021 onwards will be indexed at the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) and the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), revealed the Indexing team at ARPHA Platform.

The news means that One Ecosystem might see its very first Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as early as 2024, following the latest revision of the metric’s policies Clarivate announced last July. According to the update, all journals from the Web of Science Core Collection are now featured in the Journal Citation Reports, and thereby eligible for a JIF.

“Giving all quality journals a Journal Impact Factor will provide full transparency to articles and citations that have contributed to impact, and therefore will help them demonstrate their value to the research community. This decision is aligned to our position that publications in all quality journals, not just highly cited journals, should be eligible for inclusion in research assessment exercises,” said back then Dr Nandita Quaderi, Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Vice President at Web of Science.

“We are happy to learn that Web of Science has recognised the value and integrity of One Ecosystem in the scholarly landscape. Not only does it mean that the scientific content One Ecosystem has been publishing over the years is persistent in merit and quality, but that innovative research outputs are already widely accepted and appreciated within academia. After all, one of the reasons why we launched One Ecosystem and why it has grown to be particularly distinguished in the field of ecology and sustainability is that it provides a scholarly publication venue for traditional research papers, as well as ‘unconventional’ scientific contributions,”

comments Prof Dr Benjamin Burkhard, Executive Director at the Institute of Physical Geography & Landscape Ecology, Leibniz University Hannover (Germany) and founding Editor-in-Chief of One Ecosystem.

“These ‘unconventional’ research outputs – like software descriptions, ecosystem inventories, ecosystem service mappings and monitoring schema – do not normally see the light of day, let alone the formal publication and efficient visibility. We believe that these outputs can be very useful to researchers, as well as practitioners and public bodies in charge of, for example, setting up indicator frameworks for environmental reporting,”

says Prof Davide Geneletti, Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering of University of Trento, Italy, and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of One Ecosystem.

“In fact, last year, we also launched a new article type: the Ecosystem Accounting table, which follows the standards set by the the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA). This publication type provides scientists and statisticians with a platform to publish newly compiled accounting tables,” 

adds Dr Joachim Maes, Policy analyst at the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of One Ecosystem.

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Previously, One Ecosystem has been accepted for indexing at over 60 major academic databases, including Scopus, DOAJ, Cabell’s Directory, CABI and ERIH PLUS. In June 2022, the journal received a Scopus CiteScore reading 7.0, which placed it in Q1 in five categories: Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology; Nature and Landscape Conservation; Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous); Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics.

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You can follow One Ecosystem on Twitter and Facebook.

Ultimaterials B.V. signs with Pensoft to publish Atomic Layer Deposition International Journal on ARPHA Platform

To fully unlock the potential of the upcoming era of Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) research, it is crucial to incorporate the viewpoints of academia, industry, and governmental organisations, and ensure that these insights are promptly reflected in the academic articles.

To address this demand and bridge the gap between industry and scientific advances, Ultimaterials BV: a Netherlands-based company developing products in the domain of rechargeable batteries, nanotechnology and composite materials, run by scientists of diverse backgrounds, such as physics, chemistry and mechanical engineering – recently launched the new diamond open-access, peer-reviewed Atomic Layer Deposition International Journal

Powered by Pensoft’s publishing platform ARPHA, the new academic outlet is dedicated to the latest research and developments in the field of atomic layer deposition.

Atomic Layer Deposition is targeting scientists specialising in all aspects of ALD and related alternating vapour phase technologies. Pensoft’s publishing platform ARPHA enables the journal to publish a range of scholarly content, such as original research articles, reviews, short communications, and method papers.

The system is tailored to assist the authors and the editors throughout the entire manuscript submission, review, and publication process, delivering an end-to-end experience and resulting in the publication of articles, enriched with data and multimedia content.

In addition to streamlining the editorial management and publication process, Atomic Layer Deposition can now enjoy improved visibility for its published articles: every article is published in multiple formats, including convenient PDF, semantically-enriched HTML and fully data-minable XML. Thanks to its advanced features and integration with major indexing services, it’s not only simpler to cite and reuse the published research, but the articles are also more readily discoverable and accessible to researchers and decision-makers across the globe.

