Pensoft journals now archived in the Biodiversity Heritage Library

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Content from 15 journals published by Pensoft will now be archived in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), the world’s largest open-access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives.

A global consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries, BHL digitises and freely shares essential biodiversity materials. A critical resource for researchers, it provides vital access to material that might otherwise be difficult to obtain.

Under the agreement, over 16,000 articles published by Pensoft are now available on BHL. Both legacy content and new articles are made available on the platform, complete with full-text PDFs and all relevant metadata.

More Pensoft journals will gradually be added to the BHL archive.

Thanks to this integration, content in our journals will become even more accessible and readily discoverable, helping researchers find the biodiversity information they need.

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Pensoft content in BHL will be included in the Library’s full-text search, allowing researchers to easily locate relevant publications. Crucially, the scientific names within the articles will be indexed using the Global Names Architecture, enabling seamless discovery of information about specific taxa across the BHL collection.

This automated workflow is facilitated by the ARPHA platform and uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) to enable exposure and harvesting of repository metadata. 

“Pensoft is pleased to collaborate with BHL in our joint mission to support global biodiversity research through free access to knowledge. Thanks to this integration, content in our journals will become even more accessible and readily discoverable, helping researchers find the biodiversity information they need,” said Prof. Lyubomir Penev, CEO and founder of Pensoft.

The news comes soon after BHL announced it is about to face a major shift in its operation. From 2026, the Smithsonian Institution – one of BHL’s 10 founding members – will cease to host the administrative and technical components of BHL. As the consortium explores a range of options, the BHL team is confident that “the transition opens the door to a reimagined and more sustainable future for BHL.”

List of the 15 journals published by Pensoft already archived in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (as of May 2025):

1. Biodiversity Data Journal
2. BioRisk
3. Comparative Cytogenetics
4. Contributions to Entomology
5. Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift
6. International Journal of Myriapodology
7. Journal of Hymenoptera Research
8. Journal of Orthoptera Research
9. MycoKeys
10. Nature Conservation
11. NeoBiota
12. PhytoKeys
13. Subterranean Biology
14. Zookeys
15. Zoosystematics and Evolution