Tag: academic publishing

April 30, 2018December 12, 2018

Economics journals hosted on ARPHA to have their content indexed at RePEc

The first to take advantage of the service is the most recent addition to the journal platform’s portfolio — Russian Journal of Economics

Following the recent integration between ARPHA and the collaborative project RePEc (Research Papers in Economics), journals publishing in economics will have their articles indexed in RePEc decentralised bibliographic database upon moving to the technologically advanced platform.

Working with 50,000 registered authors from around the globe, having indexed about 2.3 million research publications from 2,800 journals, and serving over 80,000 email subscriptions on a weekly basis, RePEc’s services are set to further increase the discoverability and creditability of economics papers published in any ARPHA-hosted journal.

The collaboration was inspired by the recent move of the open access peer-reviewed Russian Journal of Economics to ARPHA. Shortly after appearing on the journal’s new website provided by the platform, RuJE’s first 2018 issue, themed ‘The Austrian School of Economics: Its Reception in European Countries,’ was also available via the RePEc’s web interfaces, including IDEAS.

“Having added yet another web-service integration to the list, ARPHA once more demonstrates its flexibility and customer-oriented approach when it comes to providing a new home for journals looking to step up and provide all those innovative and high-tech features to their users,” says ARPHA’s and Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev. “In times where the findability of a research publication is almost as important as its quality, I am certain that our integration with RePEc will significantly benefit our clients specialising in economics.”

Speaking in Novosibirsk, Russia, the founder of RePEc, Thomas Krichel noted, “When I set out what would become RePEc in the early 1990, my vision was of a non-proprietary system that all could contribute to, and that all could use freely. My particular concern was to level the playing field between publishers. Open access content is particularly valuable. I am pleased that ARPHA has chosen that publishing avenue.”

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Additional information:

About RePEc:

RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 96 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics and related sciences.

The heart of the project is a decentralised bibliographic database of working papers, journal articles, books, books chapters and software components, all maintained by volunteers. The collected data are then used in various services that provide the collected metadata to users or enhance it.

So far, over 1,900 archives from 96 countries have contributed about 2.3 million research pieces from 2,800 journals and 4,500 working paper series. About 50,000 authors have registered and 75,000 email subscriptions are served every week.

RePEc grew out of the NetEc project founded by Thomas Krichel in 1993.

April 23, 2018May 28, 2020

Russian Journal of Economics finds a new publishing home on ARPHA platform

The journal’s 2018 inaugural issue, themed ‘The Austrian School of Economics: Its Reception in European Countries,’ demonstrates an all-new look-and-feel complete with various next-generation technological perks

Russian Journal of Economics (RuJE) is the latest competent and renowned journal to join the ranks of the open access titles published on the next-generation platform ARPHA, developed by scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft.

The journal’s 2018 inaugural issue and the first since the realization of the new partnership is already live on the journal’s new website.

The articles are brought together under the theme “The Austrian School of Economics: Its Reception in European Countries” and have been briefly presented at the Second World Congress of Comparative Economics “1917-2017: Revolution and Evolution in Economic Development” held in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2017.

Having taken advantage of the white-label publishing solution offered by ARPHA, the open access peer-reviewed journal is to continue being recognized as one of the titles founded and published by the reputed institutions of National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, and non-profit partnership Voprosy Ekonomiki.

Although recently established, the journal is well-known among its audience comprising primarily professional economists working in academia, government and private sector.

Since its launch in 2015, RuJE has been providing a scholarly outlet for research findings in all fields of economics related to policy issues and is being published on a quarterly basis.

While the journal focuses on the Russian economy, economic policy and institutional reform with a broader international context and sound theoretical background, it also welcomes submissions in all areas of applied and theoretical economics, especially those with policy implications.

“I am pleased to see our new collaboration with Russian Journal of Economics coming to fruition, not solely because it looks great in our growing journal portfolio, but also for the amazing opportunity for ARPHA,” says ARPHA’s and Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev. “I am certain that we can contribute a lot, so that we can together oversee the further progress of this excellent journal.”

“The task of the project is to create a competent international information resource for academic economists, expert and business communities, devoted to macroeconomic policies in different national contexts, including the Russian one, institutional issues and comparative analysis. The high technological base of ARPHA platform gives all the necessary opportunities to realize the strategic goals of Russian Journal of Economics,” says Andrey Kotkovsky, Director at NP Voprosy Ekonomiki.