Atomic Layer Deposition publishes papers in atomic and molecular layer deposition, area selective and spatial ALD, vapour phase infiltration, atomic layer etching, new developments in ALD process design, precursors and chemistry, applications, and characterization and analysis of films and coatings.

Thanks to the generous sponsorship of Ultimaterials B.V., the journal is not only free-to-read, but also free-to-publish, thereby ensuring that the latest research in ALD is available to a global audience to access, but also to produce and disseminate efficiently.

Submissions that report on innovative research, offer new insights or techniques, and contribute to advancing the state-of-the-art in the field from authors working in academic, industrial, and government research settings are especially welcome in Atomic Layer Deposition. 

“Publishing a peer reviewed journal is quite a complicated endeavour. The peer review software, website hosting, production, layout, proofreading, publication in HTML, XML and PDF, indexing and archiving are fortunately all taken care of by the ARPHA Platform and the skilled team at Pensoft. We are glad that the Atomic Layer Deposition journal has found a home with a solid publishing foundation,”

comments the founder of the journal and CEO of Ultimaterials B.V., Dr DJ Monsma.

“We are thrilled to welcome the Atomic Layer Deposition International Journal to our expanding portfolio of scholarly journals published on ARPHA Platform. We are confident that this important and particularly promising industry is being met with increasing enthusiasm. This positive trend is also seen in the appreciation and popularity of this novel journal among professionals in the field”,

says Prof. Lyubomir Penev, CEO and founder of Pensoft and ARPHA.

The first papers of 2023 are already available online on the new website of Atomic Layer Deposition

Within the pioneering papers published, there is a research article by US scholars that discusses the use of ALD for the fabrication of efficient and stable catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction in water splitting for renewable energy applications.

Another study by a Dutch team reports the development of a world-first low-temperature atmospheric-pressure spatial ALD process for SiNx, which can reach comparably low oxygen atomic percentages as those obtained by low-pressure temporal ALD processes based on similar chemistries.

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The Atomic Layer Deposition journal is also on social media. You can follow the ALD journal on Twitter and Linkedin.

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Additional information

About Ultimaterials B.V.:
Ultimaterials B.V. consists of scientists with background in physics, chemistry and mechanical engineering, and talented business administrators.  Products developed by Ultimaterials B.V. are in the domain of rechargeable batteries, nanotechnology and composite materials. Apart from developing products with improved functionality and longevity, Ultimaterials BV also provides consulting services for venture fund enterprises and investments in the energy sector and materials science.

About ARPHA:
ARPHA is the first end-to-end, narrative- and data-integrated publishing solution that supports the full life cycle of a manuscript, from authoring to reviewing, publishing and dissemination. ARPHA provides accomplished and streamlined production workflows that can be customized according to the journal’s needs. The platform enables a variety of publishing models through a number of options for branding, production and revenue models to choose from.

About Pensoft:
Pensoft is an independent, open-access publisher and technology provider, best known for its biodiversity journals, including ZooKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal, Phytokeys, Mycokeys, One Ecosystem, Metabarcoding and Metagenomics and many others. 

To date, the company has continuously been working on various tools and workflows designed to facilitate biodiversity data findability, accessibility, discoverability and interoperability. The latest large projects, led by Pensoft include the OpenBiodiv knowledge graph and the Horizon 2020 project BiCIKL.

Contacts: 

Prof. Lyubomir Penev, founder and CEO at ARPHA and Pensoft
Email: l.penev@pensoft.net

Dr DJ Monsma, founder of the Atomic Layer Deposition International Journal and CEO of Ultimaterials B.V.
LinkedIn

ARPHA Platform reports 6 journals now indexed in ERIH PLUS

Following a thorough evaluation that has been going on for the last several months, the Indexing team at ARPHA Platform reports that the applications submitted on behalf of six journals have all been approved by ERIH PLUS – the European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS)

Four journals (co-)published by the scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft: Nature Conservation, NeoBiota, Neotropical Biology and Conservation and Fossil Record, and two journals using the white-label publishing solution of ARPHA Platform: the Journal of the Bulgarian Geographical Society and the Amsterdam University PressHeritage, Memory and Conflict (HMC) were recently accepted by the key index within the field of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS): ERIH PLUS.

