Posts

Posted on

Vegetation Classification and Survey awaits first Journal Impact Factor

Only four years after the inaugural editorial by Prof Dr Florian Jansen, Dr Idoia Biurrun, Prof Dr Jürgen Dengler and Dr Wolfgang Willner that officialised the third and still youngest scientific journal of the International Association of Vegetation Science (IAVS), the Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS) journal successfully completed the rigorous quality and integrity assessment at Web of Science (WoS).

Late May 2024 saw the whole content ever published in VCS added to the Core Collection of the renowned academic platform, further boosting its discoverability, accessibility and reliability to researchers and other stakeholders alike, confirms the Indexing team of Pensoft and the ARPHA scholarly publishing platform.

“Many thanks to IAVS as owner and Pensoft as publisher, who made this success story possible. However, most of all, this early inclusion into the Web of Science Core Edition is due to the good articles of our authors and the great volunteer service our Associate Editors, Guest Editors, Linguistic Editors, Editorial Review Board members, and other reviewers did and do for VCS,”

the Chief Editors comment on the latest success.

The news means that VCS is soon to receive its very first Journal Impact Factor (JIF): allegedly the most popular and sought after journal-level metric, which annually releases the citation (or “impact”) rate of a given scholarly journal over the last period. By the end of next month, for example, we will know how different journals indexed by WoS have performed compared to each other, based on the number of citations received in 2023 (from other journals indexed by WoS) for papers published in 2021 and 2022 combined.

In 2022, VCS and its all-time publications were also featured by the largest and similarly acclaimed scientific database: Scopus, thus receiving its very first Scopus CiteScore* last June. At 2.0, the result instantly gave a promise of the widely appreciated content published in the journal.

In an editorial, published in the beginning of 2024, the Chief Editors assessed the performance of the journal and analysed the available data from Scopus to predict the citation rates for the journal in the next few years. There, the team also compared the journal’s latest performance with similar journals, including the other two journals owned by the IAVS (i.e. Applied Vegetation Science and Journal of Vegetation Science). Given that as of May 2024 the Scopus CiteScoreTracker for VCS reads 2.5, their optimistic forecasts seem rather realistic.

“The VCS articles of 2023 were on average even better cited than those in Applied Vegetation Science of the same year and had reached about the same level as Journal of Vegetation Science and Biodiversity and Conservation,”

they concluded.

In a recent post, published on the IAVS blog, on behalf of the four VCS Chief Editors, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Dengler further comments on the latest achievements of the journal, while also highlighting particularly valued recent publications.

The team also uses the occasion to invite experts in the field of vegetation science to submit their manuscripts in 2024 to make use of the generous financial support by the IAVS. Given the increasing interest in VCS, the journal also invites additional linguistic editors, as well as reviewers who wish to join the Editorial Review Board.

***

Keep yourself updated with news from Vegetation Classification and Survey on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. You can also follow IAVS on X and join the Association’s public group on Facebook. 

***

*Note that the Scopus database features a different selection of scientific journals compared to Web of Science to estimate citation metrics. The indexers are also using different formulae, where the former looks into citations made in the last two complete years for eligible papers published in the same years.

***

About Vegetation Classification and Survey:

Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS) is an international, peer-reviewed, online journal on plant community ecology published on behalf of the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS). It is devoted to vegetation survey and classification at any organisational and spatial scale and without restriction to certain methodological approaches.

The scope of VCS is focused on vegetation typologies and vegetation classification systems, their methodological foundation, their development and their application. The journal publishes original papers that develop new typologies as well as applied studies that use such typologies, for example, in vegetation mapping, ecosystem modelling, nature conservation, land use management, or monitoring. Particularly encouraged are methodological studies that design and compare tools for vegetation classification and mapping, such as algorithms, databases and nomenclatural principles, or are dealing with the conceptual and theoretical bases of vegetation survey and classification. 

VCS also includes two permanent collections (or sections): “Ecoinformatics” and “Phytosociological Nomenclature”. 

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.

