Metabarcoding & Metagenomics (MBMG) has been approved for inclusion in Clarivate’s Web of Science, one of the most renowned citation databases that indexes the world’s leading scholarly journals. This recognition underscores the journal’s growing influence in its field, and reflects its commitment to publishing high-quality, peer-reviewed research.
Since its launch in September 2017, the journal has been at the forefront of publishing papers on metabarcoding and metagenomics for both basic and applied studies. At the time of its inauguration it was seen as a particularly forward-looking and niche scholarly outlet because it was devised to address the need for an innovative journal in the rapidly developing fields of DNA-based environmental research, biodiversity monitoring and nature conservation. Going forward, MBMG’s inclusion in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) at Web of Science will further enhance the visibility and accessibility of existing and future research.
Now that it has completed the Web of Science’s rigorous quality and integrity assessment, MBMG may receive its first Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as early as 2025. This is a testament to the dedication of the authors, reviewers, and editorial board members who have contributed to the journal’s success.
MBMG is indexed and archived in more than 60 databases, including Scopus, DOAJ, ResearchGate, Library of Congress, British Library, Baidu Scholar, CNKI, EBSCO, Unpaywall, CLOCKSS and Zenodo.
In June 2024, the journal received a Scopus CiteScore of 5.4, placing it in Q1 in five categories: Animal Science and Zoology; Insect Science; Plant Science; Ecology, Evolution, Behaviour and Systematics; and Nature and Landscape Conservation.
This inclusion in the Web of Science marks a new chapter in the journal’s mission to facilitate the production and dissemination of important research.
“The quality of research and the perception by the community our MBMG staff supports matter most. Being officially listed in Web of Science and having a Journal Impact Factor are criteria of high importance to many of our authors. Therefore, I‘m very happy about this new development.”
“From the very beginning, we were convinced that this niche is of high relevance and will be rapidly expanding. The inclusion of MBMG in the Web of Science will be of particular importance for our (young) authors, who are too often evaluated by IF-based criteria. At the same time, MBMG hopefully will face a further growing number of submissions.”
The journal aims to serve as a leading platform for scholarly research, discussion, and innovation in the field of natural history collections worldwide and will be published by Pensoft Publishers.
By promoting the exchange of knowledge between museum professionals, researchers, educators, and enthusiasts, the publication aims to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of natural history and its significance in society.
Natural History Collections and Museomics promoted by Pensoft at the 2024 International Congress of Entomology in Kyoto, Japan.
Natural History Collections and Museomics (NHCM) encourages interdisciplinary approaches and collaborations across fields such as taxonomy, conservation, education, ethics, and museum studies. The editorial team welcomes original research articles, reviews, case studies, methods, letters and perspectives addressing a wide range of topics related to natural history institutions and collections.
The journal is supported by CETAF (Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities), Europe’s leading voice for taxonomy and systematic biology. The support of this European network of scientific institutions ensures a robust and collaborative foundation for the journal’s academic endeavours.
By utilising a Diamond Open Access model, the journal allows free access to published content without any fees for authors or readers. This approach ensures that important research can reach the widest possible audience, promoting inclusivity and global collaboration in the field.
A strong Editorial Board is already in place, co-chaired by two distinguished scholars in the field.
Dr Franco Andreone: Serving as the zoology curator at the Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali in Turin, Italy, Dr Andreone is a renowned herpetologist with a profound impact on amphibian taxonomy, roles of natural history museums and conservation, particularly in Italy and Madagascar. His experience as a former Chair of the IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group – Madagascar and his current role as a special advisor underscore his life-longdedication to preserving biodiversity.
Prof Shuqiang Li: A prominent Chinese arachnologist, Prof Li brings his vast expertise in zoological systematics to the journal. Among many accomplishments, he led the construction of 29 natural history museums for the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of which is an 8,800 square metre collection building to preserve more than 10 million specimens and another a 6,600 square metre public museum in the Zoological Institute in Beijing. As leading taxonomist and the Editor-in-Chief of Zoological Systematics, Professor Li has described more than 2,000 new species. His work on how Tethyan changes shaped diversification is most notable. His research has also revealed the origin of spider webs based multi-omics analyses.
