Category: Pharmacia

ResearchGate and Pensoft Publishers announce expansion of their Journal Home partnership

The partnership now expands to 40 journals, covering the majority of Pensoft’s and partner’s journals.

Berlin (Germany) and Sofia (Bulgaria), 10th February, 2026 – ResearchGate, the professional network for researchers, and Pensoft Publishers, an independent open access publisher and provider of high-quality scholarly publishing services, today announced an expansion of their Journal Home partnership. Building on an earlier collaboration announced in 2023, the list now expands to 40 journals, covering the majority of Pensoft’s and partners’ journals using the publisher’s ARPHA Publishing Platform.

Amongst the journals now enjoying increased visibility across the ResearchGate’s community of 25+ million researcher members are well-renowned scholarly titles affiliated with the Natural History Museum in Berlin, Swiss Academy of Sciences, International Association for Vegetation Science and The International Biogeography Society, as well as recently launched Pensoft journals, such as Individual-based Ecology, Natural History Collections and Museomics, and Food and Ecological Systems Modelling Journal.

With most of Pensoft’s eligible partner journals choosing to participate, the expansion reflects strong demand for greater exposure and engagement opportunities, particularly among smaller and developing journals in niche research areas. Through Journal Home, partner publishers can reach more relevant audiences, improve discoverability, and connect more effectively with researchers worldwide.

Participating Pensoft journals will also benefit from:

Increased usage and readership, with full-text open access journal content seamlessly surfaced to highly relevant researcher communities across the ResearchGate platform.
Stronger engagement from new and returning authors, connecting partner journals, including specialist and emerging titles, with targeted researchers and potential authors throughout the research lifecycle.
Dedicated Journal Profiles and prominent placement of Pensoft journals to enhance visibility and branding, boosting recognition of partner journals with researcher communities around the world.
Improved author experience, with the automatic addition of published articles to author profiles, clearer insight into reader engagement, and greater opportunities for meaningful collaboration.

“Journal Home allows us to provide our partner journals with improved visibility and stronger connections with global researcher communities. Many of these journals serve highly specialised fields, and Journal Home helps make sure their articles reach the right researchers, who will benefit from them most.”
Lyubomir Penev, CEO and founder of Pensoft Publishers

“We’re pleased to expand our Journal Home partnership with Pensoft to support an increasing number of partner journals. By bringing these journals onto the platform, smaller and emerging titles can expand their reach, attract high-quality submissions, and connect with the most relevant researcher communities at key moments in their research journey.”
Robyn Mugridge, Head of Partnership Development at ResearchGate

For more information about Journal Home, please visit www.researchgate.net/journal-home.

For more information about ResearchGate, please visit www.researchgate.net.

For more information about Pensoft Publishers, please visit www.pensoft.net.

About ResearchGate

ResearchGate is the professional network for researchers. Over 25 million researchers use researchgate.net to share and discover research, build their networks, and advance their careers. Based in Berlin, ResearchGate was founded in 2008. Its mission is to connect the world of science and make research open to all.

About Pensoft Publishers

Pensoft is an independent, open-access scholarly publisher and technology provider, best known for its 40+ biodiversity journals, including ZooKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal, PhytoKeys, MycoKeys, One Ecosystem, and Metabarcoding and Metagenomics. Ever since becoming the first to introduce semantic enrichments and hyperlinks within a scientific article in the field of biodiversity in 2010, Pensoft has been working on various tools and workflows designed to facilitate data findability, accessibility, discoverability and interoperability.

Pensoft and the University of Zurich sign strategic OA Agreement to support Swiss research

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 Zurich have 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).

The agreement encompasses five key research and medical bodies, namely the University of Zurich, the University Hospital of Zurich, Balgrist University Hospital, University Children’s Hospital Zurich, and the Psychiatrische Universitätsklinik.

Researchers from these institutions can now publish without worrying about APCs in 65 peer-reviewed journals published by Pensoft or hosted on its advanced ARPHA platform, including flagship titles such as ZooKeys, PhytoKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal, NeoBiota, and IMA Fungus.

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.

Ensuring drug safety using AI models for adverse drug reaction prediction

An AI model developed to predict adverse drug reactions could potentially support early-stage drug safety assessment before clinical trials.