About ARPHA Platform:

Pensoft publishes its journals on its self-developed ARPHA publishing platform: an 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 heavily customised by client journals not necessarily linked to Pensoft as a publisher, since ARPHA is specially targeted at learned societies, research institutions and university presses. The platform enables a variety of publishing models through a number of options for branding, production and revenue models. Alongside its elaborate and highly automated publishing tools and services, ARPHA provides a range of human-provided services, such as science communication and assistance in indexation at databases like Web of Science and Scopus, to provide a complete full-featured publishing solution package.

Posted on

ARPHA expands client journal network to the Middle East

The Emirates Journal of Food and Agriculture (EJFA), a peer-reviewed scholarly outlet in agricultural and food sciences by the College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, United Arab Emirates University (UAEU), has now become the first scientific journal from the Middle East to take advantage of the end-to-end scholarly publishing platform ARPHA and its diverse range of services.

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 content on 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.

Posted on

Pensoft collaborates with R Discovery to elevate research discoverability

Leading scholarly publisher Pensoft has announced a strategic collaboration with R Discovery, the AI-powered research discovery platform by Cactus Communications, a renowned science communications and technology company. This partnership aims to revolutionize the accessibility and discoverability of research articles published by Pensoft, making them more readily available on R Discovery to its over three million researchers across the globe.

R Discovery, acclaimed for its advanced algorithms and an extensive database boasting over 120 million scholarly articles, empowers researchers with intelligent search capabilities and personalized recommendations. Through its innovative Reading Feed feature, R Discovery delivers tailored suggestions in a format reminiscent of social media, identifying articles based on individual research interests. This not only saves time but also keeps researchers updated with the latest and most relevant studies in their field.

One of R Discovery’s standout features is its ability to provide paper summaries, audio readings, and language translation, enabling users to quickly assess a paper’s relevance and enhance their research reading experience significantly.

With over 2.5 million app downloads and upwards of 80 million journal articles featured, the R Discovery database is one of the largest scholarly content repositories.

“At Pensoft, we do realise that Open Science is much more than cost-free access to research outputs. It is also about easier discoverability and reusability, or, in other words, how likely it is for the reader to come across a particular scientific publication and, as a result, cite and build on those findings in his/her own studies. By feeding the content of our journals into R Discovery, we’re further facilitating the discoverability of the research done and shared by the authors who trust us with their work,” said ARPHA’s and Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev.

Abhishek Goel, Co-Founder and CEO of Cactus Communications, commented on the collaboration, “We are delighted to work with Pensoft and offer researchers easy access to the publisher’s high-quality research articles on R Discovery. This is a milestone in our quest to support academia in advancing open science that can help researchers improve the world.”

So far, R Discovery has successfully established partnership with over 20 publishers, enhancing the platform’s extensive repository of scholarly content. By joining forces with R Discovery, Pensoft solidifies its dedication to making scholarly publications from its open-access, peer-reviewed journal portfolio easily discoverable and accessible.

Posted on

Brand new journal Estuarine Management and Technologies streamlines innovation in ecosystems conservation

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,”

explain Dr Haddout and his colleagues in the opening editorial.

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.

***

You can visit the journal website and sign up for its newsletter from the homepage.

You can also follow Estuarine Management and Technologies on X (formerly Twitter).

Posted on

ARPHA 2023: A year in review

ARPHA 2023 Review

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.

The Aquatic Invasions journal

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.

Atomic Layer Deposition

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.

Estuarine Management and 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.

ResearchGate integration

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.

Scite.ai collaboration

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.

ARPHA PDF layout revamp

New ARPHA PDF layout
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.

ARPHA Writing Tool and nanopublications

Our innovative XML-based authoring tool now supports a novel workflow for nanopublications in biodiversity research, piloted at the Biodiversity Data Journal.

European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS)

Six of our journals proudly joined this index, including four Pensoft journals: Nature Conservation; NeoBiota; Neotropical Biology and Conservation; and Fossil Record. The Journal of the Bulgarian Geographical Society and the Amsterdam University Press’ Heritage, Memory and Conflict (HMC), which use ARPHA’s white-label publishing solution, were also accepted.

New on Scopus

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.

New on Web of Science

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.

Addressing ARPHA client needs

Our feature blog piece, “6 Common Mistakes at Society and Institutional Journals,” showcased our understanding and proactive approach to addressing the concerns of our clients.

—

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.

