Tag: academic publishing

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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.

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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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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

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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. 

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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 Pensoft, welcomed 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.

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Museum of New Zealand’s journal Tūhinga moves to Pensoft’s ARPHA Publishing Platform

Having decided to turn Tūhinga “into a 21st-century”, digital-native diamond open-access journal, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa signed with scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft and its publishing platform ARPHA. As part of the agreement, not only is the journal to make its future content easy to read and discover by readers and computer algorithms, but will also do so for its legacy publications previously available solely in print. 

Tūhinga: Records of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is the successor of the Museum of New Zealand Records, the National Museum of New Zealand Records, and the Dominion Museum Records in Ethnology. Together, the outlets have acquired a nearly two century-worth of scientific knowledge provided by the museum’s curators, collection managers, and research associates across disciplines, from archaeology to zoology.

The renovated Tūhinga is to utilise the whole package of signature services provided by the platform, including ARPHA’s fast-track, end-to-end publishing system, which benefits readers, authors, reviewers and editors alike. 

This means that each submitted manuscript is to be carried through the review, editing, publication, dissemination and archiving stages without leaving the platform’s collaboration-centred online environment. The articles themselves are to be openly available in PDF, machine-readable JATS XML formats, and semantically enriched HTML for better reader experience. Thus, the journal’s articles will be as easy to discover, access, reuse and cite as possible. Once published, the content is to be indexed and archived instantaneously and its underlying data exported to relevant specialised databases. Simultaneously, a suite of various metrics is to be enabled to facilitate tracking the usage of articles and sub-article elements – like figures and tables – in real time.

The journal’s legacy content is to also become machine-discoverable and more user-friendly. Each of these papers will also be assigned with DOI and registered at CrossRef, while their metadata will be indexed at relevant databases. On the new journal website, they will be displayed as embedded PDF documents, while the reader will be able to do a full-text search of the article’s content.

Tūhinga welcomes original collections-based research in the natural sciences and humanities, including museological research, where its multidisciplinarity reflects the breadth and range of museum-based scholarship. The journal focuses primarily on New Zealand and the Pacific, but all contributions are considered. Having opted for a Diamond Open Access policy, the journal is to charge neither its readers, nor the authors.

“It’s a great honour to sign with the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and provide our publishing services to Tūhinga. Particularly, we take pride in letting the whole wide world straight into the holdings of Te Papa and the knowledge they have prompted in the distant past: something that would not typically be possible had they remained only on paper,”

says Prof. Dr Lyubomir Penev, founder and CEO at ARPHA and Pensoft.
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Contributions to Entomology is the fourth Senckenberg journal to move to ARPHA Platform

By signing with the scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft, Contributions to Entomology – a journal by the Senckenberg German Entomological Institute – becomes the fourth Senckenberg academic title to transfer to the growing portfolio of the open-access scholarly publishing platform ARPHA. 

Earlier this year, the publisher came to similar agreements with Arthropod Systematics & Phylogeny, Vertebrate Zoology and Geologica Saxonica, which have already been relaunched on ARPHA under the branding of the Senckenberg Natural History Collections Dresden.

Likewise, Contributions to Entomology is to continue as a journal published exclusively by Senckenberg, thanks to the white-label publishing solution designed by ARPHA to preserve the identity of historical journals. Still, the journal is to utilise the whole package of signature services provided by the platform, including ARPHA’s fast-track, end-to-end publishing system, which benefits readers, authors, reviewers and editors alike.

With ARPHA – the scholarly publishing platform initially developed by Pensoft to cater for the needs for academic journals – each submitted manuscript is carried through the review, editing, publication, dissemination and archiving stages without leaving the platform’s collaboration-centred online environment.

Thanks to ARPHA’s highly automated workflow, once published, the content is indexed and archived instantaneously and its underlying data exported to the relevant specialised databases. Simultaneously, a suite of various metrics is enabled to facilitate tracking the usage of articles and sub-article elements – like figures and tables – in real time .

The articles themselves are openly available in PDF, machine-readable JATS XML formats, and semantically enriched HTML for better reader experience. Thus, the journal’s content is made as easy to discover, access, reuse and cite as possible.

Founded back in 1951 under the title “Beiträge zur Entomologie”, Contribution to Entomology publishes original contributions on insect systematics, taxonomy, phylogeny, zoogeography, faunistics, ecology, applied entomology, entomological bibliography, and the history of entomology. The journal operates a Diamond Open Access policy, where neither access to content, nor publication incurs charges.

