Pensoft is among the first signatories dedicated to fully leveraging biodiversity knowledge from research publications within an open science framework by 2035
Some of the world’s leading institutions, experts and scientific infrastructures relating to biodiversity information are uniting around a new 10-year roadmap to ‘liberate’ data presently trapped in research publications.
The initiative aims to enable the creation of a ‘Libroscope’ – a mechanism for unlocking and linking data from scientific literature to support understanding of biodiversity, as the microscope and telescope previously revolutionized science. The plan largely builds on existing technology and workflows, and does not rely on construction of a new technical infrastructure.
The proposals result from a symposium involving 51 experts from 10 countries held in August 2024 at the 7th-century monastery at Disentis in the Swiss Alps, supported financially by the Arcadia Fund. The symposium was a 10-year follow-up to the 2014 meeting at Meise Botanic Garden in Belgium, which led to the Bouchout Declaration on open biodiversity knowledge management. The Disentis meeting evaluated progress since then, and identified priorities for the decade ahead.
Group photo from the Disentis meeting (Switzerland, August 2024).
While acknowledging major advances in the sharing and use of open biodiversity data, the participants noted that accessing data within research publications is often very cumbersome, with databases disconnected from each other and from the source literature. Liberating and linking data from such publications – estimated to encompass more than 500 million total pages – would represent a compelling mission for the next decade.
A roadmap for staged action over the next decade was agreed by the symposium participants, with the following vision: “By 2035, the power of biodiversity knowledge from research publications will be fully leveraged within an open science framework, including unencumbered data discovery, access, and re-use across scientific disciplines and policy applications.”
The ‘Disentis Roadmap’, further developed following the symposium, and now released publicly, has already been signed by 26 institutions and a further 46 individual experts on five continents – among them major natural history collections such as Meise Botanic Garden, Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; infrastructures such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), Catalogue of Life, LifeWatch ERIC and the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB); journal publishers such as Pensoft Publishers and the European Journal of Taxonomy; research institutions such as Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research; and networks such as TDWG Biodiversity Information Standards and Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF). See the full list of signatories here.
The roadmap remains open for further signatures, ahead of the launch of an action plan at the Living Data conference in Bogotá, Colombia in October 2025. The original signatories hope that a much broader group of institutions and individuals, across global regions and disciplines, will join the initiative and help to shape implementation of its vision. Engagement of funders will also be critical to realize its objectives.
The specific goals of the roadmap are that by 2035:
All major public biodiversity research funders and academic publishers will encourage and enable publication of data adhering to the FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable);
Biodiversity-focussed publications will be accessible in machine-actionable formats, with all non-copyrightable parts of articles flowing into public data repositories;
Published research on biodiversity will be ‘fully AI-ready’, that is openly available for AI training and properly labelled for ingestion by machine-learning modelled, within appropriate ethical and legal frameworks;
Dedicated funding from research and infrastructure grants will be reserved for ensuring access to biodiversity data and knowledge.
“We finally have a chance to make a quantum leap in understanding and monitoring biodiversity, by leveraging the power of digital technologies, and combining modern genomic methods with the vast amount of research data published daily and currently stuck in the publication prison. The ‘Libroscope’ will help to explore the universe of existing knowledge, accumulated over hundreds of years, and bring it to the forefront of developments in the digital age, helping nature and people across the globe.”
commented Donat Agosti of the Swiss organization Plazi, who convened the Disentis symposium.
A recent demonstration of the principles of the ‘Libroscope’ was the launch of data portals for the European Journal of Taxonomy (EJT) and the Biodiversity Data Journal, as part of the GBIF hosted portal programme. The new portals showcase the data contained within taxonomic literature published by the journals, making use of the workflow originally developed by Plazi and partners to extract re-usable data from articles traditionally locked in static PDF files. Once created, these data objects then flow into platforms such as GBIF, Catalogue of Life, ChecklistBank and the BiodiversityPMC, and are stored in the Biodiversity Literature Repository at Zenodo hosted by CERN. This process enables data on new species and the location of related specimens cited in the literature to be openly accessible in near-real time, and available for long-term access.
