Ultimaterials B.V. signs with Pensoft to publish Atomic Layer Deposition International Journal on ARPHA Platform

To fully unlock the potential of the upcoming era of Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) research, it is crucial to incorporate the viewpoints of academia, industry, and governmental organisations, and ensure that these insights are promptly reflected in the academic articles.

To address this demand and bridge the gap between industry and scientific advances, Ultimaterials BV: a Netherlands-based company developing products in the domain of rechargeable batteries, nanotechnology and composite materials, run by scientists of diverse backgrounds, such as physics, chemistry and mechanical engineering – recently launched the new diamond open-access, peer-reviewed Atomic Layer Deposition International Journal

Powered by Pensoft’s publishing platform ARPHA, the new academic outlet is dedicated to the latest research and developments in the field of atomic layer deposition.

Atomic Layer Deposition is targeting scientists specialising in all aspects of ALD and related alternating vapour phase technologies. Pensoft’s publishing platform ARPHA enables the journal to publish a range of scholarly content, such as original research articles, reviews, short communications, and method papers.

The system is tailored to assist the authors and the editors throughout the entire manuscript submission, review, and publication process, delivering an end-to-end experience and resulting in the publication of articles, enriched with data and multimedia content.

In addition to streamlining the editorial management and publication process, Atomic Layer Deposition can now enjoy improved visibility for its published articles: every article is published in multiple formats, including convenient PDF, semantically-enriched HTML and fully data-minable XML. Thanks to its advanced features and integration with major indexing services, it’s not only simpler to cite and reuse the published research, but the articles are also more readily discoverable and accessible to researchers and decision-makers across the globe.

Atomic Layer Deposition publishes papers in atomic and molecular layer deposition, area selective and spatial ALD, vapour phase infiltration, atomic layer etching, new developments in ALD process design, precursors and chemistry, applications, and characterization and analysis of films and coatings.

Thanks to the generous sponsorship of Ultimaterials B.V., the journal is not only free-to-read, but also free-to-publish, thereby ensuring that the latest research in ALD is available to a global audience to access, but also to produce and disseminate efficiently.

Submissions that report on innovative research, offer new insights or techniques, and contribute to advancing the state-of-the-art in the field from authors working in academic, industrial, and government research settings are especially welcome in Atomic Layer Deposition. 

“Publishing a peer reviewed journal is quite a complicated endeavour. The peer review software, website hosting, production, layout, proofreading, publication in HTML, XML and PDF, indexing and archiving are fortunately all taken care of by the ARPHA Platform and the skilled team at Pensoft. We are glad that the Atomic Layer Deposition journal has found a home with a solid publishing foundation,”

comments the founder of the journal and CEO of Ultimaterials B.V., Dr DJ Monsma.

“We are thrilled to welcome the Atomic Layer Deposition International Journal to our expanding portfolio of scholarly journals published on ARPHA Platform. We are confident that this important and particularly promising industry is being met with increasing enthusiasm. This positive trend is also seen in the appreciation and popularity of this novel journal among professionals in the field”,

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

The first papers of 2023 are already available online on the new website of Atomic Layer Deposition

Within the pioneering papers published, there is a research article by US scholars that discusses the use of ALD for the fabrication of efficient and stable catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction in water splitting for renewable energy applications.

Another study by a Dutch team reports the development of a world-first low-temperature atmospheric-pressure spatial ALD process for SiNx, which can reach comparably low oxygen atomic percentages as those obtained by low-pressure temporal ALD processes based on similar chemistries.

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The Atomic Layer Deposition journal is also on social media. You can follow the ALD journal on Twitter and Linkedin.

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Additional information

About Ultimaterials B.V.:
Ultimaterials B.V. consists of scientists with background in physics, chemistry and mechanical engineering, and talented business administrators.  Products developed by Ultimaterials B.V. are in the domain of rechargeable batteries, nanotechnology and composite materials. Apart from developing products with improved functionality and longevity, Ultimaterials BV also provides consulting services for venture fund enterprises and investments in the energy sector and materials science.

About ARPHA:
ARPHA is the first end-to-end, narrative- and data-integrated publishing solution that supports the full life cycle of a manuscript, from authoring to reviewing, publishing and dissemination. ARPHA provides accomplished and streamlined production workflows that can be customized according to the journal’s needs. The platform enables a variety of publishing models through a number of options for branding, production and revenue models to choose from.

About Pensoft:
Pensoft is an independent, open-access publisher and technology provider, best known for its biodiversity journals, including ZooKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal, Phytokeys, Mycokeys, One Ecosystem, Metabarcoding and Metagenomics and many others. 

To date, the company has continuously been working on various tools and workflows designed to facilitate biodiversity data findability, accessibility, discoverability and interoperability. The latest large projects, led by Pensoft include the OpenBiodiv knowledge graph and the Horizon 2020 project BiCIKL.

Contacts: 

Prof. Lyubomir Penev, founder and CEO at ARPHA and Pensoft
Email: l.penev@pensoft.net

Dr DJ Monsma, founder of the Atomic Layer Deposition International Journal and CEO of Ultimaterials B.V.
LinkedIn

INVASIVESNET signs with Pensoft to move its official journal: Aquatic Invasions to ARPHA Platform

INVASIVESNET signs with Pensoft to move its official journal: Aquatic Invasions to ARPHA Platform

Aquatic Invasions is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal on the biological invasions in inland and coastal water ecosystems from around the world launched by the International Association for Open Knowledge on Invasive Alien Species (INVASIVESNET) & the Regional Euro-Asian Biological Invasions Centre (REABIC). 

