Publishing platform ARPHA partners with Altmetric to track online attention to research

With a research output mentioned online every 1.8 seconds, it only makes sense for the science community to grow curious of how they could access the knowledge of this public interest to better and build on their work.

Journal publishing platform ARPHA, developed by academic publisher Pensoft, has partnered with Altmetric to enable authors, readers and other users to track the online shares and discussions relating to each research output in journals published on ARPHA.

Thanks to the integration, a single click in the top menu of an article reveals the Altmetric donut visualisation, which provides an at-a-glance summary of the attention the item has received. The colours of the donut reflect the source of the attention, and the user can click on the image to be taken to the Altmetric details page, which provides a record of all of the mentions. Data is updated in real-time to provide insight into how the item is being received and shared.

To deliver such detailed information, Altmetric follows 2,000 mainstream media outlets in over 30 languages, social networks, public policy documents, post-publication peer-review forums, online reference managers, blogs, and Wikipedia.

As a result, all authors, readers, editors and funders can easily and immediately track the popularity, reception and impact of each of their studies.

“Having built an extensive portfolio of innovations as a technological provider, we are always looking forward to making yet another effort at providing our users with the best-quality experience. The integration of Altmetric data provides us with another opportunity to do exactly this,” says Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof Lyubomir Penev.

“Furthermore, the science community has long been in need of a more adequate measure of the influence and engagement of individual research outputs, and Altmetric provides this.”

Altmetric’s Founder Euan Adie adds, “We’re excited to see the Altmetric badges being implemented across the ARPHA platform. Helping researchers get credit for their work and demonstrate its reach and influence is a core part of what we do, and this integration provides new opportunities to do so.”

The Altmetric badges and associated details pages are now available for all articles within Pensoft’s journals, as well as the journals using the white-label publishing available from ARPHA.

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Additional information:

About Altmetric:

Altmetric was founded in 2011 and has made it a mission to track and analyze the online activity around scholarly literature. Altmetric tracks what people are saying about research outputs online and works with some of the biggest publishers, funders, and institutions around the world to deliver this data in an accessible and reliable format. Altmetric is supported by Digital Science. Visit http://www.altmetric.com for more information, and follow on Twitter @altmetric.

New open access journal Rethinking Ecology publishes novel ideas

Needless to say, it is through sharing new ideas and hypotheses that critical issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss can be addressed. However, few scientists are currently in a position to do so, because publishing bold ideas in peer-reviewed journals is very difficult, especially for those who are not world-renowned scientists in their field. At the same time, scientists sharing novel ideas that have not been published yet, carry the risk of being ‘scooped’. This is probably a scientist’s worst nightmare: seeing someone else publish the idea they have been working on. In this context, many innovative ideas are kept secret and it can take years before they are made available to the scientific community.

This is the niche that the novel open access peer-reviewed journal Rethinking Ecology aims to fill by providing a platform for forward thinking and publication of novel ideas in all aspects of ecology, evolution and environmental science.

Adding to its innovative nature, Rethinking Ecology joins the modern technologically advanced Pensoft journals published on next-generation platform ARPHA (abbreviation standing for Authoring, Reviewing, Publishing, Hosting and Archiving). Not only is the platform to provide fast-track and convenient publishing for the authors, reviewers and editors in Rethinking Ecology, as it takes care of a manuscript through all stages from authoring and reviewing to dissemination and archiving, but it is user-friendly to the readers as well, who enjoy publications in three formats (PDF, XML, HTML) and full of semantic enhancements.

The innovative journal aims to encourage all scientists, regardless of their seniority, publication track record, gender, or country of origin, to publish perspective papers, so that they are put in the open for peers to discuss and build on, while credit is given where credit is due. Publishing these ideas early also draws attention from the scientific community, potential collaborators and potential funders. To further avoid potential bias, Rethinking Ecology implements double-blind peer review, with the journal supporting the notion that it is the content of a manuscript that matters. Moreover, reviewers will not be asked for a formal recommendation. Instead, they will comment and evaluate the work against a set of specific questions. Thus, each paper ends up with a score on Novelty, Feasibility, Scholarship and Literacy, so that only perspective papers with an emphasis on novel hypotheses and bold ideas are accepted for publication.

Another innovative feature applied in the new journal is an Author Contribution Index (ACI), meaning that each publication will include a pie chart pointing to the contribution of each of the authors, estimated in percentage. This is the editors’ answer to the so-called ‘guest authorship’ (i.e. inclusion of authors who did not significantly contribute to the work).

logoIt is no coincidence that Rethinking Ecology has a spiral-shaped unfurling fern leaf as a logo. Called Koru in the language of the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand – Māori, it symbolises novelty, new life and new beginning, as well as perpetual movement.

