Rebranded Social Psychological Bulletin opens up to the world with PsychOpen GOLD & ARPHA

Formerly known as Psychologia Spoleczna, the scholarly journal is now publishing exclusively in English and is free to both readers and authors after joining the PsychOpen GOLD platform based on ARPHA

Social Psychological Bulletin (SPB), formerly known as the Polish-born Psychologia Spo?eczna, has rebranded and evolved to reflect its new international outlook and dedication to social psychological research and open science practices.

In line with its renowned legacy, the peer-reviewed journal welcomes original empirical research, theoretical review papers, scientific debates, and methodological contributions in the field of basic and applied social psychology.

However, from now on, accepted articles are to be exclusively in English and openly accessible from day one of publication. Furthermore, authors are able to publish with SPB free of charge in the name of socially committed and responsible research.

The journal places special emphasis on what its Editors-in-Chief Drs Michal Parzuchowski and Marcin Bukowski call “the updated FOCI” – an abbreviation for Focused on people, Open, Committed and Integrative.

The changes meant to lead up to the journal’s long-term progress, also outlined in the latest Editorial, come as a result of SPB joining two prime movers in the open science field – the Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information (ZPID) with its unique publication platform, PsychOpen GOLD, and Pensoft with its innovative journal publishing and management system, ARPHA.

Since 2012, PsychOpen GOLD – The European Open Access Publishing Platform for Psychology – allows for both journals and authors to increase the visibility and accessibility of novel psychological research in the spirit of open science practices free of charge.

In the new pilot project, ZPID’s PsychOpen GOLD also collaborates with the technologically advanced academic journal and book publishing platform ARPHA in order to further facilitate and increase visibility of the novel findings of societal value.

As a result of the partnership, SPB will make use of the long list of high-tech and user-friendly innovations, provided by ARPHA, which go far beyond the brand new sleek look and feel of the journal.

“We proudly present the new SPB journal to the scientific community, representing a major breakthrough in open access publishing in psychology,” says ZPID director Prof. Dr. Michael Bosnjak. “SPB on PsychOpen GOLD assisted by ARPHA is now up and running at record speed.”

“It’s really exciting to announce our partnership with ZPID, PsychOpen GOLD and SPB, in this collaborative venture to advance accessibility and visibility of research with such an impact on our own society,” says Prof. Lyubomir Penev, founder and CEO of ARPHA Platform and its developer – Pensoft Publishers. “At ARPHA and Pensoft, we have always worked towards next-age innovations in Open Science – be it improved accessibility, findability, usability or collaboration – so it only makes sense to join in this amazing initiative to open up the latest fine research in psychology.”

The journal’s first thematic issue comprises 10 forum papers (by Dariusz Doli?ski, Arie Kruglanski, Adam Factor & Katarzyna Jasko; Leonel Garcia-Marques & Mario Ferreira; Wolfgang Stroebe; Karl Halvor Teigen; Jolanda Jetten & Alexander S. Haslam; Miros?aw Kofta; Bogdan Wojciszke & Konrad Bocian; and Klaus Fiedler) dedicated to discussions on behavior and its measurement as triggered by Prof. Dariusz Dolinski’s article “Is Psychology Still a Science of Behaviour?”.

In his paper, Doli?ski calculates that the number of articles in a recent volume of the flagship Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2017) presenting studies in which the dependent variable consisted of a real behavior was 4 out of 49 (8.2%). Out of a total number of 290 studies presented in this volume, a mere 18 (6,2%) addressed behaviour.

He argues that in addition to studying phenomena like stereotypes, attitudes, and values – which he dubs the “what, how, and why people think”, social psychology needs to also remain dedicated to the “what, why and how people act”, i.e. things such as aggression, altruism, and social influence.

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Follow the discussion in the second 2018 issue of Social Psychological Bulletin on the journal’s new website.

Follow SPB on Twitter and Facebook.

