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The open access zoological journal ZooKeys published by Pensoft reported a substantial growth in 2011, in comparison to 2010, says an analysis dedicated to journal’s jubilee 150th issue, By the end of November 2011, the journal published more than 10,000 pages and 420 articles (to compare with 4,962 pages and 180 articles in 2010). Since its launch in July 2008, ZooKeys published more than 19,000 pages and 780 articles of valuable information on new discoveries in the fascinating world of animals (from mammals and birds to insects and corals). The growth rate will reach 120% by the end of the year.
In a field like taxonomy which constantly generates data, dissemination is one of the most crucial aspects. An open access journal has the benefit of easy distribution of information, leading to increasing relevance of the data, as it is being recognized by a larger audience.
ZooKeys is the first journal in the fields of biodiversity and taxonomy to implement a detailed schema for mark-up of its content, which allows automated extraction and dissemination of information from within the text of an article. The mark-up technology, through so called “semantic enhancements”, allows the user to add enormous additional information from external Web-based sources, which is updated in real time on query, during the reading process.
“ZooKeys is an amazing and true success story” said the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Dr Terry Erwin from the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. “The key of the ZooKeys success is simple and can be expressed easily: open access and perpetual innovations!”
The unique editorial workflow of ZooKeys was created and implemented in a close collaboration with the non-profit Swiss organization Plazi, and the National Library of Medicine in the USA. The Journal supplies information to the world’s largest biodiversity platforms, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Encyclopedia of Life, KeyCentral, as well as to wiki-based platforms such as Wikispecies, Wikimedia Commons, Species-ID, and many others.
“ZooKeys is not just a journal. It is an interactive environment that transforms the process of conventional publishing and sets up new standards in scholarly communication in biodiversity sciences. We are happy that our services help to describe so many still undiscovered species on Earth and to contribute to their identification and protection!” added the journal’s managing editor Dr Lyubomir Penev from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia.
Original source:
Erwin T, Stoev P, Georgiev T, Penev L (2011) ZooKeys 150: Three and a half years of innovative publishing and growth. In: Smith V, Penev L (Eds) e-Infrastructures for data publishing in biodiversity science. ZooKeys 150: 5–14. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.150.2431