—

For news from & about ARPHA and the journals using the platform, you can follow us on Twitter and Linkedin.

Posted on

Pensoft partners with Zendy to enhance academic accessibility

Zendy and Pensoft partnership

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.

The partnership integrates Pensoft’s diverse range of high-quality, peer-reviewed journals into Zendy’s platform. This includes the publisher’s flagship titles ZooKeys, PhytoKeys, MycoKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal and Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO Journal) amongst others, which will now have their content automatically added to the platform and freely accessible.

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.

***

For more information about Zendy, visit their website.
Follow Pensoft on X and Facebook to stay up to date with the publisher.

Posted on

Smithsonian’s Dr Torsten Dikow appointed Editor-in-Chief of ZooKeys, a leading journal in systematic zoology and biodiversity

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.

Dikow is to step into the shoes of globally celebrated fellow entomologist and colleague at the Smithsonian and founding Editor-in-Chief of ZooKeys Dr Terry Erwin, who sadly passed away in May, 2020, leaving behind hefty scientific legacy and immeasurable admiration and fond memories. 

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.

Dikow obtained his M.S. in Zoology from the Universität Rostock (Germany) and Ph.D. in Entomology from Cornell University (New York, USA) with three years of dissertation research conducted at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). 

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,”

said Dikow.

Dikow took on his new role at ZooKeys at a time when the journal had just turned 15 years on the scholarly publishing scene. In late 2020, the scientific outlet also marked the publication of its 1000th journal volume.

***

Visit the journal’s website and follow ZooKeys on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. You can also follow Torsten Dikow on X.

***

About ZooKeys:

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. 

Posted on

Pensoft partners with ResearchGate to drive readership and visibility of open access journals

ResearchGate, the professional network for researchers, and Pensoft, an independent open access academic publisher known worldwide for its cutting-edge publishing tools and workflows, today announced a new partnership that will see a set of Pensoft’s open access journals increase their reach and visibility through ResearchGate – increasing access and engagement with its 25 million researcher members.  

Pensoft is a fully open access publisher, providing high-quality end-to-end services to its own and third-party scientific journals via its in-house developed scholarly publishing platform ARPHA.

As part of this new partnership, 20 journals published by Pensoft – including the publisher’s flagship titles ZooKeys, PhytoKeys, MycoKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal and Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO Journal) amongst others – will now have their content automatically added to ResearchGate upon publication to benefit from enhanced visibility and discoverability through ResearchGate’s innovative Journal Home offering. These journals will all have dedicated profiles and be prominently represented on all associated article pages on ResearchGate, as well as all other relevant touch points throughout the network.

As part of this new partnership, 20 journals published by Pensoft will now have their content automatically added to ResearchGate upon publication to benefit from enhanced visibility and discoverability through ResearchGate’s innovative Journal Home offering.

Journal Home provides a unique opportunity for Pensoft to connect its authors with their readers. The new journal profiles on ResearchGate will provide a central location for each journal, enabling researchers to learn more, discover new article content, and understand how, through their network, they are connected to the journal’s community of authors and editors. Authors of these journals additionally benefit from having their articles automatically added to their ResearchGate profile page, giving them access to metrics, including who is reading and citing their research. These rich insights will also enable Pensoft to build a deeper understanding of the communities engaging with its journals. 

“Pensoft is delighted to be working with ResearchGate to provide an even greater service to our authors and readers. ResearchGate offers an innovative way for us to grow the reach and visibility of our content, while also giving us a way to better understand and engage our author and reader audiences,”

said Prof Lyubomir Penev, CEO and founder of Pensoft.

“We couldn’t be happier to see Pensoft embark on this new partnership with ResearchGate. Journal Home will not only enable Pensoft authors to build visibility for their work, but provide them and Pensoft with greater insights about the communities engaging with that research. I look forward to seeing this new collaboration develop.”

said Sören Hofmayer, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at ResearchGate.

###

About ResearchGate:

ResearchGate is the professional network for researchers. Over 25 million researchers use researchgate.net to share and discover research, build their networks, and advance their careers. Based in Berlin, ResearchGate was founded in 2008. Its mission is to connect the world of science and make research open to all.