ERIH (European Reference Index for the Humanities or ERIH) was established by the European Science Foundation. In 2014, it was extended to also include social science disciplines and was renamed ERIH PLUS.

The aim of the index is to increase the visibility, searchability and availability of research published in the fields. It is widely used within the European academic community.

“We want to be a key player in the European work that is done to make HSS research available to the wider community, and we want to do this by providing an index which not only supplies metadata about journals, but also places the HSS research in a wider academic context,”

says the team behind ERIH PLUS.

The ERIH PLUS easily-searchable database includes journals that have proved to meet an extensive list of requirements in line with good academic practices and research integrity, such as: 

“explicit procedures for external peer review; an academic editorial board, with members affiliated with universities or other independent research organizations; a valid ISSN code, confirmed by the international ISSN register; abstracts in English and/or another international language relevant for the field for all published articles; information on author affiliations and addresses; a maximum two thirds of the authors published in the journal from the same institution”.

ERIH PLUS is a member of different key-organisations like COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) and DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals).

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The six journals mentioned here are not the first ones in the ARPHA portfolio to be accepted at ERIH Plus. Already in the database are a total of 15 scholarly outlets published on the platform: 

  1. BioRisk
  2. Check List
  3. European Science Editing
  4. Maandblad voor Accountancy en Bedrijfseconomie
  5. One Ecosystem
  6. Plant Ecology and Evolution
  7. Plant Sociology
  8. Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO Journal)
  9. Rethinking Ecology
  10. Fossil Record
  11. Heritage, Memory and Conflict
  12. Nature Conservation
  13. NeoBiota
  14. Neotropical Biology and Conservation
  15. Journal of the Bulgarian Geographical Society

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Support in indexing and archiving is only a part of the human-provided services offered by the ARPHA publishing platform to client journals regardless of their choice to be (co-)published by Pensoft or retain their own publishing brand. 

You can find more about the services offered by ARPHA on the platform’s website.

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You can also follow ARPHA Platform on:

Pensoft joins Advisory Panel to further develop the Journal Comparison Service by cOAlition S

Back in December, we announced that Pensoft joined 27 other publishers in sharing prices and services via the Journal Comparison Service developed by cOAlition S, in order to boost transparency in scholarly publishing.

Now, we are up to another challenge: we have joined the Advisory Panel appointed by cOAlition S to help further the improvement and development of this important service. The Advisory Panel consists of twelve members (six publishers and six end-users) representing different stakeholders in the scholarly communication ecosystem.

Journal Comparison Service (JSC) is an initiative by cOAlition S aimed to improve transparency and communication regarding publishing costs between publishers and institutions. 

It serves to provide the libraries with all the information they need to make informed decisions about whether the fees charged by a particular journal are reasonable and commensurate with the services delivered. 

In their turn, the publishers can use it to demonstrate their dedication to fostering an open business culture and to bring awareness of the value of their services. 

To facilitate this process, the publishers are advised to submit information about their prices and publishing policies on an annual basis using the JCS Frameworks format. 

An Advisory Panel will review the Frameworks and offer suggestions on how to improve them, aiming to make the data collected as valuable as possible to all involved parties. Additionally, the Panel will actively promote the use of JCS among stakeholders.

The panel will meet twice a year, and the first meeting has already been scheduled for May 2023.

We are delighted that we have been able to establish such a high-quality Advisory Panel, representing all the key stakeholders.

The primary function of the Panel will make recommendations on how the data collection frameworks might be further developed to ensure that the price and service data is as useful as possible for those who procure publishing services, whilst remaining deliverable by the publishers who are asked to provide these data,

commented Robert Kiley, Head of Strategy at cOAlition S.

Additional information:

About JCS:

Journal Comparison Service is a secure, free-of-charge service that enables libraries, library consortia, and funders to better understand if the fees they pay are commensurate with the publication services delivered. Publishers provide information in a standard format, including information about the publication frequency, the peer review process, times from submission to acceptance, the range of list prices for APCs and subscriptions and more.

