Tag: ARPHA platform

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Now launched: ARPHA Preprints to fast-track research submitted to ARPHA-hosted journals

Having long considered how to help authors at our client journals get their work out in the open as early as possible, and prompted by the current research ecosystem, we came up with a new landmark feature, the ARPHA Preprints, where the preparation and posting of a preprint would be as much of a hassle as ticking a couple of check-boxes. Posting a preprint is an optional service for both journals and authors. 

ARPHA Preprints in short

ARPHA Preprints is a new platform designed by ARPHA and Pensoft to host pre-review manuscripts submitted to participating ARPHA-hosted journals. The key here is that it only takes a few clicks for the author to submit a preprint, and no more than a few days before the preprint becomes accessible on ARPHA Preprints, thus open to feedback and contribution by fellow scientists.

Once the associated manuscript successfully completes peer review in the ARPHA-hosted journal and gets published, the preprint will be conveniently linked to the formal paper, thus facilitating and prompting citation of peer-reviewed research.

ARPHA Preprints publication workflow in participating ARPHA-hosted journals.

Visit ARPHA Preprints website to see the growing list of ARPHA-hosted journals integrated with ARPHA Preprints to date.

Manuscript submitted to ZooKeys (currently under review) and posted as a preprint (DOI: 10.3897/arphapreprints.e69376) on ARPHA Preprints. If published in the journal, the text will change to “Published in ZooKeys”. If rejected, the preprint will be disassociated from the journal to prevent potential issues with future resubmission.

ARPHA Preprints in practice

During submission at any of the journals that have been integrated with ARPHA Preprints, an author will come to a question asking them whether they wish to post a preprint. If they check that box and agree to the terms and conditions of posting a preprint, the platform will use the files uploaded to compile a preprint in PDF format. Here, the author will be able to preview the file and either agree they are happy with how it looks, or, alternatively, replace it with their own copy. The bottom line is, the manuscript and the preprint are submitted simultaneously.

Having confirmed they wish to post a preprint while submitting to the journal, ARPHA lets the authors review and, if needed, replace the preprint with their own PDF file. This is the version that will be posted as a preprint on ARPHA Preprints in a few days’ time – once it successfully completes the in-house screening.

At this point, it is only one to a few days keeping the preprint away from public knowledge. This time is needed for the submission to undergo a basic screening, meant to verify that it complies with the journal’s focus and scope, and does not contain offensive language, pseudoscience, plagiarism or any other unethical content.

When posted, preprints indicate the name of the journal, where the associated manuscript has been submitted. If published in that journal, this status changes to Published, while a link and citation details to the formal publication are provided via DOI and the Citation tab, respectively. This means that whenever a reader finds information in the preprint he/she would like to cite in their own work, he/she will have easy to spot, intuitive access to the peer-reviewed paper. If the manuscript is rejected on this occasion, the preprint is disassociated from the journal to prevent potential issues with future resubmission.

Preprints are open to public as well as private comments, in order to encourage constructive feedback and contribution well before the formal publication sees the light of the day.

ARPHA Preprints extra perks

Preprints posted on ARPHA Preprints are:

  • Registered with CrossRef and assigned with their own digital object identifier (DOI) to ensure scientific record and permanent availability;
  • Indexed in several indexing services covering preprints to increase findability;
  • Easy to track for viewership (via ARPHA Platform-provided views counting tools), and citation (via integration with Dimensions) rates;
  • Promptly shared on social media to increase visibility and outreach.

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Got further questions about ARPHA Preprints? Visit our FAQs page or email us at info@arphahub.com.

Much like an author of a preprint, we will be happy to hear some constructive feedback from you!

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Follow ARPHA Preprints on Twitter.

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Register with Pensoft to customise your email alerts from ARPHA Preprints and ARPHA-hosted journals by title and/or topic.

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New features in ARPHA to aid journal editors in day-to-day activities and long-term strategic decisions

Recently, at Pensoft, we were delighted to report the positive trends and progress the majority of our journals demonstrated in terms of their citability for 2019. Moreover, this comes as an encouraging pattern where the results have been following the positive progression we’ve been enjoying in recent years. 

Below you can learn about our latest features that address the availability of transparent and dynamic information about the journal’s performance from various perspectives: from authorship and readership to trends in peer review time, and user activity.

Even more statistics to provide key insights into the journal’s performance

Our system already provides plenty of statistics, in order to inform the editors about:

  • manuscript submissions at any moment and their status;
  • publications and submissions for any period of interest; 
  • publications by article type for a period of choice; 
  • international representation based on lead author’s country for a period of choice;
  • article views for a period of choice.

