International Association for Vegetation Science

This summer, Gijón, Spain played host to the 68th Annual Symposium of the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS), welcoming 465 participants from 49 countries for five extraordinary days under the theme “Understanding Ecosystems Through Vegetation.“

Held from 22-26 June 2026, the symposium brought together researchers working across the full spectrum of the field, from Earth Observation and vegetation databases to plant community interactions, seed regeneration, and long-term vegetation dynamics. From opening keynotes to the closing ceremony, the energy, curiosity, and collegiality of our community made this one for the books.

A Packed Scientific Programme

The opening ceremony of the 68th IAVS Annual Symposium.
Pensoft’s stand at the 68th Annual Symposium.
Pensoft’s stand at the 68th IAVS Annual Symposium.

Alongside the core symposium topics, this year’s programme featured seven special sessions on some of the field’s most pressing questions, including bringing different vegetation classification approaches together, plant biogeography and macroecology, scaling laws in vegetation ecology, belowground functional ecology and more.

Moreover, the session themed “Bringing the different vegetation classification approaches together”, sponsored by the IAVS Vegetation Classification Working Group, will be used as a basis for assembling a Special Collection in the open-access journal Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS).

Two of VCS’ Editors-in-Chief also took the stage this year: Prof. Jürgen Dengler shared a presentation called “Plant invasions in grasslands of Switzerland: invaders, spatial patterns and effects on biodiversity”.

While Dr. Idoia Biurrun presented “The power of scale: uncovering biodiversity patterns and environmental drivers in riparian forests”.

Spotlight On Our Vegetation Science Journals

Speaking of that journal, we’ve been proud collaborators with IAVS since 2020, when we launched Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS) together as the association’s newest journal. At this year’s symposium, we had the chance to showcase both VCS and our other flagship vegetation title, Vegetation Ecology and Diversity (VED), to the community.

Vegetation Classification and Survey promotional materials from the 68th IAVS Annual Symposium.

Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS) is an international, peer-reviewed, online journal on plant community ecology, published on behalf of IAVS. It is devoted to vegetation survey and classification at any organisational and spatial scale, welcoming original papers that develop new vegetation typologies as well as applied studies, from vegetation mapping and ecosystem modelling to nature conservation and land-use management.

Five years after launch, VCS is boasting a 2025 Scopus CiteScore of 4.7 (up from 3.6 the year before), and the journal is now ranked Q1 across all the categories in which it is indexed.

Vegetation Ecology and Diversity promotional materials from the 68th IAVS Annual Symposium.

Vegetation Ecology and Diversity (VED) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal owned by the Italian Society of Vegetation Science (SISV). It publishes original research covering all aspects of vegetation, from plant communities to landscapes, with a particular focus on plant community ecology and vegetation surveys used to advance ecological models, classify vegetation, map ecosystems, and monitor and conserve European habitats.

A Productive Conversation About VCS’s Future

Pensoft’s team presenting during the Editorial Meeting at the 68th IAVS Annual Symposium.
Editorial meeting at the 68th IAVS Symposium.
Editorial Meeting at IAVS 2026.

For Pensoft, one of the standout moments of the symposium was the VCS editorial meeting, where we had the chance to sit down with members of the journal’s editorial board for a candid and productive discussion about Vegetation Classification and Survey‘s current position and its prospects for future growth. It was a valuable opportunity to hear directly from the people shaping the journal’s direction and to plan the next steps together.

Pensoft's Head of Marketing, Sales and Events with Susan WiserP resident of IAVS during the 68th Annual Symposium. — Pensoft’s Head of Marketing, Sales and Events with Susan WiserP resident of IAVS during the 68th Annual Symposium.

During the symposium, Pensoft’s stand was visited by Susan Wiser, President of IAVS, giving our on-site team the chance to discuss our ongoing publishing collaboration.

Our Diverse Journal Portfolio On Display

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Beyond VCS and VED, our stand featured a wide range of open-access, peer-reviewed journals from our vegetation science and biodiversity portfolio – spanning plant-focused scientific outlets like Plant Ecology and Evolution, Italian Botanist, and PhytoKeys to conservation and ecosystem titles such as Nature Conservation, One Ecosystem, NeoBiota, Frontiers of Biogeography, and Neotropical Biology and Conservation. On display were also Pensoft’s fungi-focused journals: IMA Fungus and MycoKeys.

Some of the journal materials on display wtih Denitsa Peneva’s beautiful illustrations.
Vegetation Classification and Survey along with Check List and Neotropical Biology and Conservation promotional materials at IAVS 2026.
Biodiversity Data Journal, IMA Fungus and MycoKeys on focus wtih Denitsa Peneva’s beautiful illustrations.
Agricultural and Environmental Modelling flyer in front of the 68th IAVS Annual Symposium banner.
Frontiers of Biogeography in focus, alongside stickers illustrated by Denitsa Peneva.
Metabarcoding and Metagenomics, Individual-Based Ecology and Nature Conservation brochures in focus at IAVS 2026.

Аttendees also stopped by to explore and learn more about Pensoft’s more specialised outlets such as Metabarcoding and Metagenomics, Biodiversity Data Journal, Individual-Based Ecology and the recently relaunched Agricultural and Environmental Modelling as well as Check List, all of which sparked great conversations at the stand.