The journal was established in 2006 as an initiative of the International Society of Limnology (SIL) Working Group on Aquatic Invasive Species (WGAIS) with start-up funding from the European Commission Sixth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development Integrated Project ALARM to address the need for a dedicated platform to address the challenges of aquatic invasive species. 

Aquatic Invasions has been gradually building on its appeal within the field of aquatic invasive species research, as its impact has been on the rise. Its latest Scopus CiteScore stands at 4.3 and its Journal Impact Factor is 2.651. 

In early 2023, Aquatic Invasions moved to the ARPHA publishing platform to take advantage of its advanced tools and features, allowing the users to navigate throughout the website and enjoy the articles in either semantically enriched HTML or classic PDF format. ARPHA’s innovative and intuitive system streamlines the publication process, reducing the time and effort required to bring high-quality research to the scientific community.

In addition to providing a seamless publication experience, Aquatic Invasions will now benefit from enhanced visibility for its published articles. With advanced search capabilities and integration with major indexing services, including Web of Science, Scopus, and many others, articles published in Aquatic Invasions will be more easily discoverable and accessible to researchers around the world. 

Furthermore, the implementation of the new article- and sub-article level metrics will enable real-time tracking of various elements, providing valuable insights into their usage.

Aquatic Invasions accepts papers related to the introduction, establishment, spread, and impacts of non-native aquatic species in freshwater, estuarine, and marine environments. 

The journal also considers papers that provide new insights into the biology, ecology, and management of invasive species, as well as those that assess the ecological, economic, and social impacts of invasions.

«I am delighted to see Aquatic Invasions moving on to the ARPHA Platform. This will help the growth of our journal, facilitating the submission and production process.

Since its foundation, AI has been focused on biological invasions in aquatic environments, among the most vulnerable and threatened ecosystems by species introduction, to provide continuous updates for researchers but also stakeholders and managers, and promote the spread of its papers to all the sectors of society affected by this problem.

We want to improve our role in this sense, attracting more contributors and reaching more and more people, especially from that part of the world where the phenomenon and study of biological invasions in aquatic environments are increasing, such as Africa, Asia and South America. I am confident this new change will be positive for the journal!»

comments the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Professor of University of Florence Dr Elena Tricarico.

«Aquatic Invasions was the first international fully open-access journal devoted to biological invasions. Currently, Aquatic Invasions, along its sister journals, BioInvasions Records and Management of Biological Invasions, is a core linking element of INVASIVESNET – the global professional Association of organisations and experts working in the area of biological invasions. Our strategic goal – to make our publication services free of charge for all authors in the long-term, and within INVASIVESNET, we are working on the development of the Open Access Publishing Fund and seeking for potential sponsors and other funding solutions.

Also, we are extremely optimistic that the movement of Aquatic Invasions to the ARPHA platform will improve our services for authors and facilitate free dissemination of data and knowledge on invasive species globally»,

comments the founder and Managing Editor of the journal, Director of REABIC, Dr Vadim Panov.

«We are thrilled to announce our partnership with another journal focused on the important topic of biological invasions here at Pensoft. With our extensive experience in publishing and disseminating research on zoology and biodiversity, I am confident that this journal has found a perfect home within the ARPHA journals family»,

comments Prof. Lyubomir Penev, CEO and founder of Pensoft and ARPHA.

The first papers of 2023 are already available online on the new website of Aquatic Invasions

Among the seven articles published, there are four papers on marine and three papers on inland water invasions across 4 continents. The studies are covering non-native ascidians in southern California; invasive forams along the coasts of Normandy; invasive sun coral spreading along the Brazilian coasts; invasive pufferfish in the Eastern Mediterranean; invasive New Zeland mudsnail in the Greater Yellowstone Area (U.S.A.); Australian red-claw crayfish in Thailand and non-native species that invaded Poyang Lake Basin (China) after 2000.

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Additional information

About INVASIVESNET:

The International Association for Open Knowledge on Invasive Alien Species (INVASIVESNET) is a global network of scientists and researchers who collaborate to improve knowledge sharing and management related to invasive alien species. INVASIVESNET is committed to promoting the use of open data and knowledge to advance research, management, and policy related to invasive alien species. The organization aims to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas among its members and other stakeholders to promote effective invasive alien species management strategies and enhance global biosecurity.

About REABIC:

The Regional Euro-Asian Biological Invasions Centre (REABIC) is an international organisation that focuses on research, management, and prevention of biological invasions, particularly in the Euro-Asian region. REABIC was established in 2003 and is based in Helsinki, Finland. The organisation brings together scientists, experts, and stakeholders from various fields to develop and implement strategies for preventing and managing the negative impacts of invasive species on biodiversity, ecosystems, and human well-being. 

About ARPHA:

ARPHA is the first end-to-end, narrative- and data-integrated publishing solution that supports the full life cycle of a manuscript, from authoring to reviewing, publishing and dissemination. ARPHA provides accomplished and streamlined production workflows that can be customized according to the journal’s needs. The platform enables a variety of publishing models through a number of options for branding, production and revenue models to choose from.

About Pensoft:

Pensoft is an independent, open-access publisher and technology provider, best known for its biodiversity journals, including ZooKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal, Phytokeys, Mycokeys, One Ecosystem, Metabarcoding and Metagenomics and many others. 

Over the past 30 years, Pensoft has built a reputation for its innovations in the field, after launching ZooKeys: the very first digital-first scientific journal in zoology and the first to introduce semantic enrichments and hyperlinks within a biodiversity article. 

To date, the company has continuously been working on various tools and workflows designed to facilitate biodiversity data findability, accessibility, discoverability and interoperability. The latest large projects, led by Pensoft include the OpenBiodiv knowledge graph and the Horizon 2020 project BiCIKL.

