For decades, butterfly enthusiasts and lepidopterists across Italy have wondered: could the lost southern populations of the Southern Swallowtail still be out there?
Historical records of Papilio alexanor in Southern Italy were sparse and dated, often dismissed as stray individuals blown in by strong winds from Greece or the Balkans. But for many lepidopterists, alexanor represents a true holy grail – a majestic, bright-yellow species that is strictly protected.
Our research didn’t start in a lab, but with a smartphone screen.
Male Papilio alexanor on C. ruber. Picture by Stefano Meraglia.
In May 2023, a marine biologist kayaking along the rugged cliffs of Basilicata uploaded a brief video to iNaturalist. It captured an unmistakable female Papilio alexanorfluttering around a giant fennel (Ferula) stalk.
A year later, a second record appeared on iNaturalist: a pristine, freshly emerged female photographed by a German tourist in Campania. Together, these two sightings hinted that the species might be more than a mere vagrant here.
Papilio alexanor. Picture by Paolo Mazzei.
This is where the power of modern biodiversity platforms like iNaturalist, Observation.org, and the eBMS (European Butterfly Monitoring Scheme) shines: they act as distributed networks of eyes on the ground, catching subtle shifts in nature that a single research team could easily miss. Inspired by these community sightings, our team from the Italian Lepidopterological Association (ALI), in collaboration with the University of Turin, decided it was time to step in.
A 1,400 km Journey into the Wild
Obtaining research permits for a strictly protected species under EU law takes time, ethics, and rigor. With support from the University of Turin, we secured formal authorization from the Italian Ministry of Environment in early 2026.
Driven by passion, our team funded the expedition ourselves, driving over 1,400 km round trip to systematically survey the steep coastal cliffs and dry habitats along the Campania–Basilicata border.
Pupa of Papilio alexanor. Photo by Paolo Mazzei.
5th instar Papilio alexanor caterpillar. Picture by Stefano Meraglia,
Papilio alexanor caterpillars feeding F. glauca. Picture by Paolo Mazzei.
Papilio alexanor caterpillars of different instars, feeding on seeds of F. glauca. Picture by Stefano Meraglia.
Papilio alexanor on C. ruber. Picture by Andrea Baruzzi,
The thrill of discovery was immediate. Standing at a cliffside turnout, we watched the first bright-yellow male soar up from the ravine. Soon we spotted courting pairs feeding on red valerian (Centranthus ruber) and females in the act of ovipositing.
Encouraged, we started scouting similar spots nearby, and the hunch paid off. About 15 to 20 km away, we found a second active breeding colony.
Surprising Ecology: A New Host Plant for Italy
Female Papilio alexanor laying eggs on the flowers of F. glauca. Picture by Luciano Valeri.
First, the Northern Italian populations rely on host plants such as Ptychotis saxifraga or Opopanax chironium, but the southern caterpillars feed exclusively on Ferula glauca. This host-plant association was previously documented in Greece and the Balkans, but never before in Italy.
Second, the flight begins significantly earlier here than in northern populations, reflecting local adaptation to the semi-arid, thermo-Mediterranean climate.
Protecting the Future: Simple Actions for Big Impact
Finding a “lost” population is cause for celebration, but it also brings responsibility. These isolated coastal colonies remain vulnerable to habitat fragmentation, fire, climate extremes, and road infrastructure development.
Female Papilioalexanor on C. ruber. Picture by Andrea Baruzzi, 2026,
To help Papilio alexanor keep thriving here, effective conservation management should prioritise targeted monitoring, integrating structured transects through schemes like eBMS to track population trends over time; habitat protection, preserving coastal slope vegetation and preventing over-mowing or destruction of Ferula glauca stands during roadside maintenance; and responsible citizen engagement, encouraging nature lovers, hikers, and photographers to submit observations with precise geolocation, while ensuring that delicate breeding sites remain respected and undisturbed.
This story is a reminder that remarkable biological discoveries are still waiting to be made right under our noses. All it takes is a curious eye, a smartphone upload, and a community of passionate researchers ready to follow the trail.
Original source:
Meraglia S, Baruzzi A, Mazzei P, Valeri L, Zerunian Z (2026) First documented record of a reproducing population of Papilio alexanor Esper, 1800 (Lepidoptera, Papilionidae) in Southern Italy, with ecological notes. Nota Lepidopterologica 49: 157-170. https://doi.org/10.3897/nl.49.206084
The floodlights have dimmed, the confetti has settled, and the 2026 FIFA World Cup has officially come to an end. A huge congratulations to Spain, who saw off Argentina 1-0 after extra time to lift their second World Cup trophy.
And with the football finished, it’s time for us to blow the final whistle on our own tournament too. Throughout the World Cup, we ran the Pensoft Biodiversity Cup alongside the real competition – a weekly knockout contest on our Instagram page, pitting some of the most remarkable species described in our journals against one another.