The Board expects the team of subject (associate) editors to soon expand further, as they have been actively recruiting colleagues from diverse professional and geographical backgrounds. Experts in fields within the scope of the new journal are also invited to apply to join the NHCM team as either editors or reviewers. Conveniently, the respective application forms are made accessible from the journal website’s homepage.
“The journal Natural History Collections and Museomics will serve as a perfectforum and place to publish cutting-edge research.
“Natural history collections are gargantuan resources and tools to discover and preserve global diversity. We need to treat them as immense treasures to discover and describe new species and understand Earth’s marvels.”
Dr Franco Andreone and Prof Shuqiang Li, Editors-in-Chief.
“We are thrilled to launch Natural History Collections and Museomics on the ARPHA Platform. The importance of natural history collections cannot be overstated and we look forward to publishing valuable research to a wide audience.”
Prof Dr Lyubomir Penev, CEO and founder of Pensoft Publishers.
Submissions to the journal are now open. Researchers, scholars, and practitioners are invited to contribute articles to Natural History Collections and Museomics.
For more information and submission guidelines, please visit the Natural History Collections and Museomics website.
You can also follow the journal on X and Facebook.
About ARPHA Platform:
ARPHA is a full-featured, end-to-end publishing platform for journals, books, conference materials and preprints. ARPHA offers flexible operating and business models, and a wide-range of automated and human-provided services. The ARPHA team places a special focus on its scholarly communication solutions designed to leverage the visibility and outreach of academic output, while promoting inclusivity and engagement.
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. Over the past 30 years, Pensoft has built a reputation for its innovations in the field, after launching ZooKeys: the very first digital-first scientific journal in zoology and the first to introduce semantic enrichments and hyperlinks within a biodiversity article. To date, the company has continuously been working on various tools and workflows designed to facilitate biodiversity data findability, accessibility, discoverability and interoperability.
Contrary to the popular expression, diamonds do not shine. Instead, they reflect, refract and disperse light to the fascination of the onlooker.
Similarly, even though Diamond Open Access (OA) offers a stellar publication and dissemination route for both readers and authors, some of the biggest actors in the scholarly publishing industry have been trying to deflect the concept behind it. While they might be moving from reader-facing charges, they seem to be billing libraries, institutions and consortia the same money they would have received in subscription fees.
National library consortia are paying for read-and-publish / publish-and-read ‘transformative agreements’ (also known as ‘transitional agreements’ or ‘big deals’), which include clauses for “non-APC” quotas of Open Access publishing for authors based in their country’s institutions. As a result, authors need to only submit their work to journals cited in these agreements, if they wish to avoid APC payments.
Meanwhile, these Transformation Agreements (TAs) are raising increasing concerns about their capability to achieve their very purpose: assisting scientific publishers in flipping their journals from closed- to open-access models in line with the objectives of the global Open Access 2020 Initiative. Back in 2016, the initiative signed by over 150 scholarly organisations posited a deadline for the majority of today’s scholarly journals to transfer from subscription to OA by 2020. While it is obvious that as of mid-2024 this transition is far from complete, a recent report issued by Jisc, estimates that based on 2018-2022 data, “it would take at least 70 years for the big five publishers to flip their TA titles to OA”. Citing “an erosion in confidence that TAs will achieve a transition within an acceptable timescale”, the report also highlights pressing issues concerning transparency on how “OA publishing charges are costed” and how and when the surveyed publishers will achieve their task.
Impact on scholars
The above-mentioned approaches to ostensibly free-of-charge scholarly publishing are indeed taking a great burden off the shoulders of many scientists, as long as they are working in top research institutions in certain countries.