Contacts: 

Prof. Lyubomir Penev, founder and CEO at ARPHA and Pensoft
Email: l.penev@pensoft.net

Dr Elena Tricarico, Editor-in-Chief of Aquatic Invasions
Email: elena.tricarico@unifi.it 

Dr Vadim Panov, Managing Editor of Aquatic Invasions and Director at REABIC
Email: vepanov@gmail.com

Pensoft joins Advisory Panel to further develop the Journal Comparison Service by cOAlition S

Back in December, we announced that Pensoft joined 27 other publishers in sharing prices and services via the Journal Comparison Service developed by cOAlition S, in order to boost transparency in scholarly publishing.

Now, we are up to another challenge: we have joined the Advisory Panel appointed by cOAlition S to help further the improvement and development of this important service. The Advisory Panel consists of twelve members (six publishers and six end-users) representing different stakeholders in the scholarly communication ecosystem.

Journal Comparison Service (JSC) is an initiative by cOAlition S aimed to improve transparency and communication regarding publishing costs between publishers and institutions. 

It serves to provide the libraries with all the information they need to make informed decisions about whether the fees charged by a particular journal are reasonable and commensurate with the services delivered. 

In their turn, the publishers can use it to demonstrate their dedication to fostering an open business culture and to bring awareness of the value of their services. 

To facilitate this process, the publishers are advised to submit information about their prices and publishing policies on an annual basis using the JCS Frameworks format. 

An Advisory Panel will review the Frameworks and offer suggestions on how to improve them, aiming to make the data collected as valuable as possible to all involved parties. Additionally, the Panel will actively promote the use of JCS among stakeholders.

The panel will meet twice a year, and the first meeting has already been scheduled for May 2023.

We are delighted that we have been able to establish such a high-quality Advisory Panel, representing all the key stakeholders.

The primary function of the Panel will make recommendations on how the data collection frameworks might be further developed to ensure that the price and service data is as useful as possible for those who procure publishing services, whilst remaining deliverable by the publishers who are asked to provide these data,

commented Robert Kiley, Head of Strategy at cOAlition S.

Additional information:

About JCS:

Journal Comparison Service is a secure, free-of-charge service that enables libraries, library consortia, and funders to better understand if the fees they pay are commensurate with the publication services delivered. Publishers provide information in a standard format, including information about the publication frequency, the peer review process, times from submission to acceptance, the range of list prices for APCs and subscriptions and more.

About cOAlition S:

On 4 September 2018, a group of national research funding organisations, with the support of the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC), announced the launch of cOAlition S, an initiative to make full and immediate Open Access to research publications a reality. It is built around Plan S, which consists of one target and 10 principles

Pensoft among the first 27 publishers to share prices & services via the Journal Comparison Service by Plan S

In support of transparency and openness in scholarly publishing and academia, the scientific publisher and technology provider Pensoft joined the Journal Comparison Service (JCS) initiative by cOAlition S, an alliance of national funders and charitable bodies working to increase the volume of free-to-read research. 

As a result, all journals published by Pensoft – each using the publisher’s self-developed ARPHA Platform – provide extensive and transparent information about their costs and services in line with the Plan S principles.

The JCS was launched to aid libraries and library consortia – the ones negotiating and participating in Open Access agreements with publishers – by providing them with everything they need to know in order to determine whether the prices charged by a certain journal are fair and corresponding to the quality of the service. 

According to cOAlition S, an increasing number of libraries and library consortia from Europe, Africa, North America, and Australia have registered with the JCS over the past year since the launch of the portal in September 2021.

While access to the JCS is only open to librarians, individual researchers may also make use of the data provided by the participating publishers and their journals. 

This is possible through an integration with the Journal Checker Tool, where researchers can simply enter the name of the journal of interest, their funder and affiliation (if applicable) to check whether the scholarly outlet complies with the Open Access policy of the author’s funder. A full list of all academic titles that provide data to the JCS is also publicly available. By being on the list means a journal and its publisher do not only support cOAlition S, but they also demonstrate that they stand for openness and transparency in scholarly publishing.

“We are delighted that Pensoft, along with a number of other publishers, have shared their price and service data through the Journal Comparison Service. Not only are such publishers demonstrating their commitment to open business models and cultures but are also helping to build understanding and trust within the research community.”

said Robert Kiley, Head of Strategy at cOAlition S. 

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Journals using the ARPHA Platform as a white-label publishing solution to publish their journal(s) under their own label should note that it is the responsibility of the journal owner publisher to submit journal data to the JCS. This means that it is only journals published on ARPHA and associated with Pensoft that have been automatically featured in the JCS.

However, the ARPHA team is ready to assist journals using the platform’s white-label publishing to provide details to cOAlition S and the JCS.

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About cOAlition S:

On 4 September 2018, a group of national research funding organisations, with the support of the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC), announced the launch of cOAlition S, an initiative to make full and immediate Open Access to research publications a reality. It is built around Plan S, which consists of one target and 10 principles. Read more on the cOAlition S website.

About Plan S:

Plan S is an initiative for Open Access publishing that was launched in September 2018. The plan is supported by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funding and performing organisations. Plan S requires that, from 2021, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant Open Access journals or platforms. Read more on the cOAlition S website.

Five journals published on ARPHA with an Impact Factor from 2023

In late July, Clarivate announced that starting from the next Journal Citation Report (JCR) release, expected in June 2023, all journals indexed by the Emerging Science Citation Index (ESCI) and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) will receive an Impact Factor.

So far, the score was only available for journals in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI).

The news means that the following journals using the ARPHA publishing platform will receive their first Impact Factor next year:

The 2023 JCR report will reflect how many times publications in a particular journal from the Web of Science database have been cited in scholarly articles published in other journals from the same database during 2022. Then, this number will be divided by the number of ‘citable items’ published in the journal in the preceding two years (i.e. research articles, review papers and proceedings papers published in 2021 and 2020).