Now, in the Statistics tab, the editors can find even more data, including the average time the manuscripts submitted over a defined period have spent at each stage (e.g. reviewer or editorial decision). Also, the editors have access to a record of all online mentions from across the Internet (data available from our partners at Altmetric), including traditional and new media, blogs, Wikipedia, policy documents and many others. 

See how to access all available statistics on an ARPHA-host journal here.

… all of this brought straight to your inbox with our:

Biannual journal performance report

For further convenience for our managing editors, we will be emailing a journal performance report twice a year, starting in July 2020. In this report, the editors will be receiving graphics on the journal’s performance for the current year and how the results fare against the previous one. The statistics provided include:

  • current submissions and their status;
  • submissions, publications and rejections by quarter;
  • acceptance rate;
  • turnaround time at different processing stages;
  • average review invitations, declines and review rounds per article;
  • top 10 countries represented by lead authors;
  • article views by format (PDF, HTML and XML) and in total;
  • number of online article mentions (data available from Altmetric);
  • Journal Impact Factor and CiteScore trends over the last five years.

Extended annual journal performance report

Citations trends available from Dimensions are reported on an annual basis for journals using the Standard and Premium packages provided by ARPHA Platform.

An extended annual report will be emailed to those who have opted for the ARPHA’s Standard and Premium package of reporting services. There, the editors will also have access to further and more exhaustive insights into the citability, outreach, readership and scholarly impact of their journals and their content. For journals that benefit from the Premium package of reporting services, we will be providing reviews and analyses meant to support the future strategy and progress of their journal.


*See all Journal performance reporting services provided by ARPHA Platform.

Statistics on reviewers’ and editors’ workload and activities

We know that it is the exception rather than the rule that a subject editor is certain about whom out of the lists of names in the system’s database will be most likely to provide a peer review at his request, especially when the task is due time. This is why before the editor selects a particular reviewer, he/she will be able to see the number of tasks (if any) the user is currently working on, in order to find out their current availability. In addition, the subject editor will be able to see how many reviews the user has provided so far, as well as how many times he/she has been invited to do so in the past.

Likewise, the same functionality is available for managing editors when they look to assign a manuscript to a subject editor.     

Review ratings

To further assist subject editors in their choice of appropriate reviewer, and also motivate reviewers, we have also implemented a 5-star rating system, where upon editorial decision on the acceptance/rejection of a manuscript, a subject editor is able to rate each of the provided reviews. The average result for a particular user will be visible in the system for the next subject editor who considers to assign him/her as a reviewer.

See how to rate a review here.

Keeping user expertise up to date

It’s fully understandable that users seldom think of the personal information visible on their accounts once they’ve completed their registration, as they don’t normally need to go back to it afterwards. However, their expertise details determine whether their name will show up in the lists of suggested reviewers and/or subject editors whenever an editor considers an assignment to the manuscript he/she is managing.

Here’s why we’ve introduced a regular reminder for users to review and, where necessary, update their expertise on their ARPHA account. This system message will come up once a year upon login and will straight away offer users a text box, where they can update their saved expertise. By means of free text, they will also be able to narrow it down even further.

As a result, not only are users not going to be bothered by irrelevant invitations – such as those received on the basis of their saved expertise being too broad, thereby saving time to the editorial team, but will also ensure that manuscripts will be indeed handed into the right hands for the sake of quality science.


Subscribe to our blog’s newsletter and follow us on Twitter (@ARPHAPlatform and @Pensoft) to keep yourself posted about the next features and updates coming to ARPHA!

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Bulgaria’s National Cardiac Society pioneers ARPHA’s top-to-bottom bilingual publishing

The first 2020 issue of the society’s bilingual journal is already online on a brand new and user-friendly website

(Прочетете на български тук)

This month, ARPHA Platform welcomed the fourth medical academic journal to its portfolio: Bulgarian Cardiology („Българска кардиология”), the official publication venue of the Bulgarian National Cardiac Society since 1995. The Society is a member of the European Society of Cardiology. 

With its first 2020 issue, Bulgarian Cardiology pioneers the Bulgarian-English bilingual publishing solution from ARPHA, the open-access scholarly publishing platform, developed by the publisher and technology provider Pensoft. Thanks to this, authors will be able to publish their papers either in Bulgarian, or in Bulgarian and English. In the latter case, the article will be displayed in both languages side by side, as exemplified in the paper “Novel approaches to treat resistant hypertension” by Dr Alexandra Cherneva (Acibadem City Clinic – Cardiovascular center, Bulgaria) and Prof Ivo Petrov (Sofia University and Acibadem City Clinic – Cardiovascular center, Bulgaria).