In the meantime, independent researchers and smaller or underfunded institutions – typically located in countries that have not signed such expensive agreements at national or library consortia levels – are left out of the equation. If they wish to publish in the very same flashy journals, they need to pay fees in the range of several thousands of dollars either out of their research grants, or their own pockets. The “barriers to access” seem to have simply transformed into ”barriers to publication”.
There are also production costs. After all, quality publication of human knowledge in the vast digital world, which is increasingly powered by smart computer algorithms and Artificial Intelligence, surely costs some money, doesn’t it? Publication platforms comprising continuously evolving workflows and third-party integrations, impeccable user experience, diligent customer support, and far-reaching dissemination and communication, all require specialised staff and equipment. The question is how much does it cost to make science effectively public? The immediate answer is that taxpayers currently pay corporate publishers prices several times as high as actual publication costs.
Impact on smaller journals, societies and publishers
In the past, smaller publishers predominantly launched as open-access academic outlets. After all, they were either run by scientists who saw paywalls as the unthinkable evil that hinders the world’s progress, or they simply realised that their primary audience could not afford to pay to learn about their field. Further, it is the same altruistic and understanding backstory of society and smaller institution-led journals – in addition to their historical legacy and independence from commercial entities – that make them particularly cherished and respected in academia.
The issue here is that, these days, scientific publications and journals abound, which makes it practically impossible for one’s work to reach another researcher, let alone non-specialist audiences, including policy makers, without a lot of dedicated effort. Even if there was a single huge publicly available centralised source for all research outcomes out there, it would be practically impossible for one – expert or not – to navigate the deluge of data and statements without sophisticated tools, infrastructure and workflows capable of discerning what is actually useful.
To ensure scientific output is practically findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR), you need much more than a URL that resolves at no additional charge. Instead, a journal needs to provide optimal discoverability and visibility for its content, so that publications are capable of reaching their intended audience via existing search engines and portals.
This can only be achieved through professional publishing platforms (e.g. peer review, publication, hosting, third-party service integrations), tools (e.g. metadata import/export; semantic tagging) and services (e.g. application to indexing databases; in-house editorial services; copy-editing, customer support; science communication), which will inevitably increase the costs of the publication process.
Here comes the tough call for most smaller institutions and journals: whether to seek the services of multiple professional providers and then introduce APCs to cover the expenditure OR to opt for in-house editorial services and open-source infrastructure, but compromise the quality of service, including the discoverability and reach of the content with which their authors entrust them.
Yet, this is a choice that only needs to be made by small- to mid-sized, OA-born publishers and journal owners, since large commercial, originally subscription publishers are covered through deals and agreements, as long as a research paper is submitted by a research team with the right affiliation. The situation begs the question: who is actually being charged?
Impact on equity and sustainability in academia
Suffice to say, the scientific community has gone a long way to prompt public and worldwide access to the latest research at a greater than ever speed and scale. However, there is still a gaping chasm in academia when it comes to inclusivity and equity in scholarly publishing and dissemination of knowledge. Despite the ongoing work and progress coordinated by international funders of research and policy-makers, a vast part of the world continues to be singled out due to a mismatch in funding and unhealthy commercialisation that paves the way to mono-/oligopolies.
Arguably, academia is threatened by its own good intentions and a new status quo, where it is only researchers working at well-funded research institutions that get to publish their work in visible and discoverable journals.
Our way forward
While our team at Pensoft realises there is no easy way to high-quality, open and equitable scholarly publishing, we are firm supporters of an environment governed by transparency, inclusivity and democracy, where researchers are not “limited in their choice of publication channels due to financial capacities rather than quality criteria”, as put by the Council of the European Union in their “Conclusions on high-quality, transparent, open and equitable scholarly publishing” issued last year.
If scholarly publishers and technology providers remain true to their purpose of being a vehicle for scientific knowledge between the individual scientist and the world, we can collectively contribute to a healthy diversity of continuously developing tools and workflows for researchers, journal owners, learned societies and scientific funders to cater for their own users and audiences in the ever-evolving modern world.