Every Thursday we opened the polls, and every Monday we brought you the result. Now that the dust has settled, we thought it was the perfect moment to look back at how the tournament unfolded.
Here’s how each fixture played out, with the winning species (as voted for by you!) shown in blue bold:
Date
Species #1
Species #2
11/06
Nadzikambia goodallae
Ferreiraella populi
18/06
Hellwigia opalina
Neohelicomyces coffeae
25/06
Thecacera sesama
Dolichopoda balrogi
02/07
Pikelinia floydmuraria
Trachischium lalremsangai
09/07
Theridion himalayana
Pyralis papaleonei
19/07
Iberoscia zaragozai
Echinodorus nenufar
General recap of Pensoft’s Biodiversity Cup.
Our first week’s competition kicked off with a cloud-forest chameleon named after Jane Goodall, which faced off against a public-named deep-sea chiton from the abyssal Pacific:
…and round two went to the fungi! Neohelicomyces coffeae ended up decisively defeating the jade ginger Hellwigia opalina in this Plant vs Fungi edition.
Round three brought Cave vs. Coast: a Balrog-named cave cricket unearthed on Kastellorizo faced a sesame-speckled nudibranch discovered off northeastern Taiwan:
Our third round went to the underdog (or in this case, undercricket): Dolichopoda balrogi, which hopped past Thecacera sesama in a unanimous win.
Round four was our Animal Kingdom edition, with the newly described Pink Floyd spider Pikelinia floydmuraria facing off against the burrowing snake Trachischium lalremsangai for the top spot:
Pikelinia floydmuraria vs Trachischium lalremsangai.
The snake slithered through – Trachischium lalremsangai defeated Pikelinia floydmuraria, its burrowing lifestyle proving harder to top than a rock-star spider name in this round.
Our second-to-last round paired the smiley-faced Himalayan Happy-Face Spider, Theridion himalayana, against Pyralis papaleonei, a papal-named moth endemic to Crete’s White Mountains:
The moth flew past the competition! Pyralis papaleonei took the win over Theridion himalayana, its rare papal namesake and striking wing bands proving enough to edge out even a face full of smiles.
Our own final on 19 July ended up mirroring the World Cup final to a tee, with a species from Spain going head-to-head with one from Argentina:
Representing Spain in the final was Iberoscia zaragozai, a newly described genus and species of cave-dwelling isopod, published only this April in our open-access journal Subterranean Biology.
Discovered in caves across Catalonia, Murcia and the Valencian Community, this blind crustacean measures barely 3-4 mm long, yet required a new genus to accommodate it, thanks to its unique features – right down to its antennal sensory structures.
Fittingly, it’s named in posthumous tribute to the Spanish arachnologist Juan Antonio Zaragoza-Miralles, in recognition of his decades of work on the cave-dwelling fauna of the Iberian Peninsula.
Standing in Argentina’s corner was Echinodorus nenufar, a new aquatic plant described in PhytoKeysback in January. Found in the temporary ponds and seasonal wetlands of the dry Chaco region of northern Argentina and western Paraguay, it earns its name – “nenúfar” being Spanish for water lily – thanks to its rounded floating leaves and creamy-white flowers, which give it an uncanny resemblance to a true Nymphaeaceae water lily.
Like the seasonal killifish it shares its ephemeral ponds with, it has evolved to complete its whole life cycle in habitats that can appear and vanish with the rains.
Two species, two countries, both barely a few months old to science. This is a proper final if ever there was one. And… just like their footballing counterparts, it was the Spanish contender that came out on top!
We had an absolute blast running the Biodiversity Cup alongside this year’s World Cup, and we hope it gave you a fun new way to discover some of the incredible species being described in our journals. Thank you to everyone who voted, shared and cheered along from the side lines.
Pensoft has been awarded the Seal of Recognition for the FAO AGRIS Active Data Provider of the Year for 2027. The seal is granted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations through its AGRIS initiative, and it recognises institutions that consistently share open-access agricultural research with the global community.
Notably, Pensoft joined the FAO AGRIS network back in 2024, and the organisation has renewed our seal every year since, a recognition we’re proud to have kept.
What has changed is the scale of our contribution. In 2024, Pensoft’s records on AGRIS numbered just under 15,000. Today, that figure has doubled to nearly 30,000, drawn from all 51 of our journals that fall within the scope of FAO AGRIS. The subjects covered are wide-ranging, spanning taxonomy, biodiversity, conservation and biogeography – these are all areas that feed directly into sustainable agriculture and natural resource management.
Through AGRIS, this research travels well beyond our own journals to researchers, policymakers and practitioners worldwide, adding to the shared pool of open knowledge that supports global food security and environmental sustainability. We’re glad to keep contributing to that effort, and look forward to continuing our work with FAO AGRIS in the years to come.