“Novel approaches to treat resistant hypertension”, a research paper by Dr Alexandra Cherneva and Prof Ivo Petrov, published in the latest issue of Bulgarian Cardiology, available in both Bulgarian and English
(DOI: 10.3897/bgcardio.26.e52712)

For non-Bulgarian speaking authors, who submit their manuscript in English, the journal provides translation to Bulgarian, so that the published article is also available in both languages. In the latest issue, this is exemplified by the Editorial piece “Atrial fibrillation: Importance of real world data from regional registries. A focus on the BALKAN-AF registry”, authored by the international team of Dr Monika Kozieł, Prof Gregory Y. H. Lip and Dr Tatjana S. Potpara.

Having already acquired its own glossy and user-friendly website provided by ARPHA, Bulgarian Cardiology also takes advantage of the platform’s signature fast-track, end-to-end publishing system, which is to benefit all journal users: authors, reviewers and editors alike. In addition, the published content enjoys automated export of data to aggregators, as well as web-service integrations with major global indexing and archiving databases.

The first issue of Bulgarian Cardiology was published in 1995 to provide a scholarly outlet for the Bulgarian Society of Cardiology. Ever since then, it has been serving as an essential forum to bring together the cardiology community in the country. Its aim is to publish both the academic achievements of the Bulgarian medical experts and the key practical guidelines of the European Society of Cardiology.  

Bulgarian Cardiology accepts for publication research and review articles, clinical cases, editorials, letters to the Editor, European Society of Cardiology guidelines, announcements from the Bulgarian Society of Cardiology and materials presented at their meetings, and others. 

“It’s a pleasure to all of us at ARPHA to welcome the Bulgarian Society of Cardiology’s journal. It’s a fantastic win-win situation for both parties: while we managed to customise and provide the necessary services the Society asked us for, they offered us the opportunity to further push our capabilities and know-how, in order to launch our first top-to-bottom bilingual publishing solution,”

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

The journal will continue to be published also in print with four issues a year.

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Visit the journal’s website at https://journal.bgcardio.org/.

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Pensoft to publish the paleontology and geobiology journal Zitteliana on behalf of SNSB

Following the recent contract between the State Natural History Collection of Bavaria (Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns or SNSB) and the scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft, the scholarly peer-reviewed, open-access journal on paleontology and geobiology Zitteliana will be published on the technologically advanced scholarly publishing platform ARPHA.

Expected later in 2020, Zitteliana will not only benefit from its own sleek-looking and user-friendly website, but will also enjoy a long list of services and high-tech features and human-provided services delivered from ARPHA’s signature fast-track, end-to-end publishing system. 

One thing that will greatly appeal to submitting authors, editors and reviewers is that the collaboration-focused ARPHA Platform supports manuscripts all the way from submission, peer review, editing, publication, dissemination and archiving within its online environment. On the other hand, to the benefit of readers, after publication, the articles are made available in PDF, machine-readable JATS XML formats, and semantically enriched HTML, which prompts discoverability, accessibility, citability and reusability. In addition, the journals will use all unique services offered by ARPHA, such as data publishing, linked data tables, semantic markup and enhancements, automated export of sub-article elements and data to aggregators, web-service integrations with more than 40 world-class indexing and archiving databases, sub-article-level usage metrics, and more.

Zitteliana is a scholarly journal covering all fields of paleontology and geobiology by the Bavarian State Collection of Palaeontology and Geology (SNSB): a research institution for natural history in Bavaria, comprising five State Collections. Initially limited to publications studying either the materials deposited in SNSB’s own collections, or topics related to the geology and palaeontology of Bavaria and adjacent regions, these days, Zitteliana welcomes articles in all fields of paleontology and geobiology. Encouraged are submissions on paleobiology, numerical paleontology, paleobiogeography, paleogenomics, palaeooceanography, biosedimentology, multiproxy and sequential stratigraphy, biodiversity research, and actuopaleontology, as well as contributions to the journal’s traditionally well-represented topics, such as paleontological taxonomy, systematics, phylogeny, and regional geology.

“It’s a great delight for Pensoft to be partnering such a prominent natural history institution like the SNSB and publish this particular journal of theirs. With our joint expertise and devotion, I am certain that we will successfully address major needs of the research community: readers, authors and their affiliates alike.”

says Pensoft and ARPHA’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev.

The SNSB is the latest major German research institution to collaborate with Pensoft and choose ARPHA Platform for its journals. Since 2014, the Natural History Museum Berlin has trusted the publisher with its historical titles: Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift and Zoosystematics and Evolution. In 2017, Evolutionary Systematics, another prominent journal with a legacy in the field of zoology by the University of Hamburg followed suit. In 2020, we will be also seeing the move of three journals by the Senckenberg Nature Research Society: Arthropod Systematics & Phylogeny, Vertebrate Zoology and Geologica Saxonica.