About cOAlition S:

On 4 September 2018, a group of national research funding organisations, with the support of the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC), announced the launch of cOAlition S, an initiative to make full and immediate Open Access to research publications a reality. It is built around Plan S, which consists of one target and 10 principles

Pensoft among the first 27 publishers to share prices & services via the Journal Comparison Service by Plan S

In support of transparency and openness in scholarly publishing and academia, the scientific publisher and technology provider Pensoft joined the Journal Comparison Service (JCS) initiative by cOAlition S, an alliance of national funders and charitable bodies working to increase the volume of free-to-read research. 

As a result, all journals published by Pensoft – each using the publisher’s self-developed ARPHA Platform – provide extensive and transparent information about their costs and services in line with the Plan S principles.

The JCS was launched to aid libraries and library consortia – the ones negotiating and participating in Open Access agreements with publishers – by providing them with everything they need to know in order to determine whether the prices charged by a certain journal are fair and corresponding to the quality of the service. 

According to cOAlition S, an increasing number of libraries and library consortia from Europe, Africa, North America, and Australia have registered with the JCS over the past year since the launch of the portal in September 2021.

While access to the JCS is only open to librarians, individual researchers may also make use of the data provided by the participating publishers and their journals. 

This is possible through an integration with the Journal Checker Tool, where researchers can simply enter the name of the journal of interest, their funder and affiliation (if applicable) to check whether the scholarly outlet complies with the Open Access policy of the author’s funder. A full list of all academic titles that provide data to the JCS is also publicly available. By being on the list means a journal and its publisher do not only support cOAlition S, but they also demonstrate that they stand for openness and transparency in scholarly publishing.

“We are delighted that Pensoft, along with a number of other publishers, have shared their price and service data through the Journal Comparison Service. Not only are such publishers demonstrating their commitment to open business models and cultures but are also helping to build understanding and trust within the research community.”

said Robert Kiley, Head of Strategy at cOAlition S. 

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Journals using the ARPHA Platform as a white-label publishing solution to publish their journal(s) under their own label should note that it is the responsibility of the journal owner publisher to submit journal data to the JCS. This means that it is only journals published on ARPHA and associated with Pensoft that have been automatically featured in the JCS.

However, the ARPHA team is ready to assist journals using the platform’s white-label publishing to provide details to cOAlition S and the JCS.

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About cOAlition S:

On 4 September 2018, a group of national research funding organisations, with the support of the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC), announced the launch of cOAlition S, an initiative to make full and immediate Open Access to research publications a reality. It is built around Plan S, which consists of one target and 10 principles. Read more on the cOAlition S website.

About Plan S:

Plan S is an initiative for Open Access publishing that was launched in September 2018. The plan is supported by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funding and performing organisations. Plan S requires that, from 2021, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant Open Access journals or platforms. Read more on the cOAlition S website.

New ARPHA features strengthen journal communities

Long past are the days where a journal’s role was to merely provide a means to getting a piece of research work out of a drawer and into the wide world. Today, a modern journal with demonstrable online presence and a distinct ‘character’ may as well be seen as a social network in its own right, which brings together a community of frequent readers, authors, reviewers and dedicated editors.

At ARPHA, we believe that this is the time to support and give voice to these very special communities by getting to know each other and sharing and celebrating their achievements. After all, it’s strong and active communities that foster collaboration, recognition and real-life impact.

Revamped journal newsletters

Newsletter from PhytoKeys emailed to journal users subscribed for article alerts.

Journal readers subscribe to New Article alerts to stay updated about new research papers as they are published in a trusted scholarly outlet. Yet, having subscribed to notifications from a particular title – or a selection of similar titles – means that those users – typically authors, editors or active researchers in the field – might also be interested in learning about the journal’s latest Scopus CitesCore or Impact Factor; article collections calling for contributions; or new additions to the editorial board. All of these could be extremely useful to consider before submitting a paper, applying for the editorial board or simply updating a “to-read” list.

Thanks to the visually appealing look and clickable section tabs, newsletter subscribers can easily navigate through the email and explore its content at a glance.

Find instructions about how to update your profile and set up your email alerts in the ARPHA Manual.