What does ARPHA bring to the table?

As a result of its transition to ARPHA, not only does the journal look a lot different on the outside, but it also provides a whole range of high-tech innovations beneath the surface.

Among these is the prominent fast-track and convenient publishing workflow provided by the platform. It allows for each manuscript to proceed all the way from submission and reviewing to dissemination and archiving without ever leaving the platform’s singular collaboration-friendly online environment.

Once published, all articles are to be available in three formats (PDF, XML, HTML), enriched with semantic enhancements, so that they are easy to discover, access and harvest by both humans and machines.

To further enhance discoverability and reusability of the findings published in the journal, its content is to be indexed by major interdisciplinary services CrossRef and DOAJ in addition to the economics-specialized database RePEc.

RuJE’s articles are also to be archived in CLOCKSS and Zenodo, in accordance to ARPHA’s standard practices.

What’s on in the new issue?

In the opening article by Dr Gilles Campagnolo, Aix-Marseilles School of Economics, the reader is given a complex overview of the reception of the Austrian ideas in France, while also covering valuable information about the development of the Austrian School of Economics itself. The publication highlights the fact that these ideas increased their popularity in the country following the Russian perestroyka and the?fall of the Berlin Wall.

The topic is carried on into another two articles dealing with the history of this process in Russia (Soviet Union) and Bulgaria. The team of Prof. Vladimir Avtonomov and Prof. Natalia Makasheva, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia, and the one of Prof. Nikolay Nenovsky, University of Picardie Jules Verne, France, and Dr. Pencho Penchev, University of National and World Economy, Bulgaria, both identify three principal periods – initial reception, complete oblivion during the communist regimes, and renaissance in post-communist times.

The Italian perspective on the Austrian economic ideas are given in an article authored by Prof. Antonio Magliulo, University of International Studies of Rome. He explores two periods – before World War II, as linked with Menger’s influence – and compares it with Hayek’s.

The editorial by Prof. Vladimir Avtonomov looks back on the so-called Marginal revolution in economics from the 1870s. Thus, the reader obtains a firm grasp on the origins of the three European schools of economics with a focus on the Austrian one, before tracing the economic environment on the Old Continent well into the 20th century through the pages of the journal’s special issue.

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Russian Journal of Economics is the third Russian title to find its new publishing home with ARPHA Platform after Comparative Cytogenetics and Research Results in Pharmacology. Several new titles are expected to join them later this year.

April 12, 2018December 12, 2018

Russian-born Research Results in Pharmacology moves to high-tech journal platform ARPHA

The rebranded and refreshed journal is now published jointly by Belgorod National Research University and scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft

Since 2015, Belgorod National Research University‘s forward-thinking open-access and peer-reviewed scholarly journal Research Result: Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacology has been filling an essential gap as a scholarly venue for publications dealing with long-year research outcomes in pharmacology and clinical pharmacology.

Now, having moved to the high-tech journal publishing platform ARPHA (abbreviation standing for Authoring, Reviewing, Publishing, Hosting and Archiving), the rebranded Research Results in Pharmacology demonstrates its refreshed format in its first issue jointly published with open-access scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft via the journal’s brand new website.

Continuing its tradition, the journal welcomes articles on various aspects within pharmacology, including papers devoted to molecular screening with the use of modern methods of proteomics, cellular technologies, results of experimental studies in modeling abnormalities in laboratory animals and clinical studies in the field of pharmacotherapy, pharmacokinetics, pharmacoepidemiology, personalised therapy, multicenter studies and evidence-based medicine. All articles are published in English, with versions in Russian published on Belgorod National Research University’s official website.

Apart from the evolution in its look-and-feel, thanks to the partnership with ARPHA, Research Results in Pharmacology now provides a long list of services at the disposal of all users – editors, reviewers, authors and readers alike, in order to ensure that articles are submitted, reviewed, published and disseminated rapidly and conveniently. To do this, the whole publication process takes place within ARPHA’s singular online environment.

Once published, each article is freely available in three formats (PDF, XML, HTML), enriched with a whole set of semantic enhancements, so that the articles, along with their data, are easy to discover, access and harvest by both humans and machines.

Amongst the high-tech perks greeting any online publication’s visitor are the article-level metrics available thanks to the partnership between ARPHA and the revolutionary discovery and analytics tools Dimensions and Altmetric. By searching through millions of research articles, grant applications, clinical trials, as well as policy documents, news stories, blogs and social media posts, they allow for each article’s references and citations in both the academic and the public sphere to be monitored in real time.