About SNSB:

The Bavarian Natural History Collections (Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, SNSB) are a research institution for natural history in Bavaria. They encompass five State Collections (zoology, botany, paleontology and geology, mineralogy, anthropology and paleoanatomy), the Botanical Garden Munich-Nymphenburg and eight museums with public exhibitions in Munich, Bamberg, Bayreuth, Eichstätt and Nördlingen.

Research conducted by over 30 permanent and 30 third-party funded scientists, currently employed at the SNSB, focuses mainly on the past and present bio- and geodiversity and the evolution of animals and plants. To achieve this, the institution keeps large scientific collections (more than 30,000,000 specimens). The collections and museums also play an instrumental role in public and academic education.

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Pensoft signs with Senckenberg Nature Research Society to publish three journals on ARPHA

Recently, the scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft signed with one of the largest natural research associations in Germany: the Senckenberg Nature Research Society, to publish three journals: Arthropod Systematics & Phylogeny, Vertebrate Zoology and Geologica Saxonica on behalf of the Senckenberg Natural History Collections Dresden, one of the oldest natural-science museums in the world.

Expected to move to the Pensoft-developed technologically advanced scholarly publishing platform ARPHA later in 2020, the three academic outlets will not only acquire their own glossy and user-friendly websites, but will also take advantage from ARPHA’s signature fast-track, end-to-end publishing system, which is to benefit all journal users: authors, reviewers and editors alike. In addition, the journals will use all unique services offered by ARPHA, such as data publishing, linked data tables, semantic markup and enhancements, automated export of sub-article elements and data to aggregators, web-service integrations with more than 40 world-class indexing and archiving databases, sub-article-level usage metrics, and more.

Thereby, each submitted manuscript will be carried through the review, editing, publication, dissemination and archiving stages without leaving ARPHA’s collaboration-centred online environment. The articles are to be available in PDF, machine-readable JATS XML formats, and semantically enriched HTML for better reader experience to ensure they are easy to discover, access, cite and reuse.

Arthropod Systematics & Phylogeny succeeded the historical Entomologische Abhandlungen, formerly published by the Museum of Zoology, Dresden, in 2006. Its scope covers the taxonomy, morphology, anatomy, phylogeny, historical biogeography and palaeontology of arthropod taxa.

Similarly, Vertebrate Zoology was preceded by Zoologische Abhandlungen, also formerly published by the Museum of Zoology, Dresden. It deals with research on the taxonomy, morphology, anatomy, phylogeny, historical biogeography and palaeontology of vertebrates.

Meanwhile, Geologica Saxonica – Journal of Central European Geology, began its life in distant 1876, when it was founded under the name Mitteilungen aus dem Koniglichen Mineralogisch-Geologischen und Prahistorischen Museum by German geologist Hanns Bruno Geinitz, renowned for his work on the Carboniferous and Cretaceous rocks and fossils of Saxony.

“At Pensoft, we take pride in our latest partnership with the world-renowned natural history association of Senckenberg. “We are certain that our collaboration will bring many advantages to the research community: readers, authors and their affiliates alike,”

comments Pensoft and ARPHA’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev.

Senckenberg is not the first prestigious German research institution to enter into an agreement with Pensoft. Since 2014, the Natural History Museum Berlin has trusted the publisher with its own historical titles in the Biology domain: Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift and Zoosystematics and Evolution. In 2017, Evolutionary Systematics, another prominent journal with a legacy in the field of Zoology by the University of Hamburg followed suit. Zitteliana, a historical scholarly journal covering all fields of paleontology and geobiology by the State Natural History Collection of Bavaria (SNSB) is to also join the journal portfolio of Pensoft and ARPHA Platform in the next months.

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About Senckenberg:

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

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New OA Journal of European Landscapes by Amsterdam University Press launched on ARPHA

By crossing traditional disciplinary and regional borders, this innovative peer-reviewed journal will document landscape studies and project results while inspiring international collaboration

Journal of European Landscape (JEL), an openly accessible, peer-reviewed academic outlet, was launched by Amsterdam University Press (AUP) with the aim to bridge the gap between heritage and future-proof landscapes, between local and international perspectives, between what is and what is only in the eye of the beholder. By publishing scientific papers, descriptions of running or finished projects, interviews and book reviews, the novel journal is to document and safely store otherwise fragile research outputs, while also promoting landscape discourse across geographies.