“We are delighted to welcome this particular journal on ARPHA Platform. While we’re publishing academic titles from across the sciences, Pensoft and ARPHA are still best known for their biodiversity- and ecology-themed journals and domain-specific innovations. This is why we are honoured to be able to share our experience and approach with Senckenberg and Contributions to Entomology,”

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

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About Senckenberg:

Senckenberg, Research Institutes and Natural History Museums, conduct research in bio- and geoscience. Major research fields are biodiversity and ecosystem research and the research on the entire Earth-Human-Earth system. Senckenberg headquarters are located in Frankfurt am Main, but research on marine, terrestrial and climate systems is also housed at additional nine locations throughout Germany: in Dresden, Gelnhausen, Gorlitz, Hamburg, Messel, Muncheberg, Tubingen, Weimar and Wilhelmshaven. Senckenberg employs about 1,000 people, including 300 scientists. Senckenberg scientists are active in projects worldwide, most of which are international collaborations with universities and other research institutions. Senckenberg hosts biological and geological research collections with more than 35 million series.

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The journal Biosystematics and Ecology moves to ARPHA Platform

The Austrian Academy of Sciences’ journal Biosystematics and Ecology now boasts an improved publishing infrastructure after moving to the technologically advanced ARPHA Platform and signing with publisher and technology provider Pensoft. The publisher, well-established in the domain of biodiversity-themed journals, is eager to welcome this latest addition to its growing open-access portfolio.

Biosystematics and Ecology is a continuation and replaces the established print-only Biosystematics and Ecology Series of the Austrian Academy of Sciences’s Commission for Interdisciplinary Ecological Studies. It publishes research focused on biodiversity in Central Europe and around the world, a domain of rapidly growing importance as а global biodiversity crisis is looming. A great advantage of Biosystematics and Ecology, in contrast to its predecessor, is the ability to simply update existing checklists and therefore to account for new scientific findings about taxonomic groups or regions. 

The peer-reviewed outlet includes contributions on a wide range of ecology and biosystematics topics, aiming to provide biodiversity data, such as catalogi, checklists and interdisciplinary research to the scientific community, while offering the maximum in accessibility, usability, and transparency. The journal is currently indexed in Crossref and archived in CLOCKSS, Portico and Zenodo.

Having already acquired its own glossy and user-friendly website provided by ARPHA, the journal also takes advantage of the platform’s signature fast-track publishing system, which offers an end-to-end publishing solution from submission to publication, distribution and archiving. The platform offers a synergic online space for authoring, reviewing, editing, production and archiving, ensuring a seamlessly integrated workflow at every step of the publishing process.

Thanks to the financial support of the Academy, Biosystematics and Ecology will publish under Diamond Open Access, which means that it is free to read and publish. Opting for ARPHA’s white-label publishing solution, the journal is published under the Academy’s branding and imprint, while benefiting from all signature high-tech features by ARPHA.

Biosystematics and Ecology also makes use of ARPHA Preprints, another platform developed by Pensoft, where authors can post a preprint in a matter of seconds upon submitting a manuscript to the journal. Once the associated manuscript gets published, the preprint is conveniently linked to the formal paper, displaying its citation details.

ARPHA’s easy-to-use, open-access publishing platform offers high-end functionalities such as diverse paper formats (PDF, machine-readable JATS XML, and semantically enriched HTML), automated data export to aggregators, web-service integrations with major global indexing databases, advanced semantics publishing, and automated email notifications and reminders. Features like these make it easy for both humans and machines all over the world to discover, access, cite, and reuse published research.

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ARPHA expands to computer science with International Journal of Universal Computer Science

The scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft and its self-developed publishing platform ARPHA welcome The International Journal of Universal Computer Science (J.UCS) to their portfolio. With this addition, the publisher, best known for a wide range of biodiversity-themed journals, steps into the field of computer science.

Since 1995, J.UCS has been publishing, digitally and in print, research articles and editorials on all aspects of computer science. With a free-of-charge policy for both authors and readers, and a review process usually taking between 6 and 10 weeks, its volumes have been documenting, connecting and reflecting novel aspects of computer science. J.UCS’ peer-reviewed monthly issues, as well as special issues on selected topics, continuously serve as one of the major knowledge bases for the research community in computer science. Currently, its Impact Factor stands at 1.139 (2020), and its CiteScore is at 2.0 (2020).

By moving to ARPHA, J.UCS now enjoys a long list of high-tech perks, which dramatically enhance the entire publishing process, from submission to publication, distribution and archiving.

The journal is already publishing on a brand-new, user-friendly website under Pensoft’s scholarly publishing platform ARPHA. Its latest issue features a model for forecasting air travel demand with machine learning; an analysis of the effect of different stimuli, such as video and sound on a user’s sense of presence in a virtual environment; and a new approach for solving the 15-puzzle problem using the artificial bee colony algorithm.