Note that while citations of any article type are counted in the numerator of the ratio, ‘non-citable items’, such as editorials, letters, obituaries, meeting abstracts and corrigenda, are left out of the denominator.

Can we forecast the Impact Factor?

Unfortunately, we can only guess what the first Impact Factor for any of those journals will be like. 

While you can find the Scopus CiteScore for each of them displayed on the journal’s website homepages, we need to remind you that Web of Science and Scopus use their own databases and apply quite different formulae. 

The Scopus CiteScore is calculated from the number of citations made over the last four completed years divided by the publications from the same years. Apart from a yearly score for the last complete year, Scopus also presents a CiteScoreTracker, whose estimate is updated on a monthly basis.

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A comprehensive post, published on the independent Scholarly Kitchen blog provides further details and discussion on what the change could mean for journals in the ESCI index. The post also includes a short interview with Dr. Nandita Quaderi, Editor in Chief and Editorial Vice President, Web of Science.  

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Natural History Museum of Berlin’s Fossil Record journal started publishing on ARPHA Platform

Fossil Record – the paleontological scholarly journal of the Natural History Museum of Berlin (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin) published its first articles after moving to the academic publisher Pensoft and its publishing platform ARPHA in late 2021. The renowned scientific outlet – launched in 1998 – joined two other historical journals owned by the Museum: Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift and Zoosystematics and Evolution, which moved to Pensoft back in 2014.

Published in two issues a year, the open-access scientific outlet covers research from all areas of palaeontology, including the taxonomy and systematics of fossil organisms, biostratigraphy, palaeoecology, and evolution. It deals with all taxonomic groups, including invertebrates, microfossils, plants, and vertebrates.

As a result of the move to ARPHA, Fossil Record utilises the whole package of ARPHA Platform’s services, including its fast-track, end-to-end publishing module, designed to appeal to readers, authors, reviewers and editors alike. A major advantage is that the whole editorial process, starting from the submission of a manuscript and continuing into peer review, editing, publication, dissemination, archiving and hosting, happens within the online ecosystem of ARPHA. 

As soon as they are published, the articles in Fossil Record are available in three formats: PDF, machine-readable JATS XML and semantically enriched HTML for better and mobile-friendly reader experience. 

The publications are equipped with real-time metrics on both article and sub-article level that allow easy access to the number of visitors, views and downloads for every article and each of it’s figures, tables or supplementary materials. In their turn, the semantic enhancements do not only allow for easy navigation throughout the text and quick access to cited literature and the article’s own citations, but also tag each taxon that appears in the paper to provide links to further information concerning its occurrences, genomics, nomenclature, treatments and more as available from various databases.      

The first five papers – now available on the brand new journal website powered by ARPHA – already demonstrate the breadth of topics covered by Fossil Record, including systematics, paleobiogeography, palaeodiversity and morphology, as well as the international appeal of the scholarly outlet. The articles are co-authored by collaborative research teams representing ten countries and spanning three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa.

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About the Natural History Museum of Berlin:

The “Museum für Naturkunde – Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science” is an integrated research museum within the Leibniz Association. It is one of the most important research institutions worldwide in the areas of biological and geological evolution and biodiversity.

The Museum’s mission is to discover and describe life and earth – with people, through dialogue. As an excellent research museum and innovative communication platform, it wants to engage with and influence the scientific and societal discourse about the future of our planet, worldwide. Its vision, strategy and structure make the museum an excellent research museum. The Natural History Museum of Berlin has research partners in Berlin, Germany and approximately 60 other countries. Over 700,000 visitors per year as well as steadily increasing participation in educational and other events show that the Museum has become an innovative communication centre that helps shape the scientific and social dialogue about the future of our earth. 

RIO shifts gears to serve as project-driven knowledge hub

Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO Journal) upgrades its unique concept to appeal to scientific projects, conference organisers and research institutions

Over the last few years, we’ve been increasingly observing how major funders of research around the world, including the likes of the European Commission, Wellcome, U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) recognise the research cycle as a continuum, rather than scattered standalone conclusions and reports. 

Hence, as a forward-looking, open science-driven journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) took it as its own responsibility to encourage scientific project teams, conference organisers and research institutions to bring together unconventional research outputs (e.g. grant proposals, data management plans, project deliverables, policy briefs, conference materials) as well as traditional (e.g. research or review papers, monographs, etc.), including such published elsewhere. To do so, RIO now provides the platform ready to be used as a research knowledge hub, where published outcomes are preserved permanently and easier to share, disseminate, reference and reuse.

Hence, RIO stepped up its game by turning permanent article collections into a one-stop source of diverse research items, where project coordinators, conference organisers or research institutions can not only publish early, interim and conclusive research items as they emerge within a research project, a series of events or the continuous scientific efforts at their lab, but also link relevant publications (i.e. preprints, articles or other documents, published elsewhere) available elsewhere through their metadata. As a result, they will receive a one-stop source under their own branding for every piece of scientific contribution ready to present to funding bodies or prospective collaborators and future research teams.

A permanent topical collection in RIO Journal may include a diverse range of both traditional and unconventional research outputs, as well as links to publications from outside the journal (see What can I publish on the journal’s website). 

Apart from bringing contextually linked research outcomes together, thus prompting findability, readership and citability en masse, RIO’s approach to collections ensures further accessibility by not only having RIO-published articles available in traditional PDF, semantically enriched HTML and minable XML format. The open-science journal has now made it possible for users to add to their collections preprints from ARPHA Preprints, as well as author-formatted PDFs (e.g. project deliverables, reports, policy briefs, etc.) and linked metadata to documents published elsewhere. Thanks to the integration of the journal with the general-purpose open-access repository Zenodo, all items in a collection are archived, and additionally indexed, disseminated and cited.