The inaugural issue of the journal is now out, featuring an opening editorial, two project descriptions (CHeriScape Project and PERICLES), three book reviews (Biography of an Industrial Landscape: Carlsberg’s Urban Spaces Retold, Waddenland Outstanding. History, landscape and cultural heritage of the Wadden Sea Region and Estate landscapes in northern Europe), a research paper comparing similar Iron Age settlements in England, France and Spain and an interview with geographer Dr Kenneth Olwig, whose best known work is devoted to the concept of landscape from a philological perspective and studied using historical sources and etymological methods.

Having become the second AUP’s journal to move to the scholarly publishing platform ARPHA after the Dutch journal of Accountancy & Business Economics (Maandblad voor Accountancy en Bedrijfseconomie), JEL does not only benefit from a brand new glossy and user-friendly appearance, but also from ARPHA’s signature fast-track, end-to-end publishing system to the benefit of its users: authors, reviewers and editors alike. Thereby, each submitted manuscript is carried through the review, editing, publication, dissemination and archiving stages without ever leaving ARPHA’s collaboration-centred online environment. The articles are available in PDF, machine-readable JATS XML formats, and semantically enriched HTML for better reader experience, so that they are easy to discover, access, cite and reuse.

Irene van Rossum, Senior Commissioning editor at Amsterdam University Press, says:

“We are excited by the launch of Journal of European Landscapes on the ARPHA platform. AUP believes that the platform is the ideal venue for open access journals, giving them all the features and services needed for authors and editors alike. It is a great pleasure to work with the very professional people at Pensoft in setting all this up.”

Given the complexity of landscape as a concept that brings together the physical, cultural and scenic identity of a geographical space for purposes as varied as planning and environmental management to Art, it becomes clear why until recently it has only been a concern on a local, regional or, at most, national level. However, as a result of the common issues shared within the European Union (EU) and the fact that the Old Continent has effectively ‘exported’ landscape to many other parts of the world, it becomes apparent that research results from localised studies and projects can prove of huge benefit to multiple other localities, regions and nations.

Furthermore, the same goes for knowledge obtained through work in diverse academic disciplines, including archaeology, anthropology, art history, geography, earth sciences, economics, tourism studies and sociology.

Linde Egberts, Editor-in-Chief, comments:

“We have seen a growing interest in contextualising heritage and history of local, regional and national landscape over the years. But we felt there was no platform to share the outcomes of comparative and cross-boundary landscape research. By launching this journal, we are doing just that: contributing to the understanding of the relationships between different landscapes and the way they are managed and interpreted.”

Hans Renes, Editor-in-Chief, adds:

“We are very excited about this new journal that certainly fills a gap in the study of landscapes. In our vision, landscape studies are still too much taking place within national boundaries. The new open access journal will be instrumental in making the field more international. We are grateful that AUP and Pensoft are guiding us in this fascinating journey.”

A platform like JEL is to also be especially helpful for EU projects and consortia, which despite being largely focused on novelty and sustainability, often fail to preserve the results of their work once the initiative is formally concluded, the funding is over and the project’s website is no longer maintained.

As a result, JEL aims to offer a first-of-its-kind platform, where researchers from across geographies and scientific fields will be able to publish their work and make it available to others to reuse and build-on in their own turn. By simultaneously prompting the better understanding of landscape in its historical, conceptual and practical dimensions and paving the way to forward-thinking advancements, perspectives and findings published in JEL will be well-positioned to address impending matters of concern, including the challenges of rewilding, energy transition and making landscapes ‘climate-proof’.

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About Amsterdam University Press (AUP):

Amsterdam University Press (AUP) is a leading publisher of academic books in English, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. AUP contracts over one hundred and fifty titles a year specialising in the fields of History, Asian Studies, Film, Media and Communication, Social and Political Sciences, and Linguistics, with an additional active and best-selling list of non-fiction trade publications in Dutch. AUP connects authors with readers through an international network of distributors and partners, and offers sales and marketing with dedicated representatives in key markets across the world. Working on cutting-edge research, AUP authors are from a global academic network, distinguishing an open, creative, and internationally orientated attitude in acquisitions, sales and marketing. Visit http://www.aup.nl for more information.

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Official EASE journal European Science Editing goes diamond OA with ARPHA

Starting from 2020, European Science Editing (ESE), the official journal of the European Association of Science Editors (EASE), has been relaunched as a fully Open Access journal with all content freely available and published as soon as accepted, on a new journal website hosted on ARPHA Platform.

This move is part of a strategic relaunch of the journal to provide greater focus on research and expert commentary that will inform and support editors working in the scholarly environment. The relaunch comes after several months of planning by a small working group of EASE Council members and ESE editors. Much of the non-research content previously published in the journal will now be published in the newly-created member magazine, the EASE Digest; for example, News notes, The editor’s bookshelf, Resources, and interviews.