As such, we have accepted it as our mission to provide affordable, compromise-free Diamond OA, empowering smaller journals to deliver top-quality services to their authors, editors and readers. Alternatively, our end-to-end publishing platform ARPHAalso offers several Gold OA and custom-made workflows designed to support particular groups of authors, as they balance affordability, functionality, reliability, transparency and long-term sustainability. In both cases, our client journals enjoy a complete set of highly automated and human-provided services packaged in a way that fits their wants and needs.
Above all, our approach is based on working individually with journal owners, societies and publishers to create their own custom operational and business model, and achieve long-term sustainability for their scholarly titles.
To ensure our utter transparency and trustworthiness for our clients, we actively support and adopt international best practices and standards in scholarly publishing, including cOAlition S’s Plan S requirements regarding full transparency of costs and prices, and the Journal Comparison Service.
For the first time, the Journal Citation Reports™ – released by Clarivate in late June 2024 – features the open-access scientific journal One Ecosystem. The inaugural Journal Impact Factor for One Ecosystem stands at 1.8.
The 2024 report reflects how many times content published in a particular journal in 2021 and 2022 was cited in the last complete year: 2023. Then, this total count is divided by the number of “citable” (i.e. research and review) articles to estimate the JIF for 2023.
The news comes shortly after the journal specialised in ecology and sustainability data received a Scopus CiteScore of 4.6. In comparison to Clarivate and the Journal Impact Factor, Scopus uses data from its own database and calculates its CiteScore based on publications and citations from the last four complete years.
Amongst the unique features of the journal are the collaborative writing and review environment integrated within the manuscript submission workflow to allow for heavily automated structured data import; semantically enriched publications; and field-specific article formats, such as Ecosystem Service Mapping; Ecosystem Service Models; Ecosystem Accounting Table; Monitoring Schema.
“Since day one, One Ecosystem has been widely praised in the community for its novel and data-driven approach to ecology and sustainability science, coupled with a straight-forward and low-cost open-access scholarly publishing strategy for any researcher in the world. Now, the recognition by Web of Science and Scopus provides the journal with further proof of its top quality and research integrity that – I expect – will attract even more researchers in the field to submit their work to the journal”
This collaboration underscores the society’s commitment to maintaining high-quality, high-visibility and low-cost open-access publishing for the biogeographical community.
“This switch of our journal to a cutting-edge platform, and its committed team of editors, should continue to raise the journal’s visibility and impact,”
Established by TIBS in 2009, Frontiers of Biogeography serves as an independent forum for research dissemination, and publishes studies on all geographical variations of life at all levels of organisation. The journal adheres to rigorous academic standards, reflecting the mission of TIBS to promote and advance public understanding of biogeographical sciences.
The journal’s editorial leadership includes Prof. Robert J. Whittaker (University of Oxford, United Kingdom), Dr. Janet Franklin (San Diego State University, USA) and Prof. Mark J. Costello (Nord University, Norway), all esteemed figures in the field.
Frontiers of Biogeography was launched on the ARPHA Platform on the 1st of July 2024. The platform is now open for new submissions and offers a robust review and publication process. Articles and supplementary materials published on ARPHA will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), ensuring wide accessibility and reuse. All previously published issues on the e-Scholarship platform will remain freely accessible, ensuring the continuity of knowledge dissemination.
Frontiers of Biogeography has recently been selected for inclusion in the Web of Science™. Beginning with volume 14(1), articles will be indexed in Emerging Sources Citation Index, Zoological Record, Biological Abstracts, and BIOSIS Previews, significantly enhancing the journal’s visibility.
Furthermore, the journal’s latest Scopus CiteScore of 4.3 places it in the Q1 category for Ecology and Ecology, Evolution, Behaviour and Systematics, and elevates it from Q3 to Q2 in the Global and Planetary Change category.
“I am looking forward to working with the new platform and to the start of a new partnership with our colleagues at Pensoft Publishers. This arrangement underlines the commitment of The International Biogeography Society to the growth and success of Frontiers of Biogeography as a service to our members and the broader scientific community,”
stated Prof. Dr. Robert J. Whittaker, Editor-in-Chief.