By focusing on article and preprint collections coming out from a research project, institution or conference, RIO provides a quite specific and unique combination of benefits to all actors of the research process: scientists, project coordinators, funders and institutions: 

  1. Project, institution or conference branding and promotion.
  2. One-stop point for outputs of a research project, institution or conference.
  3. Free publication of author-formatted project outputs (i.e. grant proposals, deliverables, reports, policy briefs, conference materials and others).
  4. Inclusivity through adding articles, preprints and other documents published elsewhere as easy as entering the DOI number of the document.
  5. Credit and recognition for the Collection and Guest editors, who take care to organise and manage the article collection.
  6. Easier discoverability and usability of topically related studies to benefit both authors and readers.
  7. Increased visibility of related papers in a collection, even when these might otherwise not have much exposure.
  8. Simultaneous citation of multiple articles related to a certain subject.
  9. Citation and referencing of the whole collection as a complete entity.
  10.  DOI and citation details for collections and individual articles.

Furthermore, RIO Journal maps all publications to the Sustainable Development Goals  (SDGs), in order to emphasise the real-world impact of each published contribution, by displaying the corresponding badge within the article list. 

Last, but not least, both collections and individual publications in RIO enjoy the variety of default and on-demand science communication services, provided by Pensoft.  

How do project coordinators, funders and institutions benefit from a collection in RIO?

At the time a grant proposal is submitted to a research funder for evaluation, the team behind the proposed project has already put in considerable efforts, resulting in a unique idea with the potential to make a great stride towards the resolution of an outstanding problem in science, if only given the chance. However, too many of these ideas are bound to remain locked away in the archives of those funders, not because they are lacking in scientific value, but due to limited funds.

So, with its launch back in 2015, RIO Journal made it possible to publish and shed light on grant proposals and research ideas in general, similar early research outputs regardless of whether they are eventually funded or not, a novelty in scholarly publishing which earned RIO the SPARC Innovator Award Winner in 2016. To date, the journal has already published 75 grant proposals

Then, imagine what a contribution to science it would make to bring together the whole continuum of knowledge and scientific work all the way from the grant proposal to data  and software management plans, workshop reports, policy briefs and all interim and final deliverables produced within the span of the project!

On the other hand, funders are increasingly evaluating a prospective project’s impact based on its communication strategy. So, why not publish a grant proposal at the time of the submission of your proposal, in order to prove to the funding body that your project is serious about optimising its outreach to both the public and academia? Furthermore, by having an academic journal host any subsequent project deliverable, as a coordinator, you can rest assured that the communication activities of your project remain consistent and efficient.

In an excellent example of a project collection, the EU-funded ICEDIG (Innovation and Consolidation for Large Scale Digitisation of Natural Heritage), led by several major natural history institutions, including the Natural History Museum of London, Naturalis Biodiversity Center (the Netherlands), the French National Museum of Natural History and Helsinki University, brought together policy briefs, project reports, research articles and review papers, in order to provide a fantastic overview of their own research continuum. As a result, future researchers and various stakeholders can easily piece together the key components within the project, in order to learn from, recreate or even build on the experience of ICEDIG.

Explore the ICEDIG Project Outcomes collection on RIO’s website.

Similarly, conference organisers can make use of their own branded collections to overcome the ephemerality of presented research by collating virtually all valuable conference outputs, including abstracts, posters, presentations, datasets and full-text conference talks. For further convenience, a collection can be divided into subcollections, in order to organise the contribution by type or symposium. What particularly appeals to conference participants is the ARPHA Writing Tool, an intuitive collaborative online environment, which practically guides the user through each step: authoring, submission and pre-submission review, within a set of pre-designed, yet flexible templates available for each type of a conference output, thus sparing them the hassle to familiarise themselves with specific and perplexing formatting requirements

For institutions, RIO offers the opportunity to continuously provide evidence of the scholarly impact of their organisation. To better serve the needs of different labs or research teams, an institution can easily organise their outputs into various subcollections, and also customise their own article types, as well as the available usage tracking systems. Furthermore, by making use of the available pre-paid plans, institutions can support their researchers by covering fully or partially the publication charges at a discounted rate.

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Find more information regarding the submission and review process, policies and pricing, visit RIO Journal’s website.

Follow RIO Journal on Twitter and Facebook.

Making the most of conferences with modern publishing and indexing practices

Given scientific conferences present academics with the fantastic opportunity to meet up and discuss their latest work, as well as share their vision for the future of their field, it’s no wonder that, historically, the majority of ground-breaking science can easily be traced back to a particular event.

This said, don’t you think that we need to do everything within our powers to ensure the visibility, dissemination and long-term accessibility of research presented and linked to these wonderful drivers of scientific progress that conferences are? Similarly to the care conference organisers take to make sure the event runs smoothly and the attendants are happy with the programme and enjoy themselves, the organisational committee should also be thinking how to preserve all those promising pieces of research well after the event is over.

Here at Pensoft, an open-access scholarly publisher, founded by scientists, we’ve been contemplating for a while now how to encourage and support the community to efficiently open up the valuable outputs to researchers and readers well beyond the publication of abstracts in an abstract book of the conference. 

As a result, we came up with several simple, yet efficient publishing solutions for scientific conferences to collect and contextualise various research outputs either presented at or resulting from the event.

Bear in mind that with any solution, all publications enjoy the benefits seen in conventional research papers, such as:

  • Crossref registration and individual DOI to ensure preservation;
  • Publication in PDF, semantically enhanced HTML and data-minable XML formats to improve readability, accessibility and findability;
  • Indexing and archiving at multiple, industry leading databases to increase visibility;
  • PR and social media promotion to boost outreach to various audiences.