“Each publication in Rethinking Ecology can be seen as the beginning of life for a new idea and its metaphorical unfurling as it reaches out to the scientific community,” explain the journal editors in their very first Editorial at Rethinking Ecology.

“We see Rethinking Ecology as an incubator for novel ideas, and a catalyst for new thinking,” says the journal’s Editor-in-Chief Dr Stephane Boyer, Unitec Institute of Technology, New Zealand.

“In a world where scientific publications are increasingly open source and immediately available, it makes no sense to keep our most innovative ideas hidden from the world for years while we secretly test them,” he elaborates. “Bold ideas and new hypotheses need to be shared, they may or may not turn into world-changing paradigm shifts, but they all have the potential to contribute to new thinking.”

“I am pleased to welcome a groundbreaking journal such as Rethinking Ecology to the Pensoft family, which has already built a nice and extensive portfolio of innovations in scholarly publishing,” says Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev. “Seeing genuine ideas and hypotheses yet to be tested, and possibly, yet to revolutionise the ecological science is certainly a thing worthy of eager anticipation.”

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About ARPHA:

ARPHA is the first end-to-end journal publishing solution that supports the full life cycle of a manuscript, from authoring through submission, peer review, publication and dissemination. With ARPHA, journals and publishers enjoy a complete set of services, which enable tailored, technologically advanced publishing solutions. The platform enables a variety of publishing models through a number of options for branding, production and revenue models to choose from.

Business: Theory and Practice journal moves to the ARPHA white label publishing platform

Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and ARPHA launch a new joint pilot project for the open access peer-reviewed journal BTP

In a new joint pilot project, the open access peer-reviewed journal Business: Theory and Practice (BTP), issued by VGTU Press since 2000, runs on the new journal publishing platform ARPHA, developed by Pensoft. ARPHA provides end-to-end technological solution for all peer-review stages starting from submission to fully functional dedicated new website. Publications are also available in semantically enriched HTML and XML formats, as well as the traditional PDF. The journal’s authors and editors enjoy easily manageable peer-review workflow in ARPHA.

Business: Theory and Practice publishes original research articles and reviews that integrate economic development and globalization, interpretations and consequences of entrepreneurship, strategic management and organizational behavior, theoretical questions and empirical questions of industrial organizations. It covers a variety of fields, including business environment, economic development and globalization, entrepreneurial finance, interpretations and consequences of entrepreneurship, strategic management, organizational behavior, theoretical questions and empirical questions of industrial organization, and case studies.

BTP has opted for the ARPHA-DOC publishing workflow, which provides an individually designed website under the imprint and logo of VGTU Press, a document-based article submission, as well as peer review, publication, hosting and dissemination. The manuscripts submitted to BTP will be subject to double-blind peer review.

“It is a great pleasure to work with the Pensoft team on establishing an innovative publishing platform for Business: Theory and Practice. I am sure the new platform will exceed the expectations of all – the authors, the editors and the readers,” says VGTU Press Director Eleonora Dagiene.

“Academic publishing is in a process of disruptive transition. As a result, small journal publishers and society journals are strongly affected and threatened with decline and even extinction. This is because access to high-level publishing technologies is not easy and, in most cases, not affordable. So, we developed ARPHA specially for them! ARPHA is not only an end-to-end journal publishing platform, covering the whole process from website design, authoring, editorial management and peer-review to publishing and dissemination – it also delivers a wide range of easily customizable end-to-end services, on the choice of the journal. I am glad to see Business: Theory and Practice published by VGTU Press as the first Lithuanian journal coming to the ARPHA platform and becoming a member of ARPHA’s growing family of international partners,” says Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev.

The articles accepted for the current issue of 2016 in BTP, published via ARPHA, are already available on the journal’s new website.

ARPHA is open to journals looking for a technologically advanced publishing platform plus all associated services, which can be customized to the journal’s preferences.

Next-Generation Journal Publishing Platform ARPHA at Frankfurt Book Fair 2016

Following the launch of our self-developed journal publishing platform ARPHA (standing for Authoring, Reviewing, Publishing, Hosting and Archiving, all happening at one place), we were so happy with the outcome, that we couldn’t help sharing it with the world. Therefore, it’s on offer not only to our own journals and authors, but it’s also at hand to journals looking for their new home. Just let us know you’re interested!