“In these days of sometimes exorbitant costs to pay publication charges by some of the big publishers, TIBS and Pensoft are joining forces to make it possible for all authors to be able to publish their work at reasonable costs while maintaining the high scholarly standards of peer-review and editorial management which are the foundation of good science,”
added Prof. Dr. Mark J. Costello, Co-Editor-in-Chief.
“We are excited to welcome Frontiers of Biogeography to the ARPHA Platform and look forward to a successful, open-access future. This partnership aligns with our mission to support scientific research through innovative publishing solutions,”
said Prof. Dr. Lyubomir Penev, CEO and founder of Pensoft Publishers.
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Visit the Frontiers of Biogeography’s new website at https://biogeography.pensoft.net/. Use the Email alert field on the homepage to follow the latest publications, news, and highlights from Frontiers of Biogeography.
You can also follow the journal on X (formerly Twitter) at @newbiogeo.
Keep up to date with the latest from TIBS by following them on X (@Biogeography) and joining the society’s Facebook group.
Launched in 1989 to cover the areas of agriculture and food science, with a special emphasis on interdisciplinary studies, the open-access scientific journal has already begun publishing its 2024 contenton its new ARPHA-powered website. The move comes as a result of a new partnership signed between the United Arab Emirates University and Pensoft: the scholarly publisher and technology innovator.
Since 2013, EJFA is also indexed by Web of Science. Its latest Journal Impact Factor is 1.1, while its Scopus CiteScore reads 1.9.
Launched in 2013, ARPHA is Pensoft’s in-house publishing platform, initially developed by the publisher as an all-round solution for its own journal portfolio. In 2016, ARPHA became available as a white-label solution, thereby allowing client journals to retain their owners as exclusive publishers, and keep their identities intact.
The move to ARPHA ensures a seamless, end-to-end publishing solution for EJFA that encompasses all stages from manuscript submission to article publication, indexation, dissemination, and archiving. The publishing services provided by ARPHA also include a variety of human-provided services and integrations with third-party providers, intended to maximise the reach and usability of scholarly knowledge published in EJFA.
“Together with ARPHA, we can achieve milestones in our journal publishing with ARPHA’s easy-to-use, open-access publishing platform backed with high-end functionalities.”
Abdul Jaleel, Editor-in-Chief of EJFA
EJFA publishes original research articles, review papers and short communications. It welcomes studies from a wide spectrum of agriculture and food disciplines, including sustainable agriculture systems, agricultural biotechnology, environmental impacts, food safety, and food engineering.
Submissions to EJFA are subject to single-blind peer review. The journal operates a continuous publication model, which means that once accepted, papers go online as soon as they are typeset and ready for publication.
Due to ARPHA Platform’s technologically advanced and automated dissemination, indexing and archiving workflows, as well as its platform-level integrations with >60 leading databases, content published in EJFA is rapidly exported to dozens of platforms and widely used academic search portals, thereby becoming ever easier to discover, access, reuse and cite by audiences from all over the world.
EJFA has already published its first articles since the move. The journal’s backlist content all the way to the inaugural 1989 journal volume can be accessed from a link on the journal’s new website’s homepage. Conveniently, more recent content has been made available from the Articles space.
“It’s an honour to partner with an esteemed institution like the United Arab Emirates University. We are confident that in ARPHA Platform, our new partners will find a great fit for the immaculate professionalism, integrity and overall appeal of the Emirates Journal of Food and Agriculture,” says Pensoft’s CEO and founder Prof. Lyubomir Penev. “Being the first Middle Eastern journal to join ARPHA’s journal portfolio, EJFA has already become a very special client of ours.”