By moving to ARPHA, J.UCS now enjoys a long list of high-tech perks, which dramatically enhance the entire publishing process, from submission to publication, distribution and archiving. All users of the journal’s system – authors, editors, and reviewers, can benefit from ARPHA’s integrated approach, which ensures that once submitted, each manuscript goes through the whole cycle: from manuscript submission, review and copy/layout editing to publication, dissemination and archiving, without ever leaving ARPHA’s collaboration-focused online environment.

The easy-to-use platform offers features such as papers available in a machine-readable XML format, automated data export to aggregators, automated notifications and reminders, usage metrics and web-service integrations with major global indexing databases, which ensure that published articles are easy to discover, access, cite and reuse by both humans and machines all over the world.

“Since its foundation, J.UCS has built on and even created innovative features for digital libraries. By moving to the ARPHA platform, the J.UCS community can take advantage of the latest publishing features and technologies, including long-time archiving and review acknowledgement. Thus, the J.UCS team can concentrate on the journal’s core business and content quality, and can rely on professional service and support. Moving to the new platform was only possible due to the financial support of our consortium partners Graz University of Technology, ZBW, American University and California Polytechnic State University, and by in-kind support from Internet Studio Isser and photographer Christian Trummer for their graphical design contribution.”

Christian Gütl, Managing Editor-in-Chief.

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Pensoft welcomes SNSB’s paleontology and geobiology journal Zitteliana to its portfolio

The first papers of the journal of the Bavarian State Collection of Palaeontology and Geology in Munich since the move to Pensoft’s publishing platform are now online

The scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft welcomes the latest addition to its diverse portfolio of scientific outlets – the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Zitteliana, which publishes research in the fields of paleontology and geobiology.

Zitteliana is a journal of the Bavarian State Collection of Palaeontology and Geology Munich, which is part of the State Natural History Collection of Bavaria (SNSB), a research institution for natural history comprising five state collections.

Published both online and in print, the journal contains original articles, short contributions and reviews on all aspects of palaeontology and geobiology, welcoming research on all regions of the Earth and all periods of geologic time. The journal invites both modern and traditional research outputs, including palaeobiology, geobiology, palaeogenomics, biodiversity, stratigraphy, sedimentology, regional geology, systematics, phylogeny, and cross-disciplinary studies of these areas.

Since its launch in 1961, the journal has changed its name several times (i.e. Mitteilungen der Bayerischen Staatssammlung fuer Palaeontologie und historische Geologie, Zitteliana A (Abhandlungen) and Zitteliana B (Mitteilungen)), and has extended both scope and thematic range to cover global research from all areas of palaeontology and geobiology.

“This year, Zittelliana is celebrating its 60th anniversary in brand new gear. The move to the innovative scholarly publisher Pensoft shows how tradition can work hand in hand with innovation and modernity. We are very excited about this relaunch and very much look forward to transforming Zitteliana into an internationally leading journal in Paleontology and Geobiology together with Pensoft,” the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Professor Gert Woerheide adds.

After moving to Pensoft’s scholarly publishing platform ARPHA, and with a brand-new, user-friendly website, Zitteliana now takes full advantage of ARPHA’s signature fast-track, end-to-end publishing system, which significantly improves user experience for authors, reviewers and editors alike. The collaboration-focused platform supports manuscripts in all steps of the publishing process – submission, peer review, editing, publication, dissemination and archiving, all within its online environment. To the benefit of readers, published articles are then made available in PDF, machine-readable JATS XML formats, and semantically enriched HTML, which makes them much easier to discover, access, cite and reuse.

In addition, ARPHA Platform offers a long list of high-tech features and human-provided services such as advanced data publishing, linked data tables, semantic markup and enhancements, automated export of sub-article elements and data to aggregators, sub-article-level usage metrics, and web-service integrations with more than 40 world-class indexing and archiving databases.

The journal’s first papers published with Pensoft are already publicly available. One of the studies, authored by Norbert Wannenmacher, Volker Dietze, Matthias Franz of the state office for geology, resources and mining at Freiburg’s regional council, and Guenter Schweigert of the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History, describes three new species of fossil species from south-western Germany.

Zitteliana is the latest in a series of biodiversity-themed journals to join the Pensoft family – earlier this year the ichthyology journal Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria signed with the scholarly publisher and moved on to ARPHA Platform.

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Follow Zitteliana on Facebook and Twitter.Additional information: 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 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.

Contacts:

Prof. Dr. Gert Woerheide, Editor-in-Chief of Zitteliana
woerheide@snsb.de

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