About FAO
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is a specialised agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Its goal is to achieve food security for all, ensuring that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. With 194 members, 193 countries and the European Union, FAO works in over 130 countries worldwide.
About Pensoft
Founded in 1992 “by scientists, for scientists,” Pensoft is an academic open-access publishing company well known worldwide for its cutting-edge publishing tools, workflows and methods for text and data publishing of journals, books and conference materials. In 2010, Pensoft became the first scientific publisher to introduce semantic enrichments in scholarly publications. Through its Research and Technical Development department, the company is involved in a range of research and technology projects.
Distinguished by its striking colors and a name that carries the weight of a high ecclesiastical office, a new species of moth has been discovered in the rugged terrain of Greece. When researchers from the Tyrolean State Museum, the Finnish Museum of Natural History and the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology identified this unique insect in the White Mountains of Crete, they chose a name that reflects both its noble appearance and a message of environmental hope: Pyralis papaleonei – derived from “Papa Leone” (Pope Leo).
The discovery, published in the open-access journal Nota Lepidopterologica on 28 April 2026, highlights that even among such conspicuous European moths, overlooked species remain to be discovered. The new species is currently only known from the White Mountains (Lefka Ori) in the western part of Crete, where it appears to be an endemic treasure of the island.
Type-locality of Pyralis papaleonei sp. nov. (Greece, Crete, Omalos plateau). Image credit: Peter Huemer.
Striking purple forewings
The so-called Pope Leo Moth has a wingspan of around two centimeters, placing it among the medium-sized representatives of its group. Its most distinctive features are its purple forewings with an orange-golden patch and prominent white bands. The moths were recorded at artificial light sources and appear to be mainly active in June. So far, little is known about the biology and lifestyle of the new species. It was distinguished from related species based on classical morphological characteristics – such as wing pattern, coloration, and genital morphology – as well as genetic fingerprinting. Molecular analyses revealed a divergence of around six percent from its closest relative, clearly indicating that it represents a distinct species.
Pyralis papaleonei sp. nov., holotype. Image credit: Peter Huemer.
A tradition of remarkable species names
Butterflies and moths are often named after physical characteristics, geographic origins, or in honor of distinguished individuals. Within the genus Pyralis, however, a particular tradition can be observed: as early as 1775, Austrian naturalists Michael Denis and Ignaz Schiffermüller described the first species of the group as Pyralis regalis (“royal”), inspired by its splendid coloration. This was followed by sonorous names such as Pyralis princeps and Pyralis cardinalis, also referring to the remarkable beauty of these moths.
All these species belong to the diverse superfamily Pyraloidea, which comprises around 16,000 described species worldwide and represents one of the largest groups among micro-moths.
Specimen of Pyralis regalis. Image credit: Peter Huemer.
Taxonomy as the “first profession” of humankind
The naming of living organisms also has a cultural-historical dimension: in the Old Testament (Genesis 2), Adam is firstly tasked with naming all animals. In this sense, taxonomy – the science of classifying, naming, and organising organisms – can be regarded as one of humanity’s earliest endeavors.
For study leader Peter Huemer of the Tyrolean State Museum Ferdinandeum, naming a species is therefore more than a formal scientific act: it also serves as a symbolic appeal to the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV, to highlight humanity’s central responsibility in safeguarding creation. This is particularly fitting as butterflies and moths are regarded in Christianity as symbols of resurrection, transformation (metamorphosis), and the immortal soul.
Specimens of Pyralis papaleonei. Image credit: Peter Huemer.
Only a fraction of global biodiversity documented
Peter Huemer, former head of the Natural Science Collections at the Tyrolean State Museums and now a volunteer researcher, explains:
“We are facing a global biodiversity crisis, yet only a fraction of the world’s species has been scientifically documented. Effective conservation of biodiversity requires that species are first recognised, described, and named.”
Around 700 new moth species are described each year, primarily in the tropics. However, fundamental research in Europe is far from complete: in the Alps alone, approximately 200 previously unknown species have been identified in recent decades.
With their internationally significant scientific collections, the Tyrolean State Museums make an important contribution to this work. The discovery of the Pope Leo Moth, Pyralis papaleonei, highlights how much remains to be discovered even in well-studied regions of Europe—and underscores the urgent need to protect sensitive habitats.
The agreement encompasses five key research and medical bodies, and allows corresponding authors to publish their findings without individual Article Processing Charges.
Pensoft and the University of Zurichhave signed a comprehensive Open Access (OA) agreement, starting a partnership that enables researchers at participating institutions to publish their findings in Pensoft’s peer-reviewed journals without incurring individual Article Processing Charges (APCs).