“We are really excited to partner with Pensoft and run the Emirates Journal of Food and Agriculture on the ARPHA platform. This decision by the UAEU will really help the journal to reach the next level with the experience of the Pensoft team and the high-end technology of ARPHA. We believe that this strategic partnership will boost the visibility and accessibility of our journal globally. Together with ARPHA, we can achieve milestones in our journal publishing with ARPHA’s easy-to-use, open-access publishing platform backed with high-end functionalities,” says EJFA’s Editor-in-Chief, Abdul Jaleel.
Where freshwater rivers meet seas and oceans lies a scientifically intriguing and ecologically important type of ecosystem. As estuarine ecosystems provide various and diverse services to humanity and the planet at large, including food security and natural buffers and filters in the events of storms and water pollution, there has been an increasing need to facilitate and support the exchange of research findings and ideas related to their conservation and sustainable management by means of new-age technology and novel approaches.
This is how a team of renowned and passionate scientists, headed by Dr. Soufiane Haddout (Ibn Tofail University, Morocco), took the decision to launch a brand new open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly, aptly titled Estuarine Management and Technologies. They explain the rationale behind the journal in a new editorial, published to mark the official launch of the journal.
Having already worked closely with the scientific publisher and technology provider Pensoft on the fine touches of the concept of the new academic title, the team opted to use Pensoft’s publishing platform of ARPHA. As a result, the new journal provides a seamless, end-to-end publishing experience, encompassing all stages between manuscript submission and article publication, indexation, dissemination and permanent archiving.
Within the collaboration between the journal’s and Pensoft’s teams, Estuarine Management and Technologies will take advantage of various services offered by the ARPHA platform, including full-text automated export in machine-readable and minable JATS-XML format to over 60 relevant databases for scientific literature and data; semantically enriched and multimedia-friendly publications accessible in HTML; and rich statistics about the outreach and usage of each published article and its elements (e.g. figures and tables), including views, downloads, online mentions, and citations.
The publishing platform’s in-house indexing team will continue their close work with the journal’s editors to ensure that the scholarly outlet retains highest quality and integrity, so that it covers the criteria for indexation at additional key databases that require individual evaluation. In the meantime, ARPHA’s technical and editorial teams will provide technical and customer support to authors, editors and reviewers. The marketing and promotion team of ARPHA will be also joining forces with the journal to boost the visibility and image of the new academic title.
During the launch phase, content accepted for publication following double-blinded peer review will be made public right away for free to both authors and readers, where the journal will be operating under a continuous publication model.
Estuarine Management and Technologies welcomes studies from a wide spectrum of disciplines, including physics, chemistry, geology, biology, and hydrology, with a focus on interdisciplinarity, multifaceted approaches and holistic perspectives.
“One crucial aspect of estuarine management is the sustainable use of resources to balance conservation with human needs. Striking this delicate equilibrium requires a holistic understanding of the intricate web of ecological interactions within estuarine environments. Advanced technologies, such as isotopic techniques, environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis, can provide insights into the biodiversity of estuarine ecosystems with unprecedented precision,”
Amongst the unique features of the new journal are several additional publication types, such as Expert View, Video Paper, Rapid Communication, Mini Review and Estuarine Scientists, where these have been added to traditional publication outputs (e.g. Research Paper, Review Paper, Data Paper) to foster collaboration between researchers and other stakeholders in the field.
The journal is also running an annual Trailblazing Talent in Estuarine Management and Technologies award intended to recognise and encourage young scientists and engineers at the forefront of cutting-edge research in estuarine management and technologies. Nominations and applications are currently open.
Estuarine Management and Technologies also welcomes applications for guest editors in order to further expand the journal and its immediate expert network.
“I am delighted to see the Estuarine Management and Technologies journal already live on the ARPHA platform. We are confident that this particularly important, yet so far quite overlooked area of study will greatly benefit from this highly promising journal,”
says Prof. Lyubomir Penev, CEO and founder of Pensoft and ARPHA.