The newly launched Biodiversity Data Journal data portal is part of the GBIF-hosted portal programme. It showcase the data contained within taxonomic literature published by the journal.
“As a publisher of dozens of renowned academic journals in the field of biodiversity and systematics with experience in technology development, at Pensoft, we have always recognised the key role of academic publishers in scholarly communication. It’s not only about publishing the latest research. Above all, it’s about putting scientific work in the hands of those who need it: be it future researchers, policy-makers or their AI-powered assistants. Now that the Disentis roadmap is already a fact, we hope that many others will also join us on this ambitious journey to open up the knowledge we have today for those who will need it tomorrow.”
said Prof. Dr. Lyubomir Penev, founder and CEO at Pensoft, who attended the Disentis symposium.
“By repositioning scientific publications as an essential part of the research cycle, the Disentis Roadmap encourages publishers and the scientific community to move beyond open access towards FAIR access. Proactively ensuring data quality and dissemination is the core mission of the European Journal of Taxonomy. In this way, EJT enhances the immediate discoverability and usability of the taxonomic information it publishes, making it more valuable to the scientific community as a whole. Adherence to the Disentis vision marks a crucial step in the liberation and enrichment of knowledge about biodiversity.”
said Laurence Bénichou, founder and liaison officer of the European Journal of Taxonomy.
The Chief Executive Officer of Meise Botanic Garden, Steven Dessein, who attended the Disentis Symposium, commented:
“Meise Botanic Garden fully supports the Disentis Roadmap, which builds on the foundation laid by the Bouchout Declaration. Open biodiversity data is essential to tackling today’s pressing environmental challenges, from biodiversity loss to climate change. By ensuring research publications become more accessible and interconnected, this roadmap represents a critical step toward harnessing biodiversity knowledge for science, policy, and conservation.”
Christophe Déssimoz, Executive Director of the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, another signatory of the Disentis Roadmap, added:
“We have long championed the principles of open, structured, and interoperable data to advance life sciences. The Disentis Roadmap applies these same principles to biodiversity knowledge, ensuring that critical data is not just available, but truly actionable for research, policy, and conservation.”
The director of the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum of Berlin, Thomas Borsch, noted that more than any other branch of science, taxonomic research depended on the machine-actionable availability of biodiversity data from the literature:
“The ‘Libroscope’ postulated in the Disentis Roadmap will enable a new generation of research workflows through its interoperable approach,” said Professor Borsch. “This will be very helpful to address pressing issues in biodiversity research and in particular to improve the use of quality information on organisms in national and global assessments.”
The chief scientist of the national museum of natural history in Paris (MNHN) said:
“We, like all similar museums and taxonomic institutions, are focussed on linking taxonomic and collection data with digital reproductions and molecular information to create the ‘extended digital specimen.’ However, the potential of taxonomic publications and text mining should not be underestimated either. On the contrary, it is a smart and accessible way to dig into scientific publications so as to retrieve, link and consolidate, research data of great relevance to many disciplines. This is why our institution fully supports the Disentis initiative.”
Christos Arvanitidis, CEO of the Biodiversity and Ecosystem e-Science Infrastructure LifeWatch ERIC, commented:
“LifeWatch ERIC is proud to be part of this initiative, as providing access and support to biodiversity and ecosystem data is fully aligned with our mission. The Disentis Roadmap opens up new opportunities for our research infrastructure to help make what science has provided us accessible and usable, and to improve the FAIRness of data for research and science-based policy.”
Tim Robertson, deputy director and head of informatics at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), who also attended the Disentis meeting added:
“We’re excited to see the results from Disentis partners like Plazi, BHL, Pensoft and the European Journal of Taxonomy who are focussed on liberating data connected with scientific publications,” said . “GBIF will continue to do our part to improve the standards, tools and services that help expand both the benefits and the impact of FAIR and open data on biodiversity science and policy.”
Olaf Bánki, Executive Director of the Catalogue of Life, commented:
“We call out to the scientific community, especially the younger generation, to join our effort in unlocking biodiversity data from literature. Actionable biodiversity and taxonomic data from digitized literature contributes to creating an index of all described organisms of all life on earth. We need such data to tackle and understand the current biodiversity crisis.”