Under this new framework, publishing costs for corresponding authors affiliated with the respective institutions are 100% covered by a centralised institutional deposit secured by the University of Zurich. By removing financial barriers, the agreement encourages scientists to disseminate their work to both the academic community and the wider public, making research immediately and freely available upon publication.
This initiative ensures that research is shared under open licences in strict accordance with the FAIR principles—making data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.
“We are excited to start this partnership with the University of Zurich and sign an agreement that reflects our strong commitment to inclusive and equitable open science. By supporting researcher-driven publishing, we continue to foster a sustainable environment for high-impact scientific communication.”
Prof. Lyubomir Penev, CEO of Pensoft
“We are pleased to extend our portfolio of gold open access journals, in which our researchers can publish their findings without paying individual APCs. We thereby strengthen our commitment to open research information.”
University Library Zurich
Are you affiliated with a research institution operating with OA agreements? Is your institution interested in helping resident researchers navigate the complex processes underpinning academic publishing and knowledge sharing? Reach out to <publishing@pensoft.net> to discuss a potential collaboration.
The agreement covers almost 100 institutions, including Karolinska Institutet, Lund University, Uppsala University, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Pensoft and the Bibsam Consortium, operated by the National Library of Sweden, are pleased to announce the signing of a comprehensive Open Access (OA) agreement, marking a significant step in the transition towards a more transparent and open scholarly publishing landscape in Sweden.
Thanks to this move, researchers at participating institutions will be able to publish their findings in 65 journals published by Pensoft or using its advanced publishing platform ARPHA, including flagship titles such as ZooKeys, PhytoKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal, NeoBiota and IMA Fungus, without incurring individual article processing charges (APCs).
All authors affiliated with participating institutions can benefit from this agreement, with publishing costs 100% covered by an institutional deposit secured by the National Library of Sweden.
Unlike subscription-based systems, an OA framework ensures that scientific findings are immediately and freely available to the global community, supporting the global shift toward accessible science and adhering to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable).
OA agreements like this one reduce the financial burden on scientists and encourage them to share their work with both academia and the wider public, ultimately lowering barriers to sharing knowledge in a time when scientific input is key to resolving global challenges.
“We are excited to start this partnership with Bisbam and sign an agreement that reflects our strong commitment to open science. By supporting researcher-driven publishing, we continue to foster a sustainable environment for high-impact scientific communication.”
Prof. Lyubomir Penev, CEO of Pensoft
“We are delighted to announce the addition of Pensoft Publishers to our portfolio of nationally funded agreements for 2026. This represents an important step towards achieving full open access to scientific publications in Sweden.”
Niklas Willén, License Manager at Bibsam Consortium and National Library of Sweden
Are you affiliated with a research institution operating with OA agreements? Is your institution interested in helping resident researchers navigate the complex processes underpinning academic publishing and knowledge sharing? Reach out to <publishing@pensoft.net> to discuss a potential collaboration.
In November 2025, Pensoft’s Chief Communications Officer, Teodor Metodiev, crossed the Atlantic to represent the publisher at two entomology events in Portland, Oregon: the Entomological Collections Network (ECN) Annual Meeting (8–9 November) and the Entomology 2025 conference (9–12 November).
Entomological Collections Network Annual Meeting
Held at the Hyatt Regency in Portland, the ECN 2025 annual meeting brought together professionals dedicated to the care, management, and use of entomological collections. The hybrid event featured live talks, pre-recorded lightning presentations and a silent auction in support of collection initiatives.
Pensoft’s stand at the ECN meeting.
Natural History Collections and Museomics featured prominently at the event.
Deborah Paul, one of the Editors-in-Chief for Natural History Collections and Museomics, with Teodor Metodiev.
At ECN 2025, Pensoft spotlighted its journals in entomology, particularly the newly launched diamond open-access journal Natural History Collections and Museomics (NHCM), which welcomes research on the preservation, digitisation and analysis of natural history collections. Building on last year’s successful collaboration, the meeting again highlighted the Topical Collection “Entomological Outreach Collections and Community Engagement,” published in NHCM and inspired by the 2024 ECN programme.
Entomology 2025
Pensoft joined more than 3,200 insect science professionals at the Entomological Society of America’s annual meeting, Entomology 2025 (Ento2025), hosted at the Oregon Convention Center. Over four days, the conference offered symposia, workshops, networking sessions, mixers and a busy exhibit hall.
Pensoft showcased the EU pollinator projects VALOR and AGRI4POL at Entomology 2025.
Pensoft exhibited at booth #715, showcasing the publisher’s portfolio of entomology journals and promoting two key EU-funded projects on pollinators: VALOR and AGRI4POL. Featuring professional scientific illustrations, attractive open-access publishing opportunities, and results from Pensoft-partnered EU projects, the booth attracted considerable interest from attendees.