On these lines, what could be a better place to have a chat about the transition in scholarly publishing, open science, research reproducibility and, of course, the advantages of having a journal published on ARPHA, than Frankfurt Book Fair 2016? Between 18th and 23rd October, this immense event will be all about unveiling and celebrating the evolution in the publishing industry, with exhibitors, trade and private visitors from across the globe, gathering together, led by their common expertise and passion.

Meet us at HotSpot Professional and Scientific Information Stage, Hall 4.2, Stand M90, during the Fair, and make sure you don’t miss the “ARPHA: Next-Generation Journal Publishing” presentation at 11:30 AM (local time) on Friday, 21st October, where Pensoft’s Founder and Managing Director Prof Lyubomir Penev will shed more light on the first end-to-end publishing solution, providing everything a journal needs in a technologically advanced, highly efficient and user-friendly manner.

 

ARPHA in a few notes:

The platform

With ARPHA you can choose between two journal publishing workflows: ARPHA-DOC and ARPHA-XML. The former provides document-based submission for the articles in a journal, as well as peer review and publication. The latter makes use of the ARPHA Writing Tool, which takes all processes, including authoring, peer review and post-publication updates, to an online environment, created with collaboration and openness in mind.

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Our services

ARPHA takes care of all the steps that go along with academic publishing and its efficient dissemination, so that it provides a long list of perks to make it easier for the scientific community to bring research to light. Website design, online editorial management system, linguistic editing, semantic markup, promotion and (sub-)article usage metrics are only a part of the services the platform has to offer.

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The publishing models

ARPHA basically lets users mix-and-match services and features to create the publishing model that’s the best fit for their journals. How do you envision your imprint / web-design look / manuscript input / peer review process / publication output / revenue model? ARPHA understands your journal’s individual needs and works around them.

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Find out more about ARPHA at our talk, or come and meet us at our stand in HotSpot Professional and Scientific Information (Hall 4.2, M90).

As Good as Gold: Publishing platform ARPHA is proud supporter of Peer Review Week 2016 and Gold star sponsor of Publons’ Sentinels of Science

In the heat of this year’s Peer Review Week, themed “Recognition for Review”, we would like to express how and why we are so proud to be part of it and Publons’ initiative Sentinels of Science, meant to recognize the true guardians of quality science, or in other words, the peer reviewers.

Being a high-tech and modern publishing solution, developed by Pensoft with the mindset that to adapt to the future, means to innovate, ARPHA itself was set to take the quite stagnant current peer review practice forward from day one.

This is why and how we provide a range of peer review options for every author submitting their work to any journal, published on the ARPHA platform. For example, here are the four-stages of the open peer review process operating in our flagship Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) Journal:

  1. Author-organised, pre-submission review, available to all journals that make use of our ARPHA Writing Tool, which is our way to take the common get-a-friend-to-proofread-your-work practice to a whole new, transparent and technologically facilitated level. The review happens in real time with the author and the reviewers being able to work together in the ARPHA online environment. It is not mandatory, but we encourage it strongly. All pre-submission reviews provided on authors’ request in RIO can be published along with the article, bearing DOI and citation details.
  2. Pre-submission technical and editorial check is another benefit, provided by the journal’s editorial office to those who are using the ARPHA Writing Tool. If necessary, it can take up several rounds, until the manuscript is improved to the level appropriate for direct submission to the journal.
  3. The community-sourced, post-publication, open peer review is the next review stage provided to all articles published in RIO and all other ARPHA journals.
  4. In addition, RIO also provides journal-organised, post-publication open peer reviewupon author’s request. In all other ARPHA journals this review stage happens mandatory before publication.

To facilitate peer review in any journal published on the platform, ARPHA consolidates every review automatically into a single online file, which makes it possible for reviewers to comment in real time, even during the authoring process. Once posted, the whole peer review history is archived along with the associated files.

To recognize peer review even further, ARPHA registers automatically each of our peer reviewers, along with their work, on Publons, thanks to the integration of all Pensoft journals with the platform, created to credit reviewers and their contributions.

With this vision of peer review, we simply could not stay clear of the aspiring Sentinels of Science initiative, started by Publons. It only made sense for us to step in, which logically led to the ARPHA logo appearing in the Gold star sponsors list.peerrevwk16-sentinels-of-science

African Invertebrates migrates to ARPHA Platform

One of the oldest zoological journals in Africa, African Invertebrates, is now moving to Pensoft to benefit from the next generation publishing offered by the company. The journal focuses on the taxonomy, systematics, biogeography, biology, ecology, conservation and palaeontology of all Afrotropical invertebrates.