Collections of conference abstracts, posters and presentations

Conference (video) abstracts, posters and presentations are easily the first to fall victims of the ephemerality of an event, yet these are too often the stepping stones to major scientific discoveries. This is why a few years back we launched ARPHA Conference Abstracts (ACA), where conference organisers can open their own collection and provide the participants with submission, review and publication of their abstracts ahead of the conference.

Furthermore, these abstracts can be handled editorially in sub-collections, e.g. the convenors of symposia or working groups within a conference will take care of the abstracts submitted to them, thus spreading the editorial workload across larger teams of editors and organisers.

Not only will conference organisers spare themselves the worries about providing a special platform for abstracts submissions, but this will also facilitate presenting authors, who will be able to easily point to their contribution before, during or after their presentations. On the contrary, the abstracts are assigned with DOIs, published in human-readable PDF and HTML and machine-actionable JATS XML, permanently preserved on ARPHA and Zenodo, and easy to find, access and cite, just like a conventional research paper, providing authors with full credit for their work early on.

Further, with ACA, the conference abstracts can be enhanced into what we call “extended abstracts”, meaning they can also include data, images, videos and multimedia. After the conferences, we can add video recordings of the presentations or graphic files of posters, so that these are visualised on the page of each abstract.

For example, take a look at the conference abstract collection of the Vth International Congress on Biodiversity: “Taxonomy, Speciation and Euro-Mediterranean Biodiversity”.

Conference proceedings

About the time we launched ACA, we also created ARPHA Proceedings, in order to also find a place for full-text conference papers. Similarly, the platform supports dedicated collections, where conference attendants are invited to submit and publish dynamically articles under the imprint of the event.

Conference papers in ARPHA Proceedings can also include data, figures and citations, and can also be updated with video recordings, posters and presentations following the conference.

Check out an example by the VI International Forum on Teacher Education.

Article topical collections and special issues resulting from conferences

Naturally, papers resulting from a particular conference are contextually linked, so a one-stop place to discover topical studies sharing one and the same topic would be greatly appreciated by readers and future researchers. In turn, this would lead to better viewership and citability of the papers in the collection.

With our user-friendly, dedicated workflow for special issues and permanent topical article collections, we’ve made it easy for guest editors across our journals to pitch and manage article collections, in order to bring together valuable and related studies. Using such a collection under the theme of your conference in a suitable journal, you can invite your conference’s participants or, better yet, all scientists working within the field, to submit their work in a nice package of topical science. We’d be happy to assist you with the identification of the most suitable journal for your conference, authors and goals.

See an example from One Ecosystem and the collection “Mapping and assessment of ecosystem condition and ecosystem services across different scales and domains in Europe”, the result from the “Mapping and assessment of ecosystem services – Science in action” conference, held in 2017.

Bringing together traditional and non-conventional research outputs, (e.g. research ideas, grant proposals, conference materials or workshop reports) with RIO Journal’s article collections

Undoubtedly, valuable research outcomes come in many shapes and sizes well beyond research papers, conference abstracts, posters and proceedings. We are firm supporters that every research item, even early and interim outputs, could be of value to the scientist next in line within a particular study.

This is why we launched the award-winning journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), where your collections can include both conventional and non-traditional research outputs, such as research ideas, posters, workshop reports, forum papers, policy briefs, software and data management plans to name a few. Furthermore, in RIO, you can even link articles or preprints published elsewhere to your collection via their metadata. Similarly to other Pensoft journals, in RIO, you will have the full control to whom you are opening your collection for submissions, allowing you to either limit it to the outcomes coming from your conference or welcome submissions from other researchers as well.

A permanent topical collection in RIO Journal may include a diverse range of both traditional and unconventional research outputs, as well as links to publications from outside the journal (see What can I publish on the journal’s website). 

See the Brainhack 2016 Project Reports, whose aim is to collate reports from the 2016 Brainhack events. Also, check out the collection of the European Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON) Project, providing a nice example for a wide range of publication types.

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Don’t hesitate to get in touch to discuss your own case and select the best option for your conference – we’ll be happy to hear from you!

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Pensoft and ARPHA welcome three biodiversity-themed journals in their portfolio

The scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft and its self-developed publishing platform ARPHA welcome three journals to their distinguished and growing portfolio of biodiversity-themed journals. The international, peer-reviewed and open-access journals Acta Ichthyologica et PiscatoriaCaucasiana and Zitteliana are now fully operable and open for submissions through their new websites and technologically advanced user interfaces.

By moving to ARPHA, the three scholarly outlets will not only revamp their websites and technological backbone, 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 over 40 world-class indexing and archiving databases, sub-article-level usage metrics, and more. Published articles are to be available in PDF, machine-readable JATS XML formats and semantically enriched HTML, so that they guarantee better reader experience to ensure they are easy to discover, access, cite and reuse.

Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria

Launched in 1970, Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria (AIeP) publishes research about all aspects of ichthyology and fisheries, concerning true fishes (fin-fishes), including taxonomy, biology, morphology, anatomy, physiology, pathology, parasitology, reproduction and zoogeography. To be accepted, manuscripts need to be based on original experimental data or experimental methods, or new analyses of already existing data. The journal stands against the publication of “isolated” research, linked neither to the “past” nor the “future” of science. Likewise, “salami science” is also discouraged. AIeP is indexed by all major indexers, including Web of Science and Scopus. The journal’s first Impact Factor was released in 2010, and currently stands at 0.629 (2019).