A highlight of Pensoft’s presence at Entomology 2025 was the participation of Lars Straub, Editor-in-Chief of the newly launched Diamond Open Access journal Advances in Pollinator Research (APR). Straub moderated two student 10-minute presentation competitions and presented his own research, “Neonicotinoid exposure reduces fitness of a widespread butterfly, Vanessa cardui.”
Dr Alfred Daniel Johnson, a Journal of Hymenoptera Research author.
Dr Kevin Li, a One Ecosystem author.
Dr Claire Rutledge, a NeoBiota author.
Dr Lars Straub, Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Pollinator Research .
Dr Priyadarshini Chakrabarti Basu, an Advances in Pollinator Research editor.
Dr Yihang Li, a ZooKeys author.
Dr Jose ‘Joe’ Martinez, a ZooKeys author.
Yeshwanth, H M, a ZooKeys author.
–
Following a fantastic week in Portland at both ECN 2025 and Entomology 2025, Pensoft looks forward to continuing its close collaboration with the entomological and collections communities. The Entomological Society of America’s next annual meeting, Entomology 2026, will take place on 8–11 November in Columbus, Ohio, where Pensoft plans to create more partnerships and continue its support for open science in insect research.
Wiorek has strong skills in lepidopteran morphology and molecular knowledge, and will join co-Editor-in-Chief Théo Léger to continue the development of the journal.
Marcin Wiorek joins Nota Lepidopterologica’s editorial team as a co-Editor-in-Chief together with Théo Léger. He was elected to replace David Lees in this capacity on 22 August 2025 at the meeting of the Society for European Lepidopterology (SEL), the society behind the open-access, peer-reviewed Nota Lepidopterologica journal.
Marcin Wiorek.
“I am truly honoured, but also happy to join the team of Nota Lepidopterologica as a successor of David C. Lees and all previous great Editors. My interest in Lepidoptera focuses on tiger moths (Arctiinae), and different aspects of their systematics, phylogeny, biology and zoogeography. During the past few years, I have been studying the Syntomini of Madagascar, a group that ignited my professional and deep interest in moths, resulting in my recently obtained PhD,” Wiorek said.
The move follows David Lees’ resignation as a co-Editor-in-Chief after eight years of service. Here is a note from him on his time in Nota Lepidopterologica:
David Lees. Photo by Brian Fisher
“It has been a real privilege to serve as an Editor-in-Chief of the open-access journal Nota Lepidopterologica since 2017 (Issue 40 (2)). Over these eight years I have aimed to keep up the high standards established by my predecessors, the fine lepidopterists Erik van Nieukerken, Jadranka Rota (currently president of SEL, now known as Society for European Lepidopterology) and later Maria Heikkilä, whom I replaced, and to be able to help improve the accessibility, inclusivity (e.g., we welcome submissions outside the EU), and high scientific standards of the journal, working with the team at Pensoft. Plamen Pankov and Boriana Ovcharova have been particularly helpful, aided by their colleagues, as well as Matthias Nuss and Wolfgang Eckweiler in solving printing issues.
“As a co-Editor-in-Chief, I helped edit 11 issues between 2017 and 2025, containing 148 papers and 2,114 pages, occupying some 12 cm of shelf space! During this time, an Impact Factor was introduced (currently 0.7). I trust its quality, accessibility and readership will continue to improve, for example each paper integrates an Altmetric score and Pensoft often offer to promote papers with a wider interest.
Arctic habitats have fascinated biologists for centuries. Their species-poor insect faunas, however, provide little reward for entomologists – scientists who…
An unknown moth, collected from Portugal 22 years ago, has finally been named and placed in the tree of life…
“My co-Editor-in-Chief Théo Léger will continue his fine work, together with Marcin Wiorek who was elected to replace me at the 24th European Congress of Lepidopterology held in the Czech Republic last month. I know Marcin very well; we have been to the field together in Madagascar on two occasions and I have also had the pleasure to collaborate with him, and can thus vouch for his strong scientific and linguistic abilities as well his broad skillset in Lepidoptera (particularly erebid moth) morphology and strong molecular knowledge and other technical abilities. These will be invaluable in deciding on the increasingly integrated nature of submissions received at Nota Lepidopterologica. He is already well known in the SEL community.
“I am thrilled to contribute – together with co-Editor-in-Chief Théo Léger – to the further development of the journal and the maintenance of its high professional and editorial level,” added Wiorek. “I believe that my dedication to high publishing standards, implementing modern research methods embedded in the classical taxonomy and systematics of Lepidoptera, will help me work effectively on adding further centimetres of substantive shelf space to the legacy of our journal. I think that my interest in European languages (especially English, crucial to fully enjoy the British humour of my predecessor during joint field trips to Madagascar) can also help me a bit…”
Pensoft and Nota Lepidopterologica thank David for his hard work and dedication and wish him all the best in his future endeavours. We also look forward to working with Marcin on the journal’s development and wish him every success as he takes on this new role.