‘Post your news’ button

Prof Christopher John Topping introduced himself with a meet-and-greet at the time of joining the newly renovated Food and Ecological Systems Modelling Journal as a co-Editor-in-Chief.

As wholesome communication is a two-way experience, we decided to support journals published on ARPHA in setting up the stage for their users to voice their activities. By adopting the Post your news button, many of the journals introduced a simple form accessible to registered users, where they can update the community about basically everything that’s relevant to the journal and its scope. 

Particularly, the feature is useful to introduce new members of the editorial board; seek out collaborators; promote an upcoming scientific event; or celebrate the far-reaching impact and recognition of one’s research work published in the journal. Once approved by a moderator, the news item is featured in the journal’s designated News section on its website’s homepage and its newsletter.

Find instructions about how to submit a news item and how submitted news items are moderated.

Editors’ Choice badges

Every quarter, the Editors-in-Chief at Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS) recognise one paper as an “Editor’s Choice”, and an yearly award is presented at the end of each year.

A simple, yet effective way to celebrate the impact of a particular publication is having the journal’s editors pinpoint the paper as an Editor’s choice. While many journals have traditionally been awarding articles and their authors with similar recognitions, it is not often that anyone is aware of those outside of the editorial board and the awardees themselves.

As a practical solution, we introduced customisable badges that can be added next to an article’s title, and allow a journal’s editors to highlight the best contributions.

Find instructions for editors on how to add badges to published articles.

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Follow ARPHA Platform on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Plant Ecology and Evolution, a journal of Meise Botanic Garden and the Royal Botanical Society of Belgium, moves to ARPHA

Plant Ecology and Evolution

Another diamond open-access, peer-reviewed journal – owned by Meise Botanic Garden and the Royal Botanical Society of Belgium – now boasts an improved publishing infrastructure after moving to the technologically advanced ARPHA Platform, developed by scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft. Pensoft is eager to welcome a journal with rich history going back to 1862 on its platform.

Plant Ecology and Evolution is a scientific journal devoted to the ecology, phylogenetics, and systematics of all plant groups in the traditional sense (including algae, fungi, and myxomycetes), also covering related fields such as comparative and developmental morphology, conservation biology, evo­lution, phytogeography, reproductive biology, population genetics, and vegetation studies. Although submissions from all over the world are welcome, the journal has a particular interest in tropical biodiversity, especially from Africa. 

Officially launched 12 years ago in 2010, it was established as a merger of the Belgian Journal of Botany and Systematics and Geography of Plants, as their scopes started to overlap significantly, with both focusing mainly on (sub)tropical African botany.

The Belgian Journal of Botany dates back to 1862, when its first volume was published under the name Bulletins de la Société royale de Botanique de Belgique. As for Systematics and Geography of Plants, its publication started in 1902 under the name Bulletin du Jardin Botanique de l’État à Bruxelles.

Plant Ecology and Evolution opted for ARPHA’s white-label solution, benefitting from all of ARPHA’s services and a new user-friendly website, while publishing under the branding and imprint of the two non-profit organisations that support it: Meise Botanic Garden and the Royal Botanical Society of Belgium.

Thanks to their financial support, Plant Ecology and Evolution is published under Diamond Open Access, which means that it is free to read and publish. In addition, it takes advantage of ARPHA’s signature fast-track publishing system, which offers an end-to-end solution from submission to publication, distribution, and archiving. Providing a synergic online space for submission, reviewing, editing, production, and archiving, ARPHA ensures a seamlessly integrated workflow at every step of the publishing process.

The journal will also support publication of the submitted manuscripts on ARPHA Preprints platform developed by Pensoft to streamline public access to the latest scientific findings. The platform allows authors to submit a preprint in a matter of seconds along with their manuscript, with no need to upload any additional files. Once the associated paper is published, a two-way link between the article and the preprint is established via CrossRef.

New articles of Plant Ecology and Evolution will be published in three formats: PDF, machine-readable JATS XML, and semantically enriched HTML for better and mobile-friendly reader experience.