The journal is being relaunched with a new editorial board, but retaining the same Chief Editor, Ksenija Bazdaric, managing editor Dado Cakalo and associate editor associate editors Hrvoje Jakovac, Tom Lang and Joan Marsh. An introductory editorial published in the journal explains the changes.

Introductory editorial by ESE’s Chief Editor, Ksenija Bazdaric. Openly available from https://doi.org/10.3897/ese.2020.e50566.

The new editorial board comprises distinguished members from all over the world: Eva Baranyiova (Czech Republic), Lisa Colledge (UK), Moira Hudson (UK), Olga Kirillova (Russia), Zafer Kocak (Turkey), Rachael Lammey (UK), Vladimir S Lazarev (Belarus), John Loadman (Australia), Herve Maisonneuve (France), Ana Marusic (Croatia), Arjan Polderman (The Netherlands), Maria del Carmen Ruiz Alcocer (Mexico), Karen Shashok (Spain), Cem Uzun (Turkey), and Quan Hoang Vuong (Vietnam).

Ever dedicated to be a source of peer-reviewed information on all aspects of scholarly editing and publishing (i.e. research integrity, peer review, scientometrics, open science, predatory publishing, statistics), writing, translation and ethics, ESE welcomes editorials, original research articles, reviews, viewpoints and correspondence items.

ESE has moved to its new website, provided by the open-access scholarly publishing platform ARPHA (developed by scientific publisher and technology provider Pensoft), for all new articles, although the archive content will remain on the old website. This new website provides better delivery of the journal content and will help to make the journal easier to discover.

“I am happy to be working with the ARPHA team and that ESE has moved to a completely new platform which will raise the profile of editorial research and topics,”

Ksenija Bazdaric, ESE’s Chief Editor.

“At EASE we are delighted to be working with ARPHA and Pensoft to publish the journal in its new format. There has been considerable work invested in relaunching the journal with a new focus so that we can raise the profile of research about editing and the value that editors provide in the scholarly environment. An important part of the relaunch was ensuring greater visibility of the journal content and we are confident that ARPHA can help us achieve this,”

Pippa Smart, President, EASE.

“It could only make us proud at ARPHA that such a pillar in the world of scholarly communication has chosen our publishing platform to make the crucial step towards Open Access. I am certain that by opening up and digitalising its content right away, EASE will greatly facilitate and expedite the improvement of quality and integrity of science on the global scene,”

ARPHA’s and Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev. “

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Follow European Science Editing on Twitter.

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ARPHA Platform’s content integrated into ScienceOpen to take advantage of novel streams of science communication

The research discovery platform ScienceOpen and Pensoft Publishers have entered into a strategic collaboration with the aim of strengthening the companies’ identities as the leaders of innovative content dissemination. The new cooperation will focus on the unified indexation, the integration of Pensoft’s ARPHA Platform content into ScienceOpen and the utilization of novel streams of scientific communication for the published materials.

Pensoft is an independent academic publishing company, well known worldwide for bringing novelty through its cutting-edge publishing tools and for its commitment to open access practices. In 2013, Pensoft launched the first ever, end-to-end, XML-based, authoring, reviewing and publishing workflow, now upgraded to the ARPHA Publishing Platform. As of today, ARPHA hosts over 50 open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journals: the whole Pensoft portfolio in addition to titles owned by learned societies, university presses and research institutions.

As part of the strategic collaboration, all Pensoft content and journals hosted on ARPHA are indexed in the ScienceOpen’s research and discovery environment, which puts them into thematic context of over 60 million articles and books. In addition, thousands of articles across more than 20 journals were integrated into a “Pensoft Biodiversity” Collection. Combined this way, the content benefits from the special infrastructure of ScienceOpen Collections, which supports thematic groups of articles and books equipped with a unique landing page, a built-in search engine and an overview of the featured content. The Collections can be reviewed, recommended and shared by users, which facilitates academic debate and increases the discoverability of the research.

The Pensoft Biodiversity collection on ScienceOpen.

“It is certainly great news and a much-anticipated milestone for Pensoft, ARPHA and our long-year partners and supporters from ScienceOpen to have brought our collaboration to a new level by indexing the whole ARPHA-hosted content at ScienceOpen,” comments Pensoft’s and ARPHA’s CEO and founder Prof. Lyubomir Penev. “Most of all, the integration between ARPHA and ScienceOpen at an infrastructural level means that we will be able to offer this incredible service and increased visibility to newcoming journals right away. On the other hand, by streaming fresh and valuable publicly accessible content to the ScienceOpen database, these journals will be further adding to the growth of science in the open.”