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are a significant cause of hospital admissions and treatment discontinuation worldwide. Conventional approaches often fail to detect rare or delayed effects of medicinal products. In order to improve early detection, a research team from the Medical University of Sofia developed a deep learning model to predict the likelihood of ADRs based solely on a drug’s chemical structure.

The model was built using a neural network trained using reference pharmacovigilance data. Input features were derived from SMILES codes – a standard format representing molecular structure. Predictions were generated for six major ADRs: hepatotoxicity, nephrotoxicity, cardiotoxicity, neurotoxicity, hypertension, and photosensitivity.

A flowchart illustrating chemical transformation, featuring molecular structures, fragment analysis, and decomposition stages. — Visual representation of SMILES and the process of molecular deconstruction. Adapted from Wu JN, Wang T, Chen Y, Tang LJ, Wu HL, Yu RQ. t-SMILES: a fragment-based molecular representation framework for de novo ligand design. Nat Commun. 2024 Jun 11;15(1): 4993. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-49388-6.

“We could conclude that it successfully identified many expected reactions while producing relatively few false positives,” the researchers write in their paper published in the journal Pharmacia, concluding it “demonstrates acceptable accuracy in predicting ADRs.”

Infographic detailing an AI model predicting adverse drug reactions for various compounds.

Testing of the model with well-characterized drugs resulted in predictions consistent with known side-effect profiles. For example, it estimated a 94.06% probability of hepatotoxicity for erythromycin, 88.44% for nephrotoxicity and 75.8% for hypertension in cisplatin. Additionally, 22% photosensitivity was predicted for cisplatin, while 64.8% photosensitivity was estimated for the experimental compound ezeprogind. For enadoline, a novel molecule, the model returned low probability scores across all ADRs, suggesting minimal risk.

Notably, these results demonstrate the model’s potential as a decision-support tool in early-phase drug discovery and regulatory safety monitoring. The authors acknowledge that performance of the infrastructure could be further enhanced by incorporating factors such as dose levels and patient-specific parameters.

Research article:

Ruseva V, Dobrev S, Getova-Kolarova V, Peneva A, Getov I, Dimitrova M, Petkova V (2025) In situ development of an artificial intelligence (AI) model for early detection of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) to ensure drug safety. Pharmacia 72: 1–8. https://doi.org/10.3897/pharmacia.72.e160997

Probiotic supplementation may help reduce chemotherapy side effects in breast cancer

A new study published in the journal Pharmacia showed that multi-strain probiotics can have impact on chemotherapy-related side effects.

Chemotherapy is one of the most popular ways to treat breast cancer. Even though it has proven to be effective, it also has downsides, such as a higher risk of side effects, as it doesn’t only attack the cancer cells but can also affect normal cells. Chemotherapy-related side effects such as fatigue, weakness, and proneness to infections can influence treatment adherence and undermine the effectiveness of the therapy and the patients’ quality of life.

Probiotics are among the emerging alternative supplements being studied for their potential benefit in cancer treatment. A new study published in the open-access journal Pharmacia explored the effects of multi-strain probiotics on chemotherapy-related side effects using Karnofsky performance score, complete blood count, and blood biochemistry.

The findings show that probiotics with 7 strains have a potential effect in patients with breast cancer, especially in the improvement of common chemotherapy-related side effects, such as fatigue and nausea. Another potential effect of multi-strain probiotics is improving blood urea nitrogen levels. Significant improvement was observed in the ability to perform activities of daily living, which means patients can go about their lives more independently and reduce their reliance on others. This might also be related to the improvement of nausea and fatigue symptoms.

Close-up photo of a Black doctor showing pills and pill bottle at the camera

In conclusion, multi-strain probiotics have been shown to have potential benefits in chemotherapy-related side effects for patients with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy. Further, larger study is needed to explore these effects and to confirm the benefits of multi-strain probiotics before they are used in clinical practice.

Research article:
Kirtishanti A, Wijono H, Kok T, Setiawan E, Tanggo VVCM, Zahara GS, Davina W, Presley B (2025) Effect of multi-strain probiotics supplementation on chemotherapy-related side effects among patients with breast cancer: A pilot trial. Pharmacia 72: 1-9. https://doi.org/10.3897/pharmacia.72.e144998

Anti-melanoma activity found in green-produced nanosilver-chlorhexidine complex

A trustful concentration range was established in which the active agent was effective against the cancer cells but remained non-toxic to the normal cells.