The new Horizon project is to assist the transition of agriculture to a positive force for biodiversity, crop pollination services, ecosystems and people. Pensoft will lead the communication, dissemination, exploitation and synergies with other projects.
Threats to pollinators and pollination services that support agriculture and provide benefits to people are a worldwide problem, recognized by intergovernmental scientific assessments, national or transnational initiatives as well as policies.
Intensive agriculture is among the principal threats to pollinator biodiversity and the crop pollination services that pollinators provide. Moreover, typically crop breeding has tended to overlook the benefits of pollination for sustained crop yields in favour of other crop traits.
Coordinated by Dr. Adam Vanbergen (INRAE) and funded by Horizon Europe, the AGRI4POL project takes an ambitious and achievable interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to achieve a transition towards sustainable pollinator-friendly farming.
The project aims to deliver an integrated state-of-the-art analysis of the crop – farming system – pollinator interplay across levels of biological organisation from the crop gene to the agroecosystem.
AGRI4POL launched in January 2025 and will be running until the end of 2028.
To achieve its goals, AGRI4POL project has outlined six objectives:
Establish and work with a multi-actor community to drive the transition towards more pollinator friendly farming systems and value chains.
Evaluate genetic diversity of crop floral traits governing pollinator interactionsto stimulate breeding of pollinator-smart varieties.
Find out how pollinator-crop relationships are modified by intra- and interspecific crop diversification in space and time.
Optimise ecological infrastructures (EI = landscape features, non-crop habitats) for crop pollination, pollinator biodiversity and multiple ecosystem benefits.
Assess the social, economic and environmental opportunities and obstacles presented by pollinator friendly farming options to understand their feasibility and acceptability.
Evaluate the influence of the policy landscape and the practitioner awareness of the benefits and challenges of pollinator-friendly farming at [sub]national, European and international scales.
AGRI4POL’s coordinator Dr. Adam Vanbergen (INRAE) gave an introductory presentation during the project kick-off meeting in Brussels (February 2025, Belgium).
Pensoft’s role
Building on its experience in communication, dissemination, and exploitation of results, Pensoft will focus on maximizing the project’s impact and long-term legacy. This encompasses a wide array of activities, ranging all the way from building a project’s visual identity and online presence and creating a podcast to translating results into policy recommendations. Moreover, Pensoft will be facilitating collaboration opportunities with other projects, leveraging on its involvement in numerous EU-funded projects. As of now, Pensoft takes part in six EU Pollinator projects, which serves well to facilitate synergies.
International consortium
The AGRI4POL consortium comprises partners from fourteen European institutions along with five associated partners, including China. Consortium covers a wide diverse range of scientific disciplines spanning from pollinator ecology and agriculture to stakeholder engagement and communications.
Boris Barov, Project Manager at Pensoft, talked about open-science publishing and science communication as a stepping stone towards the fulfilment of biodiversity targets.
This participation came about as a result of the collaboration within a network of European organisations from the domains of biodiversity, ecology and engineering.
The organisations at the core of the network held a workshop on the combined role of science and technology in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). More precisely, the Kunmig-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM GBF) was selected as a testbed, whose stipulations can guide innovation across sectors and disciplines on the road to the realisation of specific SDGs.
The day-long programme featured 30 presentations that covered a variety of themes related to research priorities and technological instruments servicing the KM GBF. Experts and stakeholders at the political, academic and professional level were involved in the proceedings, solidifying the network’s status as a hub for innovators in biodiversity conservation efforts.
Among the speakers was Boris Barov, Project Manager at Pensoft, who introduced the audience to the importance of open-science publishing and science communication as a stepping stone towards the fulfilment of biodiversity targets.
Barov elaborated on the key tenets and approaches ensuring that publishers like Pensoft are actively contributing to the preservation of the biosphere on a global level.
Those include:
disseminating conservation-centric research that uncovers findings and innovations critical to the effective implementation of the KM-GBF
supporting open access and knowledge sharing that guarantee the free availability of research outputs to any and all parties that need it
fostering an interface between science and policy that allows vital expertise to reach and inform decision-makers
championing inclusivity and equality that give indigenous communities a seat at the table
Additionally, Barov singled out Pensoft’s participation in the EU-funded research projects CO-OP4CBD, BioAgora and TRANSPATH as a testament to effective science communication that empowers stakeholder collaboration and engagement at the science-policy interface.