The initiative aims to make it easier to access and use biodiversity data associated with published research, aligning with principles of Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data.
The data portals offer seamless integration of published articles and associated data elements with GBIF-mediated records. Now, researchers, educators, and conservation practitioners can discover and use the extensive species occurrence and other data associated with the papers published in each journal.
A video displaying an interactive map with occurrence data on the BDJ portal.
The collaboration between Pensoft and GBIF was recently piloted with the Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ). Today, the BDJ hosted portal provides seamless access and exploration for nearly 300,000 occurrences of biological organisms from all over the world that have been extracted from the journal’s all-time publications. In addition, the portal provides direct access to more than 800 datasets published alongside papers in BDJ, as well as to almost 1,000 citations of the journal articles associated with those publications.
“The release of the BDJ portal and subsequent ones planned for other Pensoft journals should inspire other publishers to follow suit in advancing a more interconnected, open and accessible ecosystem for biodiversity research,” said Dr. Vince Smith, Editor-in-Chief of BDJ and head of digital, data and informatics at the Natural History Museum, London.
— GBIF @biodiversity.social/@gbif (@GBIF) March 10, 2025
“The programme will provide a scalable solution for more than thirty of the journals we publish thanks to our partnership with Plazi, and will foster greater connectivity between scientific research and the evidence that supports it,” said Prof. Lyubomir Penev, founder and chief executive officer of Pensoft.
On the new portals, users can search data, refining their queries based on various criteria such as taxonomic classification, and conservation status. They also have access to statistical information about the hosted data.
Together, the hosted portals provide data on almost 325,000 occurrence records, as well as over 1,000 datasets published across the journals.
Yet another hectic year has passed for our team at Pensoft, so it feels right to look back at the highlights from the last 12 months, as we buckle up for the leaps and strides in 2025.
In the past, we have used the occasion to take you back to the best moments of our most popular journals (see this list of 2023 highlights from ZooKeys, MycoKeys, PhytoKeys and more!); share milestones related to our ARPHA publishing platform (see the new journals, integrations and features from 2023); or let you reminisce about the coolest research published across our journals during the year(check out our Top 10 new species from 2021).
In 2022, when we celebrated our 30th anniversary on the academic scene, we extended our festive spirit throughout the year as we dived deep into those fantastic three decades. We put up Pensoft’s timeline and finished the year with a New Species Showdown tournament, where our followers on (what was back then) Twitter voted twice a week for their favourite species EVER described on the pages of our taxonomic journals.
Spoiler alert: we will be releasing our 2024 Top 10 New Species on Monday, 23 December, so you’d better go to the right of this screen and subscribe to our blog!
As we realised we might’ve been a bit biased towards our publishing activities over the years, this time, hereby, we chose to present you a retrospection that captures our best 2024 moments from across the departments, and shed light on how the publishing, technology and project communication endeavours fit together to make Pensoft what it is.
In truth, we take pride in being an exponentially growing family of multiple departments that currently comprises over 60 full-time employees and about a dozen freelancers working from all corners of the world, including Australia, Canada, Belgium and the United Kingdom. Together, we are all determined to make sure we continuously improve our service to all who have trusted us: authors, reviewers, editors, client journals, learned societies, research institutions, project consortia and other external collaborators.
After all, great deeds are only possible when you team up with great like-minded people!
In 2024, at Pensoft, we were hugely pleased to see a significant growth in the published output at almost all our journals, including record-breaking numbers in both submissions and publications at flagship titles of ours, including the Biodiversity Data Journal, PhytoKeys and MycoKeys.
Later in 2024, our colleagues, who work together with our clients to ensure their journals comply with the requirements of the top scholarly databases before they apply for indexation, informed us that another two journals in our portfolio have had their applications to Clarivate’s Web of Science successfully accepted. These are the newest journal of the International Association of Vegetation Science: Vegetation and Classification, and Metabarcoding and Metagenomics: a journal we launched in 2017 in collaboration with a team of brilliant scientists working together at the time within the DNAquaNet COST Action.
In 2024, we also joined the celebrations of our long-time partners at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, whose three journals: Zoosystematics and Evolution, Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift and Fossil Record are all part of our journal portfolio. This year marked the 10th Open Access anniversary of the three journals.
In the meantime, we also registered a record in new titles either joining the Pensoft portfolio or opting for ARPHA Platform’s white-label publishing solution, where journal owners retain exclusivity for the publication of their titles, yet use ARPHA’s end-to-end technology and as many human-provided services as necessary.