Melanoma is a fast-progressing skin cancer characterized by a high mortality rate after metastasis. Local chemotherapy could be considered a therapeutic approach only in stage 0 of progression (in situ melanoma) and in the postoperative phase after surgical removal of suspected skin lesions. For this purpose, drugs such as Imiquimod, 5-Fluorouracil, Dacarbazine, and Doxorubicin have been tested and shown positive effects. Recently, metal nanoparticles as separate therapeutic units or drug carriers have also fallen into the research focus.

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), in particular, are widely recognized as multifunctional tools in nanomedicine, drug delivery, and theranostics. They exert wide-spectrum antimicrobial and anti-tumor properties but their pharmacological effects are in a tight bond with the so-called “surface functionality”. For example, negatively charged and spherical particles are proven less toxic than positively charged particles, especially irregularly shaped (e.g., rods, wires, etc.). Still, because of this, the former are less potent anti-cancer agents.

Contemporary pharmaceutical development relies very much on eco-friendly technologies (often referred to as “green” technologies) that avoid the use of toxic solvents and reagents. This research has implemented one such method based on Camellia sinensis (green tea leaves) as a natural reducer of silver ions. To achieve enhanced antimicrobial and anti-tumor activity, the thus obtained AgNPs were further conjugated to chlorhexidine (Cx+) — a broad-spectrum antimicrobial agent and a cationic surfactant. Indeed, the AgNP-Cx+ complexes have shown highly increased antimicrobial properties, about 18-fold stronger anti-melanoma activity, and 3 times better tumor selectivity compared to the non-functionalized AgNPs.

The most valuable outcome of this new study, published in the journal Pharmacia, was the establishment of an adhesive patch prototype as a topical dosage form for the AgNP-Cx+ complex. The used polymers, Hydroxypropyl methylcellulose and Eudragit^® RS, demonstrated a lack of negative interference with the antiproliferative action of the active agent but also ensured twice as high activity and even better selectivity against the tumor cells.

Original source:

Ivanova NA (2025) Anti-melanoma activity of green-produced nanosilver-chlorhexidine complex. Pharmacia 72: 1-7. https://doi.org/10.3897/pharmacia.72.e143419

Bulgarian Pharmaceutical Scientific Society’s journal moves to high-tech ARPHA platform

Content from Pensoft’s journals now also available from ScienceDirect

In a new content syndication partnership, scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft has made scholarly articles from 16 journals discoverable from ScienceDirect.

Through this collaboration, content from 16 journals published by Pensoft will join 1.4 million open-access articles currently available from ScienceDirect. This way, they will reach even more people: researchers will find relevant academic papers more efficiently, while study authors will get increased visibility of their work, ultimately benefiting the scholarly community and facilitating knowledge exchange. According to the latest data, ScienceDirect is being visited by 20 million researchers each month.

Serving as a hub for scientific research, ScienceDirect offers access to scholarly content from thousands of journals. Making millions of research articles available to its users, it makes it easy to explore and access the latest research findings across a wide thematic range.

The move reaffirms Pensoft’s longstanding commitment to advancing open-access publishing and making high-quality academic research accessible to all.

“We at Pensoft are happy to share that content from our journals is now available to ScienceDirect users. Our mission as a publisher has always been to make sure scientific outputs reach as many people as possible, and we are really excited about making this extra step towards global visibility, discoverability, reusability and citability,” said Pensoft’s founder and CEO, Lyubomir Penev.

Rose L’Huillier, SVP Researcher Products, Data Science, and Analytics, Elsevier, said: “We are excited about our new partnership with Pensoft. This is a win-win. This collaboration aims to provide Pensoft’s published authors with enhanced visibility as their articles will now be discoverable by over 19 million scientists on ScienceDirect. We also hope that continuing to partner with other publishers will allow us to learn together how we can continue to improve the research publishing ecosystem as a whole and promote the values we all share such as safeguarding trust in science.”

Below you can find a list of the 16 participating journals published by Pensoft and/or using Pensoft’s scholarly publishing platform ARPHA:

Additional information:

About ScienceDirect:

ScienceDirect is an essential information resource for over 19,000,000 scientists worldwide, and home to many respected journals and prestigious society titles. Researchers can now search and browse articles from participating publishers, alongside Elsevier content on ScienceDirect. This collaboration brings together partner publishers’ unique and high impact academic journals with ScienceDirect’s capabilities in research dissemination and advanced features for discoverability.