“We chose ARPHA for many reasons, one of which is functionality: the entire editorial process happens online, which provides a smooth experience for authors, reviewers, and editors. ARPHA also allows for the automatic dissemination of biodiversity data to numerous databases. Our journal wants to contribute to making biodiversity data freely available to all in the spirit of open science, and ARPHA makes this possible, easy and automated,”

said Editor-in-Chief, Dr Brecht Verstraete.

“With the ARPHA platform, Plant Ecology and Evolution is stepping into the future of biodiversity publishing,”

he added.

Additional information:

About Meise Botanic Garden:

The history of Meise Botanic Garden dates back to 1796 and it is therefore older than the Kingdom of Belgium. The Garden has a collection of more than 18,000 living plants and has a huge herbarium with approximately 4 million specimens. The Garden also has a botanical library with more than 200,000 books from the 15th century until today. As a research institute, it maps and studies the diversity of plants, mushrooms, and algae covering the whole world, from Antarctica to the rainforests of Congo.

About the Royal Botanical Society of Belgium:

The Royal Botanical Society of Belgium was founded in 1862 and promotes botany through scientific research, publications, and conferences. The members of the society, in Belgium and abroad, are teachers, students, researchers, naturalists, nature reserve managers, etc. The society is open to anyone interested in botany.

About Pensoft:

Pensoft is an independent academic publishing company, well-known worldwide for its innovations in the field of semantic publishing, as well as for its cutting-edge publishing tools and workflows. In 2013, Pensoft launched the first ever end to end XML-based authoring, reviewing and publishing workflow, as demonstrated by the Pensoft Writing Tool (PWT) and the Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ), now upgraded to the ARPHA Publishing Platform. Flagship titles include: Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), One Ecosystem, ZooKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal, PhytoKeys, MycoKeys and many more.

About ARPHA:

ARPHA is the first end-to-end, narrative- and data-integrated publishing solution that supports the full life cycle of a manuscript, from authoring to reviewing, publishing and dissemination. ARPHA provides accomplished and streamlined production workflows that can be customised according to the journal’s needs. The platform enables a variety of publishing models through a number of options for branding, production and revenue models to choose from.

Contact:

Dr Brecht Verstraete, Editor in chief of Plant Ecology and Evolution
Email: brecht.verstraete@plantentuinmeise.be

Prof Lyubomir Penev, CEO and founder at Pensoft and ARPHA
Email: l.penev@pensoft.net

Natural History Museum of Berlin’s Fossil Record journal started publishing on ARPHA Platform

Fossil Record – the paleontological scholarly journal of the Natural History Museum of Berlin (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin) published its first articles after moving to the academic publisher Pensoft and its publishing platform ARPHA in late 2021. The renowned scientific outlet – launched in 1998 – joined two other historical journals owned by the Museum: Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift and Zoosystematics and Evolution, which moved to Pensoft back in 2014.

Published in two issues a year, the open-access scientific outlet covers research from all areas of palaeontology, including the taxonomy and systematics of fossil organisms, biostratigraphy, palaeoecology, and evolution. It deals with all taxonomic groups, including invertebrates, microfossils, plants, and vertebrates.

As a result of the move to ARPHA, Fossil Record utilises the whole package of ARPHA Platform’s services, including its fast-track, end-to-end publishing module, designed to appeal to readers, authors, reviewers and editors alike. A major advantage is that the whole editorial process, starting from the submission of a manuscript and continuing into peer review, editing, publication, dissemination, archiving and hosting, happens within the online ecosystem of ARPHA. 

As soon as they are published, the articles in Fossil Record are available in three formats: PDF, machine-readable JATS XML and semantically enriched HTML for better and mobile-friendly reader experience. 

The publications are equipped with real-time metrics on both article and sub-article level that allow easy access to the number of visitors, views and downloads for every article and each of it’s figures, tables or supplementary materials. In their turn, the semantic enhancements do not only allow for easy navigation throughout the text and quick access to cited literature and the article’s own citations, but also tag each taxon that appears in the paper to provide links to further information concerning its occurrences, genomics, nomenclature, treatments and more as available from various databases.      