Evolutionary Systematics joins Pensoft’s portfolio of open access scholarly journals

Evolutionary Systematics is the latest authoritative journal to join the lines of the open access titles published on the Pensoft-developed technologically advanced journal publishing platform ARPHA.

Launched in 1884 and 1912, respectively, University of Hamburg’s journal Mitteilungen aus dem Hamburgischen Zoologischen Museum und Institut and Entomologische Mitteilungen are now resurrected under the name of Evolutionary Systematics.

Rebranded and refreshed, the journal has acquired a long list of technological user-friendly innovations, while simultaneously keeping its well-known expertise and devotion to whole-organism biology and collection-related research.

Its first issue in collaboration with Pensoft comprises two editorials dedicated to the extensive tradition and the bright future of the journal along with seven articles are already live on the journal’s new website.

Right underneath the new sleek look and feel welcoming users from the journal’s homepage, there are a lot of high-tech perks to benefit authors, readers, reviewers and editors alike.

Thanks to the fast-track and convenient publishing provided by ARPHA, each manuscript is carried through all stages from submission and reviewing to dissemination and archiving without ever leaving the platform’s singular collaboration-friendly online environment.

Furthermore, all publications are available in three formats (PDF, XML, HTML), complete with a whole set of semantic enhancements, so that the articles are easy to find, accessed and harvested by both humans and machines.

“We are happy to have joined forces with Lyubomir Penev and his professional team at Pensoft Publishers, once again now after having already successfully established together Zoosystematics and Evolution as an international journal of the Berlin Natural History Museum,” say editors Prof. Dr. Matthias Glaubrecht, Prof. Dr. Andreas Schmidt-Rhaesa and Dr. Martin Husemann.

“Certainly, I’m pleased to welcome Evolutionary Systematics to the family of Pensoft,” says the publisher’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev. “Combining our own solid experience in scholarly publishing with their amazing background, dating back to 19th century, will definitely benefit not only the two of us as collaborators, but all our present and future readers and users as well.”

Amongst the first papers, there is the description of the Bob Marley’s Intertidal Spider – a new arachnid species that emerged at low tide to the surprise of the research team of Drs. Barbara Baehr, Robert Raven and Danilo Harms. Once the scientists concluded it was a previously unknown species, they were quick to associate it with the reggae legend’s song “High Tide or Low Tide”.

The first issue also features the description of the Grey Wolf Spider – a common, yet enigmatic new species, which prompted the establishment of a new genus all to itself. The inaugural issue goes on to also announce as many as seven species of goblin spiders new to science . Their discovery results from a genus review involving a significant collection from the Otonga Nature Reserve, Ecuador.

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Additional information:

About Pensoft:

Pensoft is an independent academic publishing company, well-known worldwide for its innovations in the field of semantic publishing, as well as for its cutting-edge publishing tools and workflows. In 2013, Pensoft launched the first ever end to end XML-based authoring, reviewing and publishing workflow, as demonstrated by the Pensoft Writing Tool (PWT) and the Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ), now upgraded to the ARPHA Publishing Platform. Flagship titles include: Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), One Ecosystem, ZooKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal, PhytoKeys, MycoKeys, and more.

All Pensoft journals now integrated with Peerage of Science

Collaboration is a major driver of scientific advancement. Pensoft recognises this and has now integrated all of its journals with Peerage of Science — a platform with a mission to foster new levels of collaboration between scientists.

This integration between two innovative platforms, striving to modernize the publishing industry, provides authors with the possibility not only to receive fast-track high-quality peer review of their manuscripts, but also to have a choice between a pool of journals, when it comes to publication.

“Pensoft is a special partner for us, because they were the first publisher to start an official collaboration with Peerage of Science years ago, when we had just launched. Also, Pensoft is in many ways a pioneering publisher seeking to make the world a better place for scientists, with initiatives like the ARPHA writing tool and the RIO Journal,” explains Janne-Tuomas Seppänen, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Peerage of Science.