Stephanie Dawson, CEO of ScienceOpen says, “I am particularly excited to add new high-quality, open access biodiversity content from Pensoft Publishers to the ScienceOpen discovery environment as we have a very active community of researchers on ScienceOpen creating and sharing Collections in this field. We are looking forward to working with Pensoft’s innovative journals to support their open science goals.”

The collaboration reflects not only the commitment of both Pensoft and ScienceOpen to new methods of knowledge dissemination, but also the joint mission to champion open science through innovation. The two companies will cooperate at a strategic level in order to increase the international outreach of their content and services, and to make them even more accessible to the broad community.

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About ScienceOpen:

From promotional collections to Open Access hosting and full publishing packages, ScienceOpen provides next-generation services to academic publishers embedded in an interactive discovery platform. ScienceOpen was founded in 2013 in Berlin and Boston by Alexander Grossmann and Tibor Tscheke to accelerate research communication.

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As transparent as it gets! Four pricing plans & operating models from ARPHA available to OA academic journals

One size to fit them all? At ARPHA, we are well aware that it does not work like that in academia, let alone when it comes to accommodating individual scholarly journals from across the tremendously varied publishing landscape. 

This is why we have prepared four options to account for the specific aims and needs of ARPHA’s potential clients, while bearing in mind their resources and sustainability. 

In the spirit of transparency and openness, along with a comprehensive list of services that clarifies how each plan compares with the rest, we have provided the associated pricing ranges, where the total expenditure is easy to calculate, as it is based solely on the volume of published content. To support emerging publishers and prolific institutions, and express gratitude for their trust, we offer discounts for multiple journals joining ARPHA’s community.

Visit our website to see a detailed list of the services provided in our LITE, BASIC, ADVANCED and PREMIUM plans.

While Open Science initiatives, including OA2020 and Plan S, have clearly become the major talking points, academic institutions, societies and small-to-medium publishers from around the world are increasingly looking to chip in the growing community and make their own stand for science becoming truly efficient, responsible and inclusive by ensuring openness, transparency and FAIRness. But how do they do that when capped budgets, scarce human resources and lack of know-how in specific areas come into play? 

While one may be struggling with bringing together the right in-house expertise, another might be unable to keep track of the ‘top wanted’ integrations and services required for any state-of-the-art publication venue, and yet another might be encountering difficulties in communicating their otherwise ground-breaking published research to the public. In our experience, all of them are most likely experiencing difficulties with either the development of an advanced and user-friendly technological backbone or covering the associated costs.


ARPHA provides a highly automated, end-to-end publishing platform to ALL clients by default, which ensures that the research in their journals is just as easy to prepare and publish as it is to discover, access and reuse later on.

Here are the good news! ALL journals published on ARPHA Platform take advantage of our signature high-tech and easy-to-operate full-featured platform by default. What we mean, is that any journal benefits from an end-to-end, entirely online publishing solution, which takes care of the manuscripts all the way from submission and peer review to editing, publication, dissemination, indexing and archiving (see “The 5 Most Distinct Features of ARPHA”), while the annual maintenance could easily cost as little as a few thousands euros.

ARPHA stands for much more than a publishing platform.
It also comprises an extensive collection of services brought together in order to attend next-to-all demands associated with scholarly publishing.

On top of ARPHA’s user- and collaboration-friendly platform that allows for authors, reviewers and editors to easily and conveniently manage and track the progress of manuscripts, thereby ensuring that no technological pitfalls stand in the way to rapid and efficient distribution of scientific knowledge, our platform is continuously expanding its suite of services and features. This is also where one can find the major differences between the four plans offered by ARPHA.


With so many services and functionalities at hand, it was not that difficult for us to come up with four thought-through alternatives, and still ensure that ALL clients of ARPHA have their journals’ content published in a Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable manner. ga

As you can notice, even the lowest-priced LITE Plan features a plenty of useful and advanced perks, including a one-stop API end-point for distribution to 30+ international databases, metadata export to 12+ machine-readable formats, article sharing and usage statistics tools.

Assignment of DOIs to individual images is one of the perks exclusive in ARPHA’s PREMIUM plan (see pictured, available in Alpine Entomology). 


At the other end of the spectrum, ARPHA’s PREMIUM Plan adds top-notch features, such as assignment of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to individual images, which in turn allows for the delivery of real-time usage metrics for each one of those.

Extensive marketing and promotional support, including an unlimited dissemination of press releases via the major global science news release platform Eurekalert! (AAAS), is also available to PREMIUM clients. Thus, a journal’s authors will not have to worry about their groundbreaking discoveries failing to reach the global public (e.g. news story “Scientists discover new Chinese firefly species” on SKY News, covering one of the latest publications in ZooKeys journal, and the associated press release on Eurekalert!).