Posted on

Pensoft and ARPHA partner with scite.ai to dig deeper into article citations

In the ever-evolving landscape of academic publishing, comprehensive and informative citation metrics can make all the difference. Pensoft, the scholarly publisher and technology provider, and the innovative scite.ai platform, have partnered to provide a novel service that is looking to change the way readers perceive and utilise citation data.

scite.ai has been making waves in the scholarly world with its pioneering approach to citation metrics. At the heart of their offering are two distinctive badges, elegantly displayed on the article’s page to let readers gain deeper insights into how a publication is cited by other indexed works. 

Each citation is categorized as Supporting, Contrasting, or Mentioning, based on the context of surrounding sentences within the citing publication. This way, anyone can explore not just how many times a document has been cited but also why.

The feature is already accessible under the Metrics tab of any research paper published by a Pensoft journal. The first scite.ai badge displays the number of citations, breaking them down into Supporting, Contrasting, or Mentioning; the second one offers insights on the sections of an article where the citations were featured.

At Pensoft, we are confident that this new functionality enhances the discoverability and contextual richness of articles published in our journals. The integration also  empowers Pensoft’s users to gain deeper insights into their research. Whether you’re a scientist seeking to validate your research or a reader in search of authoritative sources, this new feature promises to enrich your academic journey.

***

Stay up to date with the latest integrations and features available at journals published by Pensoft by following ARPHA Platform on Twitter and Linkedin.

Posted on

FAIRer knowledge about biodiversity with AI-friendly nanopublications at Biodiversity Data Journal

Earlier this year, in a pilot project, the teams of high-tech startup Knowledge Pixels and open-access scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft released a novel workflow to publicly share and future-proof scientific findings by means of nanopublications.

Nanopublications complement human-created narratives of scientific knowledge with elementary, machine-actionable, simple and straightforward scientific statements that prompt sharing, finding, accessibility, citability and interoperability. By making it easier to trace individual findings back to their origin and/or follow-up updates, it also helps to better understand the provenance of biodiversity data.

These semantic statements expressed in community-agreed terms, openly available through links to controlled vocabularies, ontologies and standards, are not only freely accessible to everyone in both human-readable and machine-actionable formats, but also easy-to-digest for computer algorithms and AI-powered assistants.

Now, the collaborators – also partly supported by the Horizon 2020-funded project BiCIKL (abbreviation for Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library) – have built up on a pilot workflow already launched in the Biodiversity Data Journal – to create a specialised nanopublication solution to address the need for FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data in the biodiversity science domain. 

In their studies, researchers need to use and refer to extensive and diverse biodiversity data at once, e.g. information about groups of organisms and their classification, collections, authors and genetic sequences. However, those would normally be scattered across a vast number of articles or belong to dissociated databases. This is a major and widely recognised issue in biodiversity science, which is currently stagnating progress not only in building up the world’s knowledge about the natural world around us, but also impeding biodiversity conservation and ecosystem restoration.

Using the newly released nanopublication workflow, biodiversity researchers can now incorporate nanopublications within their manuscripts to future-proof their most important assertions on biological taxa and organisms or statements about associations of taxa or organisms and their environments. 

In addition, the authors can also create standalone nanopublications that comment or derive from already existing research journals published in an academic journal or another citable source (e.g. expert database), regardless of the author of the source. 

“With the nanopublication format, authors make sure that key scientific statements – the ones underpinning their research work – are efficiently communicated in a machine-actionable and FAIR manner. Thus, their contributions to science become future-proof for a reality driven by AI technology,”

explains Prof. Lyubomir Penev, founder and CEO at Pensoft.

“Biodiversity is the ideal field for this pilot exploring the next steps in scientific publishing. Biodiversity and its neighbouring fields have produced a remarkable number of high-quality resources, such as controlled vocabularies and databases, which we can now build upon. Moreover, many Biodiversity researchers have shown to be very open to such new methods and are enthusiastic about working together to build a more powerful ecosystem for scientific knowledge sharing, and we share their enthusiasm,”

says Tobias Kuhn, CTO and co-founder of Knowledge Pixels. 

***

You can find more about the nanopublication workflow and its advantages to biodiversity scientists on the Pensoft blog and the Biodiversity Data Journal website.