Pensoft’s CEO and founder Prof. Dr. Lyubomir Penev with Prof. Dr. Marc Stadler, Editor-in-Chief of IMA Fungus and President of the International Mycological Association at the Pensoft booth at the 12th International Mycological Congress (August, the Netherlands).
Amongst our new partners are the International Mycological Association who moved their official journal IMA Fungus to ARPHA Platform. As part of Pensoft’s scholarly portfolio, the renowned journal joins another well-known academic title in the field of mycology: MycoKeys, which was launched by Pensoft in 2011. The big announcement was aptly made public at this year’s 12th International Mycological Congress where visitors of the Pensoft stand could often spot newly elected IMA President and IMA Fungus Chief editor: Marc Stadler chatting with our founder and CEO Lyubomir Penev by the Pensoft/MycoKeys booth.
On our end, we did not stop supporting enthusiastic and proactive scientists in their attempt to bridge gaps in scientific knowledge. In January, we launched the Estuarine Management and Technologies journal together with Dr. Soufiane Haddout of the Ibn Tofail University, Morocco.
Later on, Dr. Franco Andreone (Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali, Italy) sought us with the idea to launch a journal addressing the role of natural history museums and herbaria collections in scientific progress. This collaboration resulted in the Natural History Collections and Museomics journal, officially announced at the joint TDWG-SPNHC conference in Okinawa, Japan in August.
Around this time, we finalised our similarly exciting journal project in partnership with Prof. Dr. Volker Grimm (UFZ, Germany), Prof. Dr. Karin Frank (UFZ, Germany), Prof. Dr. Mark E. Hauber (City University of New York) and Prof. Dr. Florian Jeltsch (University of Potsdam, Germany). The outcome of this collaboration is called Individual-based Ecology: a journal that aims to promote an individual-based perspective in ecology, as it closes the knowledge gap between individual-level responses and broader ecological patterns.
The three newly-launched journals are all published under the Diamond Open Access model, where neither access, nor publication is subject to charges.
As you can see, we have a lot to be proud of in terms of our journals. This is also why in 2024 our team took a record number of trips to attend major scientific events, where we got the chance to meet face-to-face with long-time editors, authors, reviewers and readers of our journals. Even more exciting was meeting the new faces of scientific research and learning about their own take on scholarship and academic journals.
Pensoft’s CEO and founder Prof. Dr. Lyubomir Penev welcomed editors at PhytoKeys to the Pensoft-PhytoKeys-branded booth at the XX International Botanical Congress in July 2024 (Spain).
We cannot possibly comment on Pensoft’s tech progress in 2024 without mentioning the EU-funded project BiCIKL (acronym for Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library) that we coordinated for three years ending up last April.
This 36-month endeavour saw 14 member institutions and 15 research infrastructures representing diverse actors from the biodiversity data realm come together to improve bi-directional links between different platforms, standards, formats and scientific fields.
Following these three years of collaborative work, we reported a great many notable research outputs from our consortium (find about them in the open-science project collection in the Research Ideas and Outcomes journal, titled “Towards interlinked FAIR biodiversity knowledge: The BiCIKL perspective”) that culminated in the Biodiversity Knowledge Hub: a one-stop portal that allows users to access FAIR and interlinked biodiversity data and services in a few clicks; and also a set of policy recommendations addressing key policy makers, research institutions and funders who deal with various types of data about the world’s biodiversity, and are thereby responsible to ensuring there findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability (FAIR-ness).
Apart from coordinating BiCIKL, we also worked side-by-side with our partners to develop, refine and test each other’s tools and services, in order to make sure that they communicate efficiently with each other, thereby aligning with the principles of FAIR data and the needs of the scientific community in the long run.
During those three years we made a lot of refinements to our OpenBiodiv: a biodiversity database containing knowledge extracted from scientific literature, built as an Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management System, and our ARPHA Writing Tool. The latter is an XML-based online authoring environment using a large set of pre-formatted templates, where manuscripts are collaboratively written, edited and submitted to participating journals published on ARPHA Platform. What makes the tool particularly special is its multiple features that streamline and FAIRify data publishing as part of a scientific publication, especially in the field of biodiversity knowledge. In fact, we made enough improvements to the ARPHA Writing Tool that we will be soon officially releasing its 2.0 version!
OpenBiodiv – The Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management System
ARPHA Writing Tool 2.0
Amongst our collaborative projects are the Nanopublications for Biodiversity workflow that we co-developed with KnowledgePixels to allow researchers to ‘fragment’ their most important scientific findings into machine-actionable and machine-interpretable statements. Being the smallest units of publishable information, these ‘pixels of knowledge’ present an assertion about anything that can be uniquely identified and attributed to its author and serve to communicate a single statement, its original source (provenance) and citation record (publication info).