“I am pleased to announce the launch of the Estuarine Management and Technologies journal on ARPHA, a decision rooted in our commitment to advancing the field. We believe that this strategic partnership will not only enhance the visibility and accessibility of our journal, but will also foster collaboration and innovation within the estuarine management and technologies community. We expect this alliance to be a catalyst for scholarly excellence, providing a robust platform for researchers and practitioners to share insights, address challenges, and propel the field forward. Together with ARPHA, we are confident in the positive impact our journal will have on shaping the future of estuarine management and technologies.”
says Dr. Soufiane Haddout, Editor-in-Chief and founder, Estuarine Management and Technologies.
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You can visit the journal website and sign up for its newsletter from the homepage.
2023 was a fantastic year for ARPHA, marked by a series of significant milestones and innovations in our scholarly publishing mission. As we reflect on the past year, we are excited to share the major strides taken by our dedicated in-house team to provide the best customised, end-to-end services for our clients.
Expansion of the ARPHA journal family
ARPHA welcomed new and diverse titles into its fold, demonstrating a commitment to promoting open-access research across many disciplines.
This journal found a new home on ARPHA, enhancing its visibility and impact in the scientific community. Focused on biological invasions in both inland and coastal water ecosystems from around the world, Aquatic Invasions is an official journal of the International Association for Open Knowledge on Invasive Alien Species.
Catering to cutting-edge research in the field of material sciences, this journal launched on ARPHA in March. Atomic Layer Deposition targets scientists specialising in all aspects of Atomic Layer Deposition and related alternating vapour phase technologies.
Another significant addition to our platform, this journal focuses on the technological facets of researching, managing, and preserving estuarine environments.
The addition of these titles is indicative of things to come, with more exciting entries expected to join ARPHA in 2024.
ARPHA’s strategic partnerships and integrations
ARPHA’s commitment to increasing the reach and impact of scientific research led to noteworthy collaborations in 2023.
Our partnership with ResearchGate significantly boosted readership and visibility for our open-access publications; we saw a 2-5 times increase in article views for journals that opted in to have their context indexed. 20 Pensoft journals were indexed, including the flagship titles ZooKeys, PhytoKeys, MycoKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal and Research Ideas and Outcomes.
This integration enhances the understanding of articles’ scientific impact and reuse, offering valuable insights to both readers and authors. With scite.ai, every citation is categorised as Supporting, Contrasting, or Mentioning, based on the context of surrounding sentences within the citing publication.
Enhancements and accolades
Our continuous efforts in tech infrastructure and design services yielded notable achievements and recognitions.
ARPHAPDF layout revamp
Research papers published in ZooKeys demonstrating the former (left) and the current (right) article layout seen in the PDF format.
We introduced a modernised layout for the PDF format of articles, enriching the reading experience. The new format focuses on readability and accessibility, implementing many changes requested by the scientific community.
Our innovative XML-based authoring tool now supports a novel workflow for nanopublications in biodiversity research, piloted at the Biodiversity Data Journal.
The Bulgarian Society of Cardiology’s journal’s inclusion in Scopus marked a significant achievement. The journal met several criteria, including: immaculate peer review and editorial processes; a good and consistent yearly publication volume; high-quality and user-friendly website and infrastructure; well-pronounced internationality and inclusivity; and considerable readership and citation rates.
One Ecosystem‘s selection for inclusion in this index was a testament to its quality and integrity. 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.
Keeping pace with scholarly publishing trends
Staying at the forefront of scholarly publishing, we continuously adapted to the latest best practices and addressed our clients’ needs.
ARPHA’s advisory role in journal comparison service
Pensoft’s involvement in developing the Journal Comparison Service by cOAlition S reflected our commitment to shaping the future of open-access publishing. The service freely and securely enables libraries, library consortia, and funders to understand if the fees they pay are commensurate with the publication services delivered.
EU’s conclusions on OA scholarly publishing
Our official statement aligned with the EU’s stance, emphasising our support for open-access initiatives. We highlighted the need to promptly address existing issues in the publishing system, so that healthy competition can thrive and contribute to a reality safe from monopolies and corporate capture.