“I’m delighted to welcome this particular new member of the Pensoft’s and ARPHA’s family,” says ARPHA’s and Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev. “With our strong background in scholarly publishing, technology development and open science practices, I am certain that we are able to provide the right venue for a brilliant and enterprising journal such as Research Results in Pharmacology.”

“I find our new partnership with ARPHA and Pensoft to be extremely advantageous for Research Results in Pharmacology, and this is already showing in our first issue since joining our efforts,” says Prof. Mikhail Pokrovsky, Editor-in-Chief at Research Results in Pharmacology. “I would like to especially thank Lyubomir and his team for fully understanding and meeting our needs, resulting in a wonderful professional collaboration, as well as friendship.”

Research Results in Pharmacology is the second Russian journal in ARPHA’s and Pensoft’s portfolios. Several new titles are expected to join them later this year.

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April 10, 2018December 12, 2018

Journal platform ARPHA partners with Dimensions to deliver extra citation data and insight

Citation count per individual publication is only a part of the useful and comprehensive data freely available for any articles published in a journal hosted on the ARPHA Platform, thanks to a new integration of the recently launched Dimensions badges.

The badges, which provide a citation count and further context on when and where an item was cited, further enhance the familiar citation insights already available from ARPHA. These include a current list of all papers referencing a particular article straight from major databases Crossref, Google Scholar, Scopus and PubMed Central.

To provide an additional in-depth insight into a paper’s impact, while placing it into a relevant context, Dimensions searches through over 90 million publications, and 873 million citations indexed in its own massive database. Going beyond the conventional research article, the tool also provides links to related grants, clinical trials, patents and policy documents.

A single click on the Metrics tab within the menu of any article in an ARPHA-published journal reveals the new eye-catching Dimensions badge, where it appears beneath the popular colourful “donut” of Altmetric – another research analytics innovation developed by Digital Science.

At a glance, the visitor can see the total and recent (from the last two calendar years) count of citations, in addition to the Field Citation Ratio and Relative Citation Ratio – designed to help users see how the article compares in a given field.

In a useful information page, the Dimensions team explains what these values stand for. For example, an article with a Citation Ratio of 0.8 has a count of citations considered as average for its subject area. The 1.2 is the watershed, beyond which a publication is deemed highly cited. Once at the 5-point mark, the number of citations is to be read as extremely high.

A second click on the badge brings up the Dimensions Details Page, where the reader can find a new set of citation data, including an interlinked list of the publications that have cited the paper, as well as their distribution over time and across research categories.

“There is no doubt that citation count and real-time, real-life impact within both the scientific community and the public space are essential for any scientist,” said ARPHA’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev. “In this sense, analytical and user-friendly tools, such as Dimensions and Altmetric, come to bridge a crucial gap – one which could easily make-or-break a researcher’s career and image in academia.”

“I am pleased to ensure that any author who has ever published with our journals can easily and openly track and demonstrate the actual performance of their work,” he added.

Christian Herzog, who led the Dimensions project at Digital Science, said “The Dimensions badges were developed to aid the research community in assessing and contextualizing publications. We’re happy to partner with ARPHA and contribute additional value to their platform.”

Learn about the partnership between ARPHA and Altmetric here.

March 1, 2018December 12, 2018

ARPHA teams with Hypothesis to encourage scientific discourse through annotation

In a new integration, the publishing platform ARPHA teams up with nonprofit, open-source annotation technology provider Hypothesis to further enable academic discussion and foster collaboration in the spirit of open science practices.

This partnership makes Pensoft the second publisher to implement this technology across its whole journal portfolio.

Current and future scholarly journals using ARPHA, including Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO Journal), ZooKeys, One Ecosystem, Journal of Hymenoptera Research and others, will have a new layer added to their content, so that anyone registered with Hypothesis will be able to add public sentence-level annotations within any publication and use it as a starting point for further discussions. All annotations are stored at Hypothesis and listed in the user’s account.

Upon opening an article published in any ARPHA journal, website visitors can now spot a dialog-box icon in the top-right of the screen showing the number of submitted annotations, which he/she can reply to at the click of a button. Annotations appear highlighted within the webpage whenever a user is logged into their account on Hypothesis.

Alternatively, the user can simply select some text and add a note to share his/her own idea, feedback, opinion or question inspired by the publication. Thus, the content of the research paper becomes alive, while readers could contribute to the study’s discourse.