Our recently launched diamond open-access journal, Advances in Pollinator Research, also drew plenty of interest.

Celebrating The Next Generation Of Vegetation Scientists

Celia González-López receiving the Young Scientist Award at the 68th IAVS Annual Symposium.

Оne of the many highlights that week was seeing the Young Scientist Award go to Celia González-López, recognising her outstanding early-career contributions to the field. Curiously, González-López is among the co-authors of a recent paper in Natural History Collections and Museomics, describing a workflow for creating 3D-printed insect replicas to make museum collections more accessible for education and outreach.

Looking Ahead

IAVS group photo — Group photo at the end of the conference. Credit to IAVS.

It was a great pleasure to become part of the IAVS community, and we look forward to an even stronger collaboration and many productive achievements together in the years to come.

Save the date: the 69th IAVS Annual Symposium will be held in Kumasi, Ashanti Region, Ghana, from 12-16 July 2027.

You can follow Pensoft on Bluesky, Facebook, X and LinkedIn to keep up all the latest updates and the events we are attending.

Four native vegetation types in native vegetation in Espinal province (central Argentina), described in the study by Zeballos et al. (2020), openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.1127/VCS/2020/38013.
Photos by Sebastián Zeballo

Last summer, the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS) took the decision to launch a gold open-access academic journal, titled Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS). Then, IAVS signed a contract with the scientific publisher and technology provider Pensoft and its self-developed innovative, fast-track scholarly platform ARPHA.

Now, VCS is officially online with the publication of its first six research articles and an exhaustive editorial, written by its four Chief Editors: Prof Dr Florian Jansen, Dr Idoia Biurrun, Prof Dr Jürgen Dengler and Dr Wolfgang Willner. They explain the mission and key features of the new journal. They also address the advantages and challenges of Open Access and share the ways VCS is to handle those.

VCS focuses on vegetation typologies and vegetation classification systems, their methodological foundation, development and application at any organisational and spatial scale. No restrictions are imposed on the methodological approaches used.

Apart from original research papers that develop new vegetation typologies, the journal publishes applied studies that use such typologies, for example, in vegetation mapping, ecosystem modelling, nature conservation, land use management, or monitoring. Particularly encouraged are methodological studies that design and compare tools or algorithms for vegetation classification and mapping, vegetation databases and nomenclatural principles. Papers dealing with conceptual and theoretical bases of vegetation survey and classification are also welcome.

“We are delighted to welcome the latest journal by IAVS to the families of ARPHA and Pensoft. We are eager to support this wonderful Open Science initiative to facilitate access and uptake of research in this emerging field of vegetation science,”
comments Prof Lyubomir Penev, founder and CEO of ARPHA and Pensoft.

Amongst the appealing features of the new journal are its two permanent special collections: Ecoinformatics and Phytosociological Nomenclature. The former invites papers presenting vegetation-plot databases and other ecoinformatics data sources relevant for vegetation classification as well as concepts, methods and tools for using these, while the latter focuses on nomenclature issues of syntaxa.

Another novelty introduced by VCS is the implementation of double-blind peer review meant to reduce potential biases in academia.

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Proving the international focus of VCS, the first published articles cover research from five continents.

A Chinese study, conducted by the team of Dr Cindy Q. Tang (Yunnan University) analyses the forest structure, regeneration and growth trends of the commercially, culturally and economically important Yunnan pine tree.

The research team of Maged Abutaha (Desert Research Center) provides the first phytosociological classification of the vegetation units of Gebel Elba – an important arid mountain in Egypt – and the environmental factors controlling their distribution.

In their paper, Dr John Hunter (University of New England) and Vanessa Hunter use unsupervised techniques to produce a hierarchical classification of montane mires within the New England Tablelands Bioregion (NETB) of eastern Australia.

A national-scale phytosociological research of freshwater lake vegetation in Greece was conducted by the team of Dimitrios Zervas (Greek Biotope/Wetland Centre).

A Finite Mixture Model is proposed as an additional approach for classifying large datasets of georeferenced vegetation plots from complex vegetation systems by a large research team, led by Dr Fabio Attorre of the Sapienza University of Rome.

A description of the remaining native vegetation of the Espinal province in central Argentina, presented by a research team, led by Dr Sebastián Zeballos (Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal, UNC-CONICET), calls for conservation measures to be taken to preserve the remaining forest patches. They also urge for the establishment of new protected natural areas.

“We would like to see more profound vegetation studies from species-rich regions, from both natural and anthropogenically influenced vegetation types,”
say the editors.

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Thanks to support from IAVS, VCS will be offering particularly attractive article processing charges (APCs) for submissions during the first two years. Moreover, significant discounts are available for IAVS members, members of the Editorial team and authors from low-income countries or with other financial constraints.

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Follow Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS) on Twitter and Facebook.

Check out the official blog of the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS), where authors in any of the three IAVS journals are invited to submit blog contributions providing further insights into their work.

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Understanding Ecosystems Through Vegetation: Highlights from the 68th IAVS Annual Symposium