It is the intention of the network of organisations to collect the stakeholder input submitted during the event in a future whitepaper designed to outline its approach to facilitating biodiversity governance through research and technology.
Moreover, this is meant to be followed by an open call rallying international support for the integration of biodiversity conservation priorities into the post-SDG agenda of the UN.
Read more about the Horizon Europe-funded CO-OP4CBD & BioAgora projects and Pensoft’s involvement on our blog. You can also follow updates from CO-OP4CBD on BluesSky, X and Linkedin. BioAgora is also on X and Linkedin.
In 2023, Pensoft also joined TRANSPATH as an expert in science communication, dissemination and exploitation. Find more on our blog and follow the Horizon Europe project on X and Linkedin.
Pensoft joins the newly funded Biodiversa+ project ANTENNA focused on making technology work for monitoring pollinators and is tasked with the communication, dissemination and exploitation activities.
The overarching goal of ANTENNA is to fill key monitoring gaps through advancing innovative technologies that will underpin and complement EU-wide pollinator monitoring schemes, and to provide tested transnational pipelines from monitoring activities to curated datasets and enhanced indicators that support pollinator-relevant policyand end-users.
The ANTENNA project answers the BiodivMon call, which was launched in September 2022 by Biodiversa+ in collaboration with the European Commission. The BiodivMon call sought proposals for three-year research projects to improve transnational monitoring of biodiversity and ecosystem change, emphasising innovation and harmonisation of biodiversity datacollection and management methodologies, addressing knowledge gaps on biodiversity status and trends to combat biodiversity loss, and the effective use of existing biodiversity monitoring data.
Supporting the work of Work Package #5: “Project coordination, and communication”, Pensoft is dedicated to maximising the project’s impact by employing a mix of channels to inform stakeholders about the results from ANTENNA and raise public awareness about pollinators.
Pensoft is also tasked with creating and maintaining a clear and recognisable project brand, promotional materials, website, social network profiles, internal communication platform, and online libraries. Another key responsibility is the development, implementation and regular updates of the project’s communication, dissemination and exploitation plans, that ANTENNA is set to follow for the next four years.
On 14-15 March 2024, ANTENNA held its official kick off meeting. Project partners came together in Halle, Germany for two days to outline objectives, discuss strategies, and set the groundwork for this venture.
Specifically, the combined expertise of the consortium will address the following objectives:
Advanceautomated sample sorting and image recognition tools from individual prototypesto systems that can be adopted by practitioners
Expand pollinator monitoring to under-researched pollinator taxa, ecosystems, and pressures
Quantify the added value of novel monitoring systems in comparison and combination with ‘traditional’ methods in terms of cost effectiveness
Provide a framework for integrative monitoring by combining multiple data streams and. The framework will also support the development of near real-time forecasting models as bases for early warning systems;
Upscale local demonstrations into the implementation of large-scale transnational pipelines and provide context-specific guidance to the use of policy-makers and other users who might need to select monitoring methods and indicators.
*Pensoft Publishers is a subcontractor tasked by the UFZ with multiple communication, dissemination and exploitation activities as part of Work Package 5.
At SpongeBoost, Pensoft is to take charge of the project’s identity, while building a strong network, and providing comprehensive knowledge and well-packaged information.
In recent years, Europe’s landscapes have become the victims of extreme events – ranging from floods to droughts – that have caused considerable damage to nature as well as human society.
With the aim to tackle such severe circumstances, the newly-started Horizon Europe-funded project SpongeBoost will be working towards protecting and promoting natural sponge landscapes.
Within SpongeBoost, the functional capacity of sponge landscapes is to be enhanced through building upon existing solutions and their large-scale implementation, but also through innovative approaches.
Pensoft is among the partnering institutions within SpongeBoost and serves as the leader of Work Package #5: “Communication, dissemination, exploitation, showcasing best practices and networking”. WP5 will aim to contribute to the project’s mission by building the overall project identity, building a strong network, and providing comprehensive knowledge and well-packaged information to targeted stakeholders.