“I am delighted to see ARPHA partnering with Hypothesis not only because this benefits our users and journals, but because it also works for the good of science and academia in general,” comments Pensoft’s and ARPHA’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev.

“What we’ve learned from implementing Open Science more and more vigorously in research practices is that striving for transparency and easier collaboration only stimulates scientific progress,” he adds. “One way to do this is definitely by providing the right platforms for giving and addressing feedback.”

Dan Whaley, CEO at Hypothesis, adds:

“We’re excited to see annotation brought to the many publications on the ARPHA platform. As an early member of the Annotating All Knowledge Coalition with a strong commitment to open research and transparent data, Pensoft shares Hypothesis’ commitment to facilitating conversations around scholarly content and improving researcher workflow. We look forward to working with the journal editors to integrate annotation into existing workflows to maximize the success of this initiative.”

For a better grasp of the Web Annotation Architecture, as seen by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), see their interactive infographic.

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About Hypothesis:

Hypothesis is a US 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the development and spread of open, standards-based annotation technologies and practices that enable anyone to annotate anywhere, helping humans reason more effectively together through a shared, collaborative discussion layer over all knowledge. Hypothesis is based in San Francisco, CA with a worldwide team. Learn more from <web.hypothes.is>.

January 8, 2018December 12, 2018

ARPHA reaches further out! Dr Matthias Wahls assigned as the platform’s new Business Development Manager

The Netherlands-based independent publishing consultant Dr. Matthias Wahls has recently joined ARPHA Journal Publishing Platform as the venture’s new Business Development Manager.

Bringing in extensive expertise from his previous appointments with key players in the academic publishing market, alongside experience accumulated through years of independent consultancy, Dr Wahls will be working on expanding ARPHA’s reach towards Western Europe, Greater China, and other Asian countries.

“I’m more than enthusiastic to join the team of ARPHA Publishing Platform and Pensoft Publishers, effective 2018,” says Dr. Matthias Wahls, the Hague, NL. “Bringing this cutting-edge software platform to as many academic publishers will be my key priority. Our focus is to supply an end-to-end solution answering the needs of individual society journals and small to mid-sized publishers alike on their way to entering the Open Science publishing era and switching to the technologically advanced workflows of the future. We equally welcome stand-alone and new journals eager to become ready for the future of Gold Open Access publishing, within the greater context of the EU’s Horizon-2020 program.”

“Making academic research accessible to everyone around the globe has been a key priority for Pensoft from the very start. Having always been exclusively Open Access, in the last couple of years we’ve been aiming to go beyond and supply cutting-edge technologies that tick all boxes on the way to Open Science. With ARPHA we want to provide small publishers and society and institutional journals with a technologically advanced and affordable solution that allows them to enter the era of Open Science, while sitting strong on an increasingly demanding global publishing market.” adds Prof. Lyubomir Penev, Founder and CEO at Pensoft and ARPHA.

Dr Wahls invites editors, publishers, and individual academics who are facing the multiple transition hurdles on their way to adopt Gold Open Access, to take their journals to a next technological level with ARPHA, while staying independent under their own identity.

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What is ARPHA?

Authoring, Reviewing, Publishing, Hosting and Archiving, all in one place for the first time, this is what stands behind the innovative fully integrated journal publishing solution ARPHA, a product of Pensoft.

Fully equipped to cater for a successful transition to a next-generation, technologically-advanced publishing, ARPHA is specifically designed to meet the needs of small and mid-sized publishers and individual society and institutional journals on their journey to entering the era of Open Science, armed with a top-notch publishing technology. Alongside its journal-based module, ARPHA offers solutions for advanced open access book and conference proceedings publishing.

More than just software
ARPHA offers an end-to-end journal publishing platform, in combination with a range of technologically advanced and human-provided services.

Future-proof
This platform offers an option for smooth transition from the conventional, document-based, to the forthcoming, fully XML-based publishing workflow.

White label
ARPHA supports both individual and multiple journal platforms under their own logo, customised design and imprint.

High-level integration
ARPHA is integrated with leading indexing and archiving platforms via web services.

Semantic publishing
ARPHA provides generic and domain-specific markup to enhance and facilitate dissemination, machine-readability, harvesting and reuse of published content to improve readers’ experience.

Tailored publishing models
Publishers or individual journal editors can customise their own preferred workflow across ARPHA’s modules.