Caucasiana

As a successor of the Proceedings of the Institute of Zoology of the Georgian Academy of Science, the Caucasiana is to give new life to the historical, print-only zoological by becoming a full-fledged, exclusively digital scholarly journal, focused on the still poorly known biodiversity in the Caucasus region and its adjacent areas. Caucasiana‘s aim is to accumulate primary biodiversity data urgently needed to understand the big picture of the biodiversity in the area: from individuals to ecosystems. To support the mission of uncovering the secrets of the Caucasus, the journal operates a no-APCs policy.

While the journal will be considering all biodiversity-related studies, based on their merits and quality of research, Caucasiana places special attention to taxonomic inventories and systematics. Thereby, in addition to traditional research outputs, the journal also publishes data papers, annotated checklists, monographs and conference proceedings, making use of the suite of biodiversity data publishing innovations, tools and know-how available from Pensoft.

Zitelliana

In 2021, Zitelliana is celebrating its 50th anniversary in a brand new gear in an excellent example of tradition working perfectly together with innovation and modernity. Since its launch in 1961, Zitelliana, a scholarly journal devoted to all fields of paleontology and geobiology, and owned by the Bavarian State Collection of Palaeontology and Geology (SNSB), has changed several names (i.e. Mitteilungen der Bayerischen Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und historische Geologie, Zitteliana A (Abhandlungen) and Zitteliana B (Mitteilungen)) and has extended its scope to cover research from outside Bavaria and adjacent regions or materials deposited in the SNSB’s collections.

Today, Zitteliana welcomes both modern and traditional research outputs, including palaeobiology, geobiology, palaeogenomics, biodiversity, stratigraphy, sedimentology, regional geology, systematics, phylogeny, and cross-disciplinary studies. Thanks to the support of the SNSB, authors in Zitteliana publish free of charge.

“At Pensoft, we take pride in our experience and achievements in the field of biodiversity research publishing and dissemination, so we’re particularly pleased to welcome these three wonderful journals and share our know-how with them at all levels: readership, editorship, publication and dissemination,” comments Prof. Lyubomir Penev, CEO and founder of Pensoft and ARPHA.

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Overview: top new ARPHA features from 2020

As another year is drawing to a close, it’s time for us to evaluate what we’ve achieved to better our services, or, as we’d rather refer to those, our mutual collaboration with our client journals and publishers, as well as their users: editors, reviewers, authors and readers alike. 

Without a doubt, 2020 has been an extraordinary year that posed plenty of challenges at both personal and professional level to everyone, everywhere in the world. Having said that, at ARPHA, we’re proud that our perseverance and dedication to never let down those who have put their trust in us have pulled us through, while ensuring that we close the year with a positive outlook.

In 2020, we saw the move of a total of 14 international scientific journals to ARPHA Platform of diverse origin, background and scientific fields:

Some of them opted to use our white-label publishing solution, while others decided to sign up with Pensoft as a (co-)publisher. Browse the complete list of ARPHA-hosted journals on our website.

Naturally, we understand that each journal has its own needs and wants, in addition to its own short- and long-term plans and goals. This is why it is from day one that we assume responsibility to work closely together to ensure a personal, customer-centric approach at all times. One way to do this is by having our various services flexible and available as opt-in, mix-and-match features, so that journals can customise their own publishing solution.

Furthermore, based on our clients’ feedback, in addition to our in-house observations and know-how, we don’t cease to introduce new opportunities for journals to upgrade their functionality to the benefit of their own teams and users. 

Below you will find an overview of the top new features and services ARPHA introduced in 2020:

  • ARPHA Preprints
  • Dedicated editorial workflow for Special Issues and Topical article collections
  • Editor and reviewer application form
  • Journal performance statistics
  • Journal performance reports
  • Workload statistics for reviewers and subject editors
  • Review rating
  • Contributor roles for co-authors 
  • Easy update of user expertise
  • Integration with the research discovery app Researcher

ARPHA Preprints

In October, we officially launched ARPHA’s preprint platform, aptly named ARPHA Preprints. Frankly speaking, we’ve been planning for our own preprint platform for quite a while now, as we were determined to ensure the feature is ultimately convenient and beneficial to our journals and their authors. Undeniably, 2020 proved the perfect timing to see this idea ripe, as we’ve been witnessing a significant rise in preprints use and demand.

So, what’s it in ARPHA Preprints that stands out? 

Available to all ARPHA Platform-hosted journals as an opt-in and free of charge service, ARPHA Preprints provides authors with the opportunity to post a preprint at the mere ‘cost’ of several clicks while submitting their article manuscript.

Submission of preprints workflow at participating ARPHA-hosted journals

By doing so, their pre-review manuscripts appear on ARPHA Preprints in a matter of one to a few days’ time, subject to a quick screening performed at the journal’s editorial office, in order to verify the submission conforms with the journal’s scope and standards, and does not contain any unethical content or plagiarism. If the associated paper is published in the journal, a link between the article and preprint is provided to prompt the citation of the paper rather than the preprint. On the occasion that the article is rejected at the ARPHA-hosted journal, where it has been submitted, the preprint is disassociated from the journal. 

Read more about ARPHA Preprints on our blog.

Dedicated editorial workflow for Special Issues and Topical article collections

Following a series of meetings with the editorial boards of our client journals, where we discussed the next steps in their plans in terms of journal development, we came up with the decision that we need a dedicated workflow to facilitate guest editors, who wish to propose a special issue or a topical article collection. Naturally, this workflow had to work just as convenient for the journal’s managing editors and everyone further down the line. Similarly to the ARPHA Preprints integration, we made this feature available to all ARPHA-hosted journals as an opt-in, free of charge service.