The first five papers – now available on the brand new journal website powered by ARPHA – already demonstrate the breadth of topics covered by Fossil Record, including systematics, paleobiogeography, palaeodiversity and morphology, as well as the international appeal of the scholarly outlet. The articles are co-authored by collaborative research teams representing ten countries and spanning three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa.

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About the Natural History Museum of Berlin:

The “Museum für Naturkunde – Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science” is an integrated research museum within the Leibniz Association. It is one of the most important research institutions worldwide in the areas of biological and geological evolution and biodiversity.

The Museum’s mission is to discover and describe life and earth – with people, through dialogue. As an excellent research museum and innovative communication platform, it wants to engage with and influence the scientific and societal discourse about the future of our planet, worldwide. Its vision, strategy and structure make the museum an excellent research museum. The Natural History Museum of Berlin has research partners in Berlin, Germany and approximately 60 other countries. Over 700,000 visitors per year as well as steadily increasing participation in educational and other events show that the Museum has become an innovative communication centre that helps shape the scientific and social dialogue about the future of our earth. 

Second economics journal by Moscow State University migrates to ARPHA Platform

Two years ago the publishing platform, developed by the scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoftwelcomed Moscow State University’s journal Population and Economics. Now, ARPHA announces the transfer of a second academic title published by the institution’s Faculty of Economics. The peer-reviewed, open-access BRICS Journal of Economics covers key economic issues of middle-income developing countries, primarily BRICS countries. 

BRICS Journal of Economics is a fairly new scientific outlet launched in 2020 with the aim to provide a better understanding of the specifics of the BRICS countries (China, Russia, Brazil, India, and South Africa), as well as a broader knowledge about the prospects emerging in those constantly growing economies. It publishes four issues per year, where all articles are submitted in English and undergo double-blind peer review. Thanks to sponsorship available from one of the leading universal banks of Russia: VTB Bank, it runs a Diamond Open Access policy, where neither reading, nor publishing incurs any costs to readers and authors.

With its move to ARPHA, BRICS Journal of Economics is to utilise the whole package of ARPHA Platform’s signature services, including a fast-track, end-to-end publishing module, designed to appeal to readers, authors, reviewers and editors alike. 

Soon, the journal will relaunch on its brand new ARPHA-powered website, where authors, editors and reviewers will find and track the progress of all of their tasks, files and correspondence, in addition to the infrastructure needed to complete every step along the editorial process. Put simply, once submitted, a manuscript has no need to leave the online, collaborative-friendly platform all the way to its publication, dissemination and archiving.

On their part, the readers of BRICS Journal of Economics will enjoy the publications in a conventional PDF format that allows easier storage, as well as semantically enriched HTML. The latter ensures a complete and mobile-friendly reading experience by relying on easier navigation and plenty of related additional linked information within the article’s text. Meanwhile, the third utilised format: the machine-readable JATS XML will make the publications much more visible and findable to both humans searching on the Internet and algorithms mining the web. 

Amongst the other advantages provided by the journal is a full suite of various metrics designed to track the usage of both articles and sub-article elements, such as figures and tables, at any time.

“We are delighted to extend our collaboration with the Moscow State University’s Faculty of Economics by taking care after the technological advancement of BRICS Journal of Economics. This particular journal is undoubtedly serving a fantastic role in the community by filling a niche in the study of Economics, and it is an honour for us at ARPHA and Pensoft to aid its reach to the international public,” 

says Prof. Dr Lyubomir Penev, founder and CEO at ARPHA and Pensoft.

Additional information:

About Faculty of Economics, Lomonosov Moscow State University:

Founded in 1941, the Faculty of Economics continues the centuries-old tradition of economic education in Russia, being one of the leading university-level centres in the field of Economics.

The faculty combines fundamental education and professional training in order to develop its students’ analytical skills and creative thinking, thereby helping its graduates to adapt quickly and successfully to the requirements of any job in the field of economics.

About Lomonosov Moscow State University:

Founded in 1755 by Russian polymath, scientist and writer Mikhail Lomonosov, the university is currently the highest-ranking Russian educational institution, according to the 2018 QS World University Rankings. It is also considered to be the most prestigious university in the former Soviet Union.

Every year Moscow University enrolls about 4 000 international students and postgraduates from all over the world.