Contact Dr Wahls at:

Address: M.Wahls Publishing Services, Plesmanlaan 88, 2497CB The Hague, The Netherlands

Tel: +31 644310818

Email: wahls@arphahub.com

WeChat: matthiaswahls1206

For more information and resources:

Visit: http://arphahub.com

Twitter: @ARPHAplatform

Video: https://youtu.be/pzTRc-zvfA8

November 20, 2017December 12, 2018

Swiss-born, now rebranded Alpine Entomology journal joins ARPHA’s and Pensoft’s OA portfolios

Formerly dedicated to all fields in entomology, the journal now focuses on insect research from mountainous regions from around the world

Launched about a century and a half ago, the Swiss Entomological Society‘s official journal Die Mitteilungen der Schweizerischen Entomologischen Gesellschaft (Journal of the Swiss Entomological Society) is the latest historical scientific journal to join the lines of Pensoft’s portfolio.

As a result of an unanimous vote at the Swiss Entomological Society’s general assembly in March, the journal is now rebranded as Alpine Entomology to reflect the shift in its scope and focus. Furthermore, the renowned journal is also changing its format, submission and review process, “in accordance with the standards of modern scientific publishing”, as explained in the inaugural Editorial.

The first articles of Alpine Entomology in partnership with Pensoft are already live on the journal’s new website.

“Focusing the scope will improve the quality of the journal and of the submitted papers and therefore increase the impact in the scientific community,” say Dr. Thibault Lachat, Bern University of Applied Sciences and Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, and Hannes Baur, Natural History Museum of Bern, and University of Bern.

Alpine Entomology now accommodates a long list of high-tech perks and brand new looks thanks to the innovative journal publishing platform ARPHA – the Pensoft-developed innovative journal publishing platform.

Nonetheless, the journal preserves its well-respected expertise and dedication to original research on the insect fauna. Occasionally, it will be also publishing studies on other arthropods from the Alpine region or other mountainous regions all over the world.

Apart from the all-new look and feel visible at first glance, there are many technologically-advanced innovations to benefit authors, readers, reviewers and editors alike.

Thanks to the fast-track and convenient publishing provided by ARPHA, each manuscript is carried through all stages from submission and reviewing to dissemination and archiving without ever leaving the platform’s singular collaboration-friendly online environment.

Once published, all articles in Alpine Entomology are to be available in three formats (PDF, XML, HTML), enriched with a whole set of semantic enhancements, so that the articles are easy to discover, access and harvest by both humans and machines.

Amongst the first papers, there are descriptions of several new mountainous species from around the world that have remained unknown to science until very recently. Two separate papers describe two new species of long-legged flies from Turkey and Croatia, respectively; while a third one reports a new ground beetle dwelling in Bhutan’s Thrumshingla National Park.

“I’m delighted to welcome this particular new member of the Pensoft’s and ARPHA’s family,” says the publisher’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev. “With our own solid experience in both scholarly publishing and entomological research, I’m certain that we’ll be able to provide the right venue for a fantastic title as Alpine Entomology.

“This year sees a lot of changes for the Swiss Entomological Society‘s signature journal, which I believe are all extremely positive,” says Alpine Entomology‘s Editor-in-Chief Dr. Thibault Lachat. “By making use of the modern, technologically advanced open access publishing provided by ARPHA and Pensoft, I’m convinced that our journal will increase its visibility and gain an international reputation in the entomological community.”

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Follow Alpine Entomology on Twitter | Facebook.

September 25, 2017December 12, 2018

New open-access journal Metabarcoding & Metagenomics joins the lines of ARPHA and Pensoft

A new innovative open-access academic journal Metabarcoding and Metagenomics (MBMG) is launched to welcome novel papers from both basic and applied aspects.

Focusing on genetic approaches to study biodiversity across all ecosystems, MBMG covers a considerably large scope of research including environmental, microbial and applied metabarcoding and metagenomics (especially DNA-based bioassessment and -monitoring, quarantine, nature conservation, species invasions, eDNA surveillance), as well as associated topics, such as molecular ecology, DNA-based species delimitation and identification, and other emerging related fields. Submissions of bioinformatic approaches to MBMG (algorithms, software) are also encouraged.

Featuring novel article formats and data publishing workflows, MBMG is to reflect the rapid growth in the use of metabarcoding and metagenomics in life and environmental sciences.