Firstly, we provided a clear information note on the key specifics, advantages and requirements for each article collection type. These are now available on the websites of all participating journals, in addition to an easy to spot proposal form, located on the journal’s homepage, in order to ensure that guest editors won’t be dissuaded by any technicalities.

Manuscript handling workflow at special issues / article collections in ARPHA-hosted journals

Secondly, by implementing direct proposal forms delivered straight to the Editors-in-Chief’s inboxes and easily visible on the journal website, as well as our distinguished highly automated manuscript handling workflow, we ended up with a smooth process that avoids potential delays, misunderstandings and annoying issues for everyone.

Read more about ARPHA’s approach to article collections and special issues on our blog.

Editor and reviewer application form

Similarly, after receiving valuable feedback from our client’s editorial board members, we figured that we could provide an easier application for subject editors at ARPHA-hosted journals. 

At the request of a journal’s managing editor, we are ready to add a convenient Become an Editor button on the homepage of the journal that takes the applicant to an exhaustive, yet simple to fill-in form. Upon submission, the application is delivered straight to the Editor-in-Chief’s inbox providing him/her with all necessary information to make a decision and reply to the applicant. 

By opting to add the feature, journals can make a simple, yet efficient step towards expanding the journal’s editorial team, thus optimising and expediting the editorial process, and naturally improving user satisfaction and journal performance.

Journal performance statistics

As we’re talking about journal development and striving for progress and success, the logical question is: how do we know what needs to be improved, revised or built upon? As always in science, the answer is: we need data and insight.

While we have had plenty of statistics available to Editors-in-Chief and managing editors for years already, we recently introduced several extra ones to provide further insight into the journal’s performance and how the numbers fare against those of previous months, quartiles or years.

So far, the Editors-in-Chief and managing editors have had access to:

  • 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.

In 2020, we added statistics about turnaround times, so that the editors are aware of the average time submitted manuscripts spend at different stages (e.g. peer review or editorial decision). Also, they now have access to a record of all online mentions from across the Internet, including traditional and new media, blogs, Wikipedia, policy documents and many others, thanks to our partners at Altmetric.

Journal performance reports

Even though we already made all those data concerning a journal’s real-time performance readily available for Editors-in-Chief and managing editors, we knew we could do more. As open-research proponents, we are well aware that openness and free access is not quite the same as findability. So, we set up bi-annual reports to be delivered to the inboxes of Editors-in-Chief and managing editors as a convenient and regular reminder of the current progress of the journal compared to the last period. 

In those reports, we point to the most recent statistics, concerning:

  • current submissions and their status;
  • submissions, publications and rejections;
  • acceptance rate;
  • turnaround times;
  • average review invitations, declines and review rounds;
  • authors by country;
  • article views;
  • online article mentions;
  • Journal Impact Factor and CiteScore trends.

Furthermore, for journals using ARPHA’s Standard and Premium reporting services, we have prepared an extended report for the end of the calendar year, where they will find even more insights into the citability, outreach, readership and scholarly impact of their journals and their content. For Premium customers, the report will also feature a review and recommendations provided by ARPHA’s journal development team.

Workload for reviewers and subject editors

We know that prolonged peer review time presents a frustrating stumbling block for many otherwise renowned for their high standards and academic rigour journals. Striving to further optimise this process at ARPHA-hosted journals, we developed workload statistics and record of past activity for reviewers and subject editors, visible to the editor at the stage of assignment. Thus, the editor is able to give priority to users who aren’t busy with editorial/review assignments at the moment, and/or those who have a good record of past activity at the journal and/or similar journals on ARPHA Platform.

Review rating

Similarly, to further encourage diligence and speed in peer review at ARPHA-hosted journals, we offer our clients an optional feature where subject editors can evaluate submitted reviews using a 5-star rating system. As a result, the next subject editors will be able to see the average score of a reviewer before they assign him/her for the manuscript they’re handling.

Contributor roles for co-authors 

Determined to always give credit where credit is due, while promoting transparency in academia and scholarship, we enabled submitting authors to assign each co-author with a role, depending on his/her primary contribution to the preparation of the manuscript. Thus, once published, a paper will clearly indicate the author who has, for example, conceptualised the study, developed the utilised software or written the original draft. 

The options available in the drop-down menu follow CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy): a high-level taxonomy, which includes 14 roles typically assumed by contributors to scholarly output.

Easy update of user expertise

As everything is (hopefully!) moving quickly in academia, we figured it’s time to take extra care after ensuring the users profiles in our systems are as relevant as possible. This is important, because ARPHA uses the expertise listed in a user’s profile to suggest reviewers and subject editors for each manuscript. So, in order to facilitate our editors and, ultimately, further expedite the peer review process at ARPHA-hosted journals, we’ve scheduled a few reminders throughout the year to prompt users to have a look at their profiles and update them, if necessary.

Integration with the research discovery app Researcher

Well aware of the fact that Open Science is way more than cost-free access to scientific and publicly funded knowledge, we understand that in the digital reality of today, the question is much more about findability and discoverability, i.e. the probability that you stumble across a particular research paper while browsing. This is why we’re continuously integrating our platform and the journals hosted on ARPHA with additional research discovery platforms used by scientists around the world to inform themselves about the latest findings in their fields of interest. 

So, we recently collaborated with Researcher: an innovative mobile and web application, currently used by 1.8 million people globally, which allows you to set up your own social media-style feed of research papers by following your favourite academic journals or research topics. Now, all articles published in Pensoft’s journals – as well as participating journals using ARPHA’s white-label publishing solution – are continuously fetched by the app and delivered to their right audiences.   

Read more about our integration with Researcher on our blog.

We are always looking forward to hearing from our clients about what they like or dislike in ARPHA, as well as their recommendations on what we could do better! You are welcome to contact us with your feedback and questions at: info@arphahub.com.

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