Nanopublications for Biodiversity
In partnership with the Swiss-based Text Mining group of Patrick Ruch at SIB and the text- and data-mining association Plazi, we brought the SIB Literature Services (SIBiLS) database one step closer to solidifying its “Biodiversity PMC” portal and working title.
Understandably, we spent a lot of effort, time and enthusiasm in raising awareness about our most recent innovations, in addition to our long-standing workflows, formats and tools developed with the aim to facilitate open and efficient access to scientific data; and their integration into published scholarly work, as well as receiving well-deserved recognition for their collection.
We just can’t stress it enough how important and beneficial it is for everyone to have high-quality FAIR data, ideally made available within a formal scientific publication!
🗨️Imagine if ALL these links were provided as hyperlinks within a #scholarly publication!
Pensoft’s CTO Teodor Georgiev talks about innovative methods and good practices in the publication of biodiversity data in scholarly papers at the First national meeting of the Bulgarian Barcode of Life (BgBOL) consortium (December, Bulgaria).
🤔What is a Data Paper?
👍 A means to describe a #dataset – like the ones on @GBIF – in a standardised, widely accepted #scientific article format.
👇🧵Highlights from @LyuboPenev's talk at the int'l symposium "#BiodiversityData in montane & arid Eurasia" in Kazakhstan 🇰🇿
Pensoft’s CEO and founder Prof. Dr. Lyubomir Penev presenting his “Data papers on biodiversity” talk at the “Biodiversity data in montane and arid Eurasia” symposium jointly organized by GBIF and by the Institute of Zoology of Republic of Kazakhstan (November, Kazakhstan).
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📸Today, at the @EASEeditors symposium, our @teodorpensoft gave a sneak peek into the AI-assisted tools at @ARPHAplatform we have been working on (e.g. Word -> JATS XML conversion) and the #ARPHA Writing Tool 2.0 (coming up in early 2025)!🎉
Pensoft’s CTO Teodor Georgiev presents new features and workflows currently in testing at the ARPHA Writing Tool 2.0 at the EASE Autumn Symposium 2024 (online event).Pensoft’s Head of Journal development, Marketing and PR Iva Boyadzhieva talks about Pensoft’s data publishing approach and innovations at the German Ecological Society 53rd Annual Conference (September, Germany).
Pensoft as a science communicator
At our Project team, which is undoubtedly the fastest developing department at Pensoft, science communicators are working closely with technology and publishing teams to help consortia bring their scientific results closer to policy actors, decision-makers and the society at large.
Ultimately, bridging the notorious chasm between researchers and global politics boils down to mutual understanding and dialogue.
Pensoft’s communication team attended COP16 (November 2024, Colombia) along with partners at the consortia of CO-OP4CBD, BioAgora and RESPIN: three Horizon Europe projects, whose communication and dissemination is led by Pensoft.
Throughout 2024, the team, comprising 20 science communicators and project managers, has been working as part of 27 EU-funded project consortia, including nine that have only started this year (check out all partnering projects on the Pensoft website, ordered from most recently started to oldest). Apart from communicating key outcomes and activities during the duration of the projects, at many of the projects, our team has also been actively involved in their grant proposal drafting, coordination, administration, platform development, graphic and web design and others (see all project services offered by Pensoft to consortia).
📸As leaders of the “Stakeholder engagement, comms & dissemination” WP at @BCubedProject, we joined the annual meeting to report on project branding, #scicomm & #DataManagement.
Naturally, we had a seat on the front row during many milestones achieved by our partners at all those 27 ongoing projects, and communicated to the public by our communicators.
Amongst those are the release of the InsectsCount web application developed within the Horizon 2020 project SHOWCASE. Through innovative gamification elements, the app encourages users to share valuable data about flower-visiting insects, which in turn help researchers gain new knowledge about the relationship between observed species and the region’s land use and management practices (learn more about InsectsCount on the SHOWCASE prroject website).
Another fantastic project output was the long-awaited dataset of maps of annual forest disturbances across 38 European countries derived from the Landsat satellite data archive published by the Horizon Europe project ForestPaths in April (find more about the European Forest Disturbance Atlas on the ForestPaths project website).
In a major company highlight, last month, our project team participated in COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan with a side event dedicated to the role of open science and science communication in climate- and biodiversity-friendly policy.
Pensoft’s participation at COP29 – as well as our perspective on FAIR data and open science – were recently covered in an interview by Exposed by CMD (a US-based news media accredited to cover the event) with our science communicator Alexandra Korcheva and project manager Boris Barov.
You see, A LOT of great things worth celebrating happened during the year for us at Pensoft: all thanks to ceaselessly flourishing collaboration based on transparency, trust and integrity. Huge ‘THANK YOU!’ goes to everyone who has joined us in our endeavours!
Here’s to many more shared achievements coming up in 2025!
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