As we progress into 2024, ARPHA remains dedicated to enhancing the scientific impact and visibility of our journals, leveraging technology and collaborations to serve the ever-evolving needs of the scholarly community. We thank our partners, clients, and contributors for being part of this exciting journey as we look forward to another successful year.
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For news from & about ARPHA and the journals using the platform, you can follow us on Twitter and Linkedin.
Pensoft has announced a partnership with Zendy, a leading online platform for free and affordable academic content. This collaboration marks a significant milestone in both companies’ efforts to make scientific research more accessible and widely disseminated.
Zendy has an extensive digital library that provides users with easy access to a wealth of academic materials, including journals, articles, and e-books. Their free online library, Zendy Open, collates quality open-access research and is available worldwide.
Zendy’s website, featuring key information about the platform.
Pensoft’s journals are powered by ARPHA and cover various fields of science, emphasising biodiversity, environmental, and ecological studies. By making content available on Zendy, Pensoft aims to support the academic community’s needs and foster an environment of discovery.
Zendy’s innovative platform, with user-friendly interface and advanced AI-powered features, enhances the research experience by simplifying the discovery and retrieval of relevant academic content. This aligns with Pensoft’s commitment to embracing technological advancements to improve the accessibility and impact of scientific research.
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For more information about Zendy, visit their website. Follow Pensoft on X and Facebook to stay up to date with the publisher.
Esteemed entomologist specialising in true flies (order Diptera) and cybertaxonomy, Dr Torsten Dikow was appointed as the new Editor-in-Chief of the leading open-access peer-reviewed journal in systematic zoology and biodiversity ZooKeys.
Today, Dikow is a Research Entomologist and Curator of Diptera and Aquatic Insects at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (Washington, DC, USA), where his research interests encompass the diversity and evolutionary history of the superfamily Asiloidea – or asiloid flies – comprising curious insect groups, such as the assassin flies / robber flies and the mydas flies. Amongst an extensive list of research publications, Dikow’s studies on the diversity, biology, distribution and systematics of asiloid flies include the description of 60 species of assassin flies alone, and the redescription of even more through comprehensive taxonomic revisions.
During his years as a postdoc at the Field Museum (Illinois, USA), Dikow was earnestly involved in the broader activities of the Encyclopedia of Life through its Biodiversity Synthesis Center (BioSynC) and the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). There, he would personally establish contacts with smaller natural history museums and scientific societies, and encourage them to grant digitisation permissions to the BHL for in-copyright scientific publications. Dikow is a champion of cybertaxonomic tools and making biodiversity data accessible from both natural history collections and publications. He has been named a Biodiversity Open Data Ambassador by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).
Dikow is no stranger to ZooKeys and other journals published by the open-access scientific publisher and technology provider Pensoft. For the past 10 years, he has been amongst the most active editors and a regular author and reviewer at ZooKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal and African Invertebrates.
“Publishing taxonomic revisions and species descriptions in an open-access, innovative journal to make data digitally accessible is one way we taxonomists can and need to add to the biodiversity knowledge base. ZooKeys has been a journal in support of this goal since day one. I am excited to lend my expertise and enthusiasm to further this goal and continue the development to publish foundational biodiversity research, species discoveries, and much more in the zoological field,”
ZooKeys is a peer-reviewed, open-access, rapidly disseminated journal launched to accelerate research and free information exchange in taxonomy, phylogeny, biogeography and evolution of animals. ZooKeys aims to apply the latest trends and methodologies in publishing and preservation of digital materials to meet the highest possible standards of the cybertaxonomy era.
ZooKeys publishes papers in systematic zoology containing taxonomic/faunistic data on any taxon of any geological age from any part of the world with no limit to manuscript size. To respond to the current trends in linking biodiversity information and synthesising the knowledge through technology advancements, ZooKeys also publishes papers across other taxon-based disciplines, such as ecology, molecular biology, genomics, evolutionary biology, palaeontology, behavioural science, bioinformatics, etc.