The project
Funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme with a budget of EUR ~3 million, the project is coordinated by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and will be developed with the active participation of 10 partnering institutions from seven countries across Europe. Having been officially launched in January 2024, SpongeBoost is to wrap up in December 2027.
The project is part of the EU mission “Adaptation to Climate Change”, whose task is tosupport EU regions, cities and local authorities in their efforts to build resilience against the impacts of climate change.
“The protection and revitalisation of wetlands, particularly through peatland rewetting and river floodplain restoration, plays a central role in this,“
says project manager Mathias Scholz from the UFZ.
SpongeBoost held its official kick-off meeting in late February (2024) in Leipzig, Germany.
To officially kickstart the project, the first consortium meeting took place on 21-23 February in Leipzig, Germany. The kick-off meeting saw all 10 partnering institutions meet in person to officially lay the foundation of a promising collaboration that will flourish over the next four years.
The joint mission before the newly formed consortium is to enhance the natural sponge function of wetlands and soils in Europe, aligning with EU policies for climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction and biodiversity. To achieve that, the project plans to employ both bottom-up and top-down approaches, which will foster networking and synergy at the regional and EU level.
SpongeBoost will focus on five main objectives over the next four years:
Conduct a comprehensive literature review to create a standard reference catalogue for securing and enhancing sponge functions in adaptation to climate change. This catalogue will integrate social, economic, technical, and ecological effects and serve as a widely used resource across Europe and beyond.
Build a knowledge base on existing approaches for enhancing sponge functions, and highlight the reasons for success or failure. The goal is to enable regions and communities to replicate effective transformative solutions. Meanwhile, the consortium is to facilitate networking initiatives with other projects and identify suitable pilot sites for monitoring long-term success using the results of previous projects.
Work on the implementation, tests, refinement, and adjustment of best practices and innovative solutions through EU-wide case studies. The goal is to enhance climate resilience to extreme events and enable upscaling from local to EU levels.
Develop a roadmap with practical tools to empower stakeholders, drive transformative change, and integrate sponge solutions into regional, national and European climate adaptation processes to achieve EU Green Deal targets.
Connect communities and compile online resources for climate change adaptation. The goal is to facilitate access and combine a library of tools for restoration and share research findings on soil, water, and groundwater interconnection for replication across Europe.
In addition to leading the “Communication, dissemination, exploitation, showcasing best practices and networking” work package at SpongeBoost, Pensoft is to also assist the Environmental Action Germany (DUH) in the implementation of different innovative communications methods and ideas meant to support the project’s goals.
As part of the creative communication strategy, DUH will take the lead in the development of a “SpongeBooster superhero” character. By creating such a character that will be also featured in comics, the team will translate complex concepts into clear visuals and engaging narratives, thereby shaping the project’s visual identity and letting non-experts join the discourse. The Sponge Booster is to serve as an innovative method to disseminate project knowledge and address barriers with humour while fostering dialogue and avoiding potential conflicts.
International Consortium
The SpongeBoost project brings together a team of 10 partners from seven European countries, spanning research, policy, and management fields. The consortium members, who individually represent various restoration projects, will join forces and expertise to promote collaboration, knowledge exchange and synergies across European regions, to ultimately instil a lasting positive impact on sponge restoration for climate change adaptation.
Stay tuned for more project information on the SpongeBoost website coming soon at: www.spongeboost.eu/. In the meantime, you can follow SpongeBoost on social media on X and Linkedin.
Measuring the extent and dynamics of the global biodiversity crisis is a challenging task that demands rapid, reliable and repeatable biodiversity monitoring data. Such data is essential for policymakers to be able to assess policy options effectively and accurately. To achieve this, however, there is a need to enhance the integration of biodiversity data from various sources, including citizen scientists, museums, herbaria, and researchers.
B-Cubed’s response
B-Cubed (Biodiversity Building Blocks for policy) hopes to tackle this challenge by reimagining the process of biodiversity monitoring, making it more adaptable and responsive.
B-Cubed’s approach rests on six pillars:
Improved alignment between policy and biodiversity data. Working closely with existing biodiversity initiatives to identify and meet policy needs.