Issued via ARPHA – the first ever publishing platform to support manuscripts all the way from authoring to peer review to publication and dissemination, designed by the academic publisher and technology provider Pensoft, the new journal is to host a wide range of outcomes from across the research cycle, including data, models, methods, workflows, software, perspectives, opinions, implementation strategies, as well as conventional research articles.

While the above-mentioned publication types are already available in other journals published on the ARPHA platform, such as Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), Biodiversity Data Journal and One Ecosystem, MBMG provides five extra domain-specific article types, namely: Emerging Technique, Applied Study, DNA Barcode Release, Primer Validation and Probe Validation.

The journal’s articles are to be available in three formats (PDF, XML, HTML) and full of semantic enhancements for better human- and machine-readability and discoverability. The XML-based workflow also ensures that content and data are available for extraction, indexing and re-use immediately after publication.

With Pensoft standing for transparent, reproducible and open science, the authors at MBMG are strongly encouraged to make all data publicly available either within the publication itself, or to link to external repositories. In their turn, the peer reviewers are also suggested to provide public access to their reviews and identities.

In time for the launch, MBMG has already gathered a team of experienced and renowned scientists from across the globe together on its editorial and advisory board.

“I am pleased to introduce the Metabarcoding and Metagenomics journal to the family of Pensoft,” says Prof. Lyubomir Penev, Founder and Managing Director at Pensoft. “With its exhaustive scope and advanced services and concept, I believe it fills fantastically a niche in our strong portfolio of mostly biodiversity- and ecology-themed journals.”

“Metabarcoding and metagenomics approaches are rapidly progressing and revolutionise research and its application alike,” Chief Editor Prof. Florian Leese states. “With the MBMG journal we provide an ideal platform to respond to this rapidly growing field, nucleate the emerging knowledge and stimulate further development.”

The first batch of research papers published in MBMG are now available on their new website.

“MBMG not only complements the range of journals in the field of molecular environmental life sciences, but also stands out as a novel outlet providing several unique features designed to help researchers to prepare for, and professionally deal with, the massive “deluge” of data,” reads the Editorial.

To celebrate the launch, MBMG starts with a tempting offer to potential authors: publishing will be completely free of charge during the beginning stages of the journal.

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Follow Metabarcoding and Metagenomics on Twitter | Facebook.

July 14, 2017December 12, 2018

The biodiversity data journal Check List joins Pensoft and ARPHA

The well-reputed and established journal Check List is the latest biodiversity-themed title to join scholarly publisher Pensoft’s peer-reviewed and open access family. Its first issue in collaboration with Pensoft is now published on the journal’s new website.

Check List is an online open access journal launched in 2005 in Brazil. It publishes distribution summaries, annotated lists of species and notes on the geographic distribution of all taxa. The journal stands for the idea that maintaining records of the range of a species is the very first step towards undertaking effective actions for its conservation. Furthermore, its team believes that publishing such data provides the baseline for biodiversity preservation as a whole.

The move sees Check List migrating to the Pensoft-developed journal publishing platform ARPHA (abbreviation for Authoring, Reviewing, Publishing, Hosting and Archiving) to provide its authors, editors and users with a brand new look and feel along with a whole set of high-tech perks.

While the all-new sleek interface is evident at first visit of the Check List‘s new website, there is much more under the surface. The partnership with Pensoft and ARPHA means that Check List will enjoy fast-track and convenient publishing. The manuscripts will be taken care for from the authoring stage, through reviewing and dissemination – all the way to archiving. The papers will be published in three formats (PDF, XML, HTML) and full of semantic enhancements.

Recognising the importance of easy and efficient publication of accessible data in the spirit of both biodiversity conservation and open science, ARPHA allows for data to be published as supplementary files along with the article, or through internationally recognised repositories, such as GBIF, Genbank, Barcode of Life, Dryad, and others.

“It is fantastic to have Check List join the world’s leading and most technologically advanced biodiversity publisher,” comments Check List Editor-in-Chief Marcus Guidoti.

“At Pensoft, we are happy to once again share and apply our long-year experience and know-how in scholarly publishing and biodiversity data handling,” says Prof. Lyubomir Penev, the founder and Managing Director of Pensoft. “I am certain that this collaboration will advance the technological and publishing label of Check List to the benefit of the scientific community”

Check List is the second scholarly journal of South American origin to join Pensoft’s growing portfolio, after another highly regarded Brazilian-born academic title – Zoologia – moved to ARPHA earlier this year.