Established as early as 1906 by the KwaZulu-Natal Museum as Annals of the Natal Museum, the journal was renamed to African Invertebrates in 2003 to mark the centenary of the founding of the museum and to declare its ambition to establish itself as a recognizable title in taxonomy. Throughout the years the journal has been building reputation and strengthening its position as a primary outlet for publishing original research on African insects and other invertebrates.

The migration to Pensoft marks yet another step forward in the journal’s development placing African Invertebrates on the map of technologically advanced journals with a mission to provide semantically enriched, interlinked and re-usable content.

“The transfer of African Invertebrates to Pensoft is an exciting development for the KwaZulu-Natal Museum. We are immensely proud of the journal and have striven to maintain and enhance its high quality. However, we realise that the journal must also keep pace with new trends and developments in the fast-moving world of scientific publication.” comments Prof. Dai Herbert, Editor-in-Chief of African Invertebrates.

“We are delighted that Pensoft has agreed to include African Invertebrates in its journal portfolio. This kind of cutting-edge publishing platform is precisely what the journal needs to ensure its future relevance and growth. We are excited to see African Invertebrates enter this new phase in its development.” he adds.

The international peer-reviewed e-journal will now be hosted on the ARPHA publishing platform, benefitting from a number of inbuilt innovations, including:

  • Fast-track professional publication services;
  • Open access, semantically enriched content;
  • Online publication in HTML, semantically enhanced with biodiversity-specific markup provided by the publisher, high resolution, full-color, print-quality PDF, as well as XML;
  • Archiving in various data repositories;
  • A number of additional services including linguistic editing, tailored dissemination campaigns and more.

“We are pleased to welcome African Invertebrates on board. Our experience in advanced open access publishing as well as our domain specific expertise promise good future for our collaboration with the KwaZulu-Natal Museum to innovate and develop the journal.” explains Prof. Lyubomir Penev, Founder and Managing Director at Pensoft.

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New journal One Ecosystem: Innovation in ecology and sustainability research publishing

Focused on the fields of ecology and sustainability, One Ecosystem is an innovative open access scholarly journal that goes beyond the conventional research article publication. Launched in January 2016, the new journal is now open for submissions ranging across the entire research cycle, including data, models, methods, workflows, results, software, perspectives and policy recommendations.

Ecosystem services, Ecology and Sustainability are research areas that address highly relevant scientific and societal topics. One Ecosystem aims to respond to the newest developments in scholarly publishing, adapting them for and applying them to these fields.

The journal offers a wide set of article templates, including domain-specific ones, such as Ecosystem services mapping, Ecological models or Environmental monitoring, allowing scientists to publish and get credit for their work at any stage of the research cycle. Through the technologically advanced ARPHA publishing platform and innovative publishing model, all data that underpin a given study will be made free to everyone and integrated into relevant and domain-specific global data repositories.

“We need better incentives for scientists who want to share their data. One Ecosystemprovides such incentives by linking peer review to open data” adds Joachim Maes, European Commission – Joint Research Centre.

“We believe that open access to all the relevant products of the scientific cycle is key to both scientific advancement, and innovation in the real world. With One Ecosystem we aim at fostering open exchange of information to address sustainability challenges.” – Deputy Editor-in-Chief Dr. Davide Geneletti, University of Trento.

Open access to content and data is quickly becoming the prevailing model in academic publishing and research funding schemes. By making research outputs public, the new journal opens up new mechanisms for integration of information, collaboration, appraisal, and dissemination. Committed to openness and innovation, One Ecosystem offers a novel community-based peer-review introduced for the first time in these academic disciplines. The journal gives authors and reviewers the opportunity to opt for an entirely open review process.

Making use of the unique ARPHA Writing Tool, One Ecosystem does not only enable authors to prepare their manuscripts directly within the system, but also allows to submit pre-submission reviews from the very start. These reviews or supporting statements from experts in the subject will facilitate the manuscript evaluation and speed up the publishing process.

“With One Ecosystem we want to accelerate scientific progress in the frontier research fields of ecology and sustainability. We are convinced that this new format of writing, reviewing and open access publishing of scientific findings is the future”, explains the Editor-in Chief of One Ecosystem – Dr. Benjamin Burkhard, University of Kiel.

“At Pensoft we have been committed to innovating scientific publishing for years. In One Ecosystem, we have collected all our knowledge and experience to provide scientists in the fields of ecology and sustainability with a conceptually new journal that will give them the opportunity to publish outcomes and collaborate with the community in a new open and more efficient way”, comments Prof. Lyubomir Penev, Founder and Managing Director at Pensoft.

Follow One Ecosystem on Twitter | Facebook