Evidence base. Leveraging data cubes to standardise access to biodiversity data using the Essential Biodiversity Variables framework. These cubes are the basis for models and indicators of biodiversity.
Cloud computing environment. Providing users with access to the models in real-time and on demand.
Automated workflows. Developing exemplary automated workflows for modelling using biodiversity data cubes and for calculating change indicators.
Case studies. Demonstrating the effectiveness of B-Cubed’s tools.
Capacity building. Ensuring that the solutions meet openness standards and training end-users to employ them.
Pensoft’s role
Harnessing its experience in the communication, dissemination and exploitation of numerous EU projects, Pensoft focuses on maximising B-Cubed’s impact and ensuring the adoption and long-term legacy of its results. This encompasses a wide array of activities, ranging all the way from building the project’s visual and online presence to translating its results into policy recommendations. Pensoft also oversees B-Cubed’s data management by developing a Data Management Plan which ensures the implementation of the FAIR data principles and maximises the access to and re-use of the project’s research outputs.
We look back on this incredible journey with pride and appreciation for the countless researchers, authors, reviewers, and supporters who have helped make this dream a reality.
Today, we are thrilled to share with you the celebration of a remarkable milestone in our journey. In July, we marked our 15th birthday – a decade and a half of fostering the free exchange of ideas, data, and knowledge in the vast realm of zoology.
We look back on this incredible journey with pride and appreciation for the countless researchers, authors, reviewers, and supporters who have helped make this dream a reality. From the very inception, our goal has been to create a platform where zoological discoveries can shine brightly, accessible to all who share a passion for the wonders of the animal kingdom.
ZooKeys was born out of our collective desire to push the boundaries of scientific publishing, to embrace innovation, and to provide a space where the brightest minds in zoology could come together. Over the years, we have not only achieved this but, thanks to our publisher Pensoft, have also become pioneers in implementing cutting-edge technologies to enhance the way knowledge is shared and absorbed.
ZooKeys was the first of Pensoft’s open-access journals, set up to accelerate research and free information exchange in taxonomy, phylogeny, biogeography and evolution of animals. Starting as a taxonomic journal, it quickly expanded to other zoology-related sciences, such as ecology, molecular biology, genomics, evolutionary biology, palaeontology, behavioural science, bioinformatics etc… The journal has been thriving since its inception and is currently considered as one of the most prolific and liked Open Access journals in zoology.
Erwin T, Stoev P, Penev L (2018) ZooKeys anniversary: 10 years of leadership toward open-access publishing of zoological data and establishment at Pensoft of like-minded sister journals across the biodiversity spectrum. ZooKeys 770: 1-8. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.770.28105
One of our proudest achievements was being the first taxonomic journal to introduce semantic tagging and content enhancements, revolutionizing the way information is presented and accessed. This endeavor, which began with our 50th issue in 2010, marked a turning point in scholarly publishing.
The cover of the first issue of ZooKeys.
As of today, we’ve published more than 180,000 pages of research in almost 7,000 articles that have amassed more than 3 million views. Here is a Top 5 of our most popular articles ever:
Helgen K, Pinto M, Kays R, Helgen L, Tsuchiya M, Quinn A, Wilson D, Maldonado J (2013) Taxonomic revision of the olingos (Bassaricyon), with description of a new species, the Olinguito. ZooKeys 324: 1-83. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.324.5827, with 80,500 views,
Bousquet Y (2016) Litteratura Coleopterologica (1758–1900): a guide to selected books related to the taxonomy of Coleoptera with publication dates and notes. ZooKeys 583: 1-776. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.583.7084 with 69,543 views,
Ledford J, Griswold C, Audisio T (2012) An extraordinary new family of spiders from caves in the Pacific Northwest (Araneae, Trogloraptoridae, new family). ZooKeys 215: 77-102. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.215.3547 with 65,446 views,
Formal paper on Trogloraptor marchingtoni, OR new sickle-legged spider, available online. Sadly pics loading way slow. http://t.co/GGFjVHPW
Ibrahim N, Sereno PC, Varricchio DJ, Martill DM, Dutheil DB, Unwin DM, Baidder L, Larsson HCE, Zouhri S, Kaoukaya A (2020) Geology and paleontology of the Upper Cretaceous Kem Kem Group of eastern Morocco. ZooKeys 928: 1-216. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.928.47517 with 64,456 views,
— Marcos K. Pinheiro / "Marcos Wyvern" (Marcosaurus) (@MMarcosaurus) April 22, 2020
Bouchard P, Bousquet Y, Davies A, Alonso-Zarazaga M, Lawrence J, Lyal C, Newton A, Reid C, Schmitt M, Slipinski A, Smith A (2011) Family-Group Names In Coleoptera (Insecta). ZooKeys 88: 1-972. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.88.807 with 63,524 views.