“I am particularly happy that Pensoft is continuing and expanding its support for our solutions for peer review, and brings more journals to the author’s destination menu in Peerage of Science. We warmly welcome the 10 new titles and their editors, and look forward to a long and productive partnership.” he adds.

The idea behind Peerage of Science was inspired by the real-world struggles a young scientist is bound to face in the traditional peer-review system. The average peer review process takes more than 160 days and could easily conclude with the paper being rejected.

The initiative applies an out-of-the-box approach to the problem, providing a collaborative platform, where peer review takes place before the actual submission to a journal. Thus the process is significantly shortened, while at the same time it secures high quality manuscripts at the end.

Similarly, Pensoft journals provide open access, new generation publishing to scientists with an emphasis of online dissemination, data re-use and semantic linking of contents. With its latest projects — RIO Journal and the ARPHA writing tool — the publisher has introduced a new generation of pre-submission and post publication peer review possibilities.

Additional benefit for the reviewers is that their reviews will be registered at Publons automatically by Pensoft, if the manuscript is published in a Pensoft journal. Reviewers will be asked for approval of the review registration before it appears in their Publons profiles.

“This collaboration works well both for us and for Peerage of Science, but most of all, it empowers the authors to set the deadlines for peer review and choose between publication offers. From the very inception of Pensoft we have striven to provide a fast, reliable and innovative service to our authors, and this new move is yet another building block in this vision.” comments Prof. Lyubomir Penev, Founder and Managing Director at Pensoft.

 

All Pensoft journals integrated with Publons to recognize your contribution as a reviewer

With both Pensoft and Publons aiming to facilitate scientific research and its introduction to the wide world, it only makes sense for the two to join efforts in a campaign to speed up publications, while giving the rightful credit to reviewers. From now on, anyone who makes this contribution to any of the 15 Pensoft journals will be able to opt-in to get credit for their peer reviews on Publons.

As for the moment, there are already 32 Pensoft reviewers who have added a total of 58 reviews to their Publons personal accounts and already started to receive recognition for their peer input – a kind of contribution that traditionally tends to be largely overlooked in academia. However, you can get a head start by signing-up to Publons and joining the 50,000 peer reviewers that are getting credit for their peer reviews.

Moreover, it is just as incredibly easy to add records of your Pensoft peer reviews to Publons thanks to the presently announced integration. It is while you are compiling your peer review for either Biodiversity Data Journal, BioRisk, Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift, Journal of Comparative Cytogenetics, Journal of Hymenoptera Research, MycoKeys, Nature ConservationNeoBiota, Nota Lepidopterologica, One Ecosystem, PhytoKeys, Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), Subterranean Biology, ZooKeys or Zoosystematics and Evolution journal, that you are asked whether you want to opt-in for the service. Then, once you have completed it, you are sent an email with a link to claim your review. To protect your anonymity, it is only the journal’s name and the year of the review that will be visible on your Publons profile.

The only exception to this rule is Pensoft’s next generation Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) journal, where the policy of ultimate transparency and openness requires all peer reviews and their authors to be made public. It is also the only Pensoft journal whose article titles will be available on a Publons profile by default. Another distinctive feature of RIO’s – an assigned DOI for each peer review, is also supported in Publons to ensure reviewers get the most out of their contribution.

“Pensoft has a strong history of innovation and we’re excited to be working together to reward the efforts of peer reviewers,” comments the new partnership Publons co-founder Andrew Preston. “It’s also great to see that many Pensoft editors are already Publons users.”

“Crediting reviewers’ voluntary contributions to the quality of scientific publications has always been a problem, especially with the current tremendous increase in the volume of published research outputs. We are happy that Publons has found such a solution and that we can credit our reviewers through recording their activity in an entirely automated way,” added founder and CEO of Pensoft Prof. Lyubomir Penev.