News story via SKY News.

***

Curious about how ARPHA could accommodate your journal(s)? 

Scroll down our pricing plans and operating models, and fill out the Get a Quote form. Shortly, we will be back in touch to discuss the best options for ARPHA to fit the specificity of your publishing project.

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Pensoft welcomes Neotropical Biology & Conservation to its open-access journal portfolio

Eleven studies in the first issue demonstrate the modernized look & feel of the Brazil-born journal, as provided by the scholarly publishing platform ARPHA

Launched by the Brazilian university Unisinos (Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos) in 2006, the open-access, peer-reviewed Neotropical Biology & Conservation moves to the journal family of scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft.

Neotropical Biology & Conservation welcomes research and review articles, short communications and commentaries on the biology and behaviour of organisms from the tropical ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South America. Special emphasis is given to papers that demonstrate the application of conservation principles for natural resource management and policy. Manuscripts can be published in Portuguese, as well as English, where an English-language abstract is mandatory.

The journal is published three times a year, with the first 2019 issue already available on the new website. New research papers, part of the second issue, will be out next Monday (15th July).

New website for Neotropical Biology & Conservation

Beyond Neotropical Biology & Conservation‘s new glossy and user-friendly appearance, the Pensoft-developed scholarly platform ARPHA provides its signature fast-track, end-to-end publishing system to the benefit of its users: authors, reviewers and editors alike. Thereby, each submitted manuscript is carried through the review, editing, publication, dissemination and archiving stages without leaving ARPHA’s collaboration-centred online environment. The articles are available in PDF and machine-readable XML formats, so that they are easy to discover, access, cite and reuse.

Editor-in-Chief of Neotropical Biology & Conservation Dr Ana Maria Leal-Zanchet, says:

“It’s an honour for the Editorial board of Neotropical Biology & Conservation that the journal becomes a member of the Pensoft/ARPHA team. This journal was born as Acta Biologica Leopoldensia, which was published by Unisinos between 1979 and 2005. Since 2006 Neotropical Biology & Conservation continued the tradition of this former journal, publishing articles from all around Brazil, and even enhancing its coverage to other parts of the Neotropics. In recent years, the scientific community that uses our journal as a venue to disseminate their research results has been continuously increasing. We maintain our commitment to disseminate scientific findings through open access and to continue pursuing a sustainable international growth. I am sure that the user-friendly ARPHA’s publishing system and the great support of the Pensoft team will please authors, reviewers and the Editorial board of the journal, enhancing the efficiency, quality and swiftness of publishing, as well as the international visibility of Neotropical Biology & Conservation.”

ARPHA’s and Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof Lyubomir Penev says:

“I’m delighted to welcome Neotropical Biology & Conservation to the Pensoft/ARPHA family, where the journal not only feels at home amongst predominantly biodiversity-themed titles, but also comes to complement another two Brazil-born journals: Check List, which publishes biogeographical data, especially for the use of biodiversity conservation, and Zoologia: mostly focusing on systematics, evolution and taxonomy in the field of Zoology. With this kind of background and the constantly expanding high-tech functions of ARPHA, I’m certain that we are fully equipped to build on the image and success of Neotropical Biology & Conservation.”

What’s on in the first issue?

Amongst the 11 articles in the first issue of Neotropical Biology & Conservation, there is the study by Dr Lucas Porto (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul) and Dr Ana Maria Rui (Universidade Federal de Pelotas), which observes Crab-eating and Pampas foxes in southern Brazil for a year to compare the diets and habitat uses of the two sympatric species. Curiously, the canids demonstrated a high overlap of their diets at all times, with the exception of autumn.

Another paper, authored by a research team from the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Goiano and the Federal University of Goiás, describes the frequency, occurrence status and activity period of the most common medium- and large-sized mammals living in the world’s most biodiverse savanna: Brazil’s Cerrado. Namely, subjects of the study were the Giant anteater, Nine-banded armadillo, South American tapir, Crab-eating fox and Lowland paca, where the largest species were found to have the greatest variation in time period of activity.

A collaborative work at the Federal University of Pernambuco, University of Brasília and the Rural Federal University of Pernambuco, reports important observations of the unexpectedly diverse bat fauna in an urban environment located in the Atlantic Forest, northeastern Brazil. Between May 2006 and April 2007, the researchers captured 950 bats identified to 16 species and five families.

The first 2019 issue of Neotropical Biology and Conservation.

Follow Neotropical Biology & Conservation on Twitter and Facebook.