July 4, 2017December 12, 2018

ARPHA-Proceedings Module: Streamline conference abstracts authoring, editing and publication

Creating, reviewing, editing and publishing of collections of proceedings from conferences, symposia and workshops is now available with the ARPHA-Proceedings module via the publishing platform ARPHA.

Designed as a venue for conference organisers to streamline proceedings publications, while simultaneously giving credit to the authors and preserving their contributions in a format that makes them easy to find and read by both humans and machines, the ARPHA-Proceedings module can be regarded as a simplified and straightforward journal publishing process specialised for conference abstracts.

The workflow supports multiple proceedings collections. For instance, a proceedings publishing platform could be created for a particular conference taking place on a regular basis or for a number of conferences organised by an institution or a society. A fine example is the Proceedings of TDWG dedicated to the yearly Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) conference.

Within the platform, hierarchical article collections could also be established. Abstracts can be submitted to sub-collections dedicated to various workshops/symposia within a larger event. The different sub-collections can be handled by different editors, normally the workshop/symposia conveners.

The workflow used in the ARPHA-Proceedings module includes ARPHA Writing Tool, editorial/technical evaluation, publication and dissemination.

At any point and at no additional costs, the platform can be modified to feature additional article types (e.g. full-text papers, posters, talks etc.). It is for the conference organisers to decide whether these submissions are to undergo a conventional peer review process.

Abstracts can be enriched with citations, figures, tables, data and multimedia if the conference organisers decide to allow it.

Abstracts can be published straight on the platform as soon as an editor approves them, so that the publication is available online ahead of the conference.

Abstracts published in this way have all features common for regular articles published via ARPHA, including Digital Object Identifier (DOI); publication in HTML, PDF and machine-readable and harvestable XML; citation, indexing and archiving in various databases; dissemination and others.

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Below you can find a practical guide to the submission process of a conference abstract and assigning it to a collection via the ARPHA-Proceedings module.

1. Log in at the platform’s website or ARPHA Writing Tool.

2. Click Start a manuscript to see the platform and article type options.

3. Select a venue and article type for your manuscript.

4. Click Collections on the navigation bar at the top. This is where you select the conference track to which you are assigning your manuscript (this does not guarantee acceptance in that track).

5. Fill in your abstract’s metadata by hovering over a category, and then clicking on the pencil icon. The fields Title, Abstract, “Keywords”, and Presenting Author are mandatory. The submitting author and affiliation are taken from the profile of the logged-in user. More authors can be added by clicking the icon beside Authors on the left-hand side. The corresponding author and the authors’ order can be changed from the same menu. The corresponding author must be available to communicate about the abstract until final acceptance for publication. The presenting author is the person who will actually be giving the talk/demonstration.

6. You may add references, figures, tables (if allowed on the particular platform) by clicking on the appropriate icon. You may also upload supplementary materials associated with the abstract.

7. Click Validate. An automated check will ensure that all mandatory fields are filled in and the abstract is assigned to a collection.

8. When you are ready to submit your abstract, click Submit for technical review. This will send the manuscript to the track editors, who will review it for relevance to the track. The button will be visible as soon as the validation has been successful.

9. The editors of the track to which you have submitted your abstract may accept or reject your submission, send feedback requesting changes or suggest submission to a different track.

10. Once the abstract is accepted, the Submit to the journal button becomes visible in ARPHA Writing Tool. You need to click this button and go through a checklist of submission steps. The fourth and final step asks you to assign categories to your submission (optional). When the submission process is finalised, the abstract goes directly to production and publication, a DOI is assigned and the abstract cannot be further revised.

11. To see your manuscripts, go to the ARPHA Writing Tool’s website, log in and click the See more button, so that you can access your ARPHA dashboard.

On the right-hand side, you can see the stage each manuscript is currently at, along with the collection it has been assigned to (note that this does not mean that it has been approved for this collection).

If an abstract is at the Draft stage, it means that it is still being authored. Once submitted for Technical Review, it reaches the In pre-submission review stage where it stays until a Collection editor approves it for addition to a particular collection. In layout means that a manuscript is successfully submitted to the journal and awaiting publication.

12. If at any time you feel in need for further assistance, you can send an email to the journal’s technical staff via the system. Click Helpdesk on the top navigation bar to open a new window with an email form for you to fill in.

Please keep in mind that the stepwise instructions displayed are subject to slight modifications per request. Feel welcome to contact us with your personal platform’s needs!