Our journey would have been incomplete without you – our avid readers and supporters. Your hunger for knowledge, your curiosity, and your unwavering support have been the wind beneath our wings, motivating us to do better, and reinforcing the importance of what we do. As we celebrate our 15th birthday, we extend our deepest gratitude to each one of you who has been a part of our history.
Part of an illustration by Nancy Halliday from the most popular ZooKeys paper to date.
Looking ahead, the future of ZooKeys looks as bright as ever. We are committed to continuing our legacy of innovation, collaboration, and accessibility. Our goal remains steadfast – to be a beacon of knowledge, a platform that fosters discoveries, and a source of inspiration for the next generation of zoological minds.
As we celebrate our 15th anniversary, we are filled with a sense of awe and wonder at the remarkable achievements we have collectively made. Thank you for being a part of this incredible journey. Here’s to the next 15 years and beyond, as we continue to explore, discover, and celebrate the extraordinary diversity of life on Earth.
In our opinion, it is of utmost importance to promptly address the existing issues in the publishing system, where healthy competition can thrive and contribute to a reality safe from potential mono-/oligopolies and corporate capture.
We firmly believe that only an industry that leaves room for variously-scaled pioneers and startups is capable of leading a long-awaited shift to a high-quality, transparent, open and equitable scholarly publishing landscape aligning with the principles of FAIRness.
Yet, we shall acknowledge that the industry has so far failed to eradicate the most fundamental flaw of the past. In the beginning, the main aim of the Open Access (OA) movement was removing the barrier to access to publicly funded scientific knowledge and scrapping costly subscription fees.
Recently, however, the industry’s biggest players merely replaced it with a barrier to publication by introducing costly Article Processing Charges (APCs) and “big deals” signed between top commercial publishers and academic institutions or national library consortia.
As a result, small and middle-sized open-access publishers, which have, ironically, been the ones to lead the change and transition to OA by default and oppose the large commercial publishers’ agenda, were effectively pushed out of the scene. Further, we are currently witnessing a situation where OA funds are mostly going to the ones who used to oppose OA.
So, we strongly supportmeasures that ensure an inclusive and FAIR competition, which could in turn prompt quality, sustainability and reasonable pricing in scholarly publishing. In our opinion, an environment like this would actually foster equality and equity amongst all publishers, either small, large,non-profit, commercial, institutionalor society-based.
One of the main points of the conclusions is a recommendation for a general use of the Diamond OA model, where no charges apply to either researchers or readers. While we fully support the Diamond OA model, we wish to stress on the fact that considerable concerns about the sustainability of existing Diamond OA models remain.
On the one hand, there are OA agreements (also known as read-and-publish, publish-and-read, transformative agreements etc.), typically signed between top publishers and top research institutions/consortia. This OA model is often mistakenly referred to as “Diamond OA”, since authors affiliated with those institutions are not concerned with providing the APC payment – either by paying themselves or applying for funding. Instead, the APCs are paid centrally. Most often, however, journals published by those publishers are still directly charging authors who are not members of the signed institutions with, in our opinion, excessive APCs. Even if those APCs are covered by a signed institution, these are still considerable funds that are being navigated away from actual research work.
On the other hand, there are independent researchers, in addition to smaller or underfunded institutions, typically – yet far from exclusively – located in the developing world, who are effectively being discriminated against.
In conclusion, this type of contracts are shutting away smaller actors from across academia just like they used to be under the subscription-based model. Hereby, we wish to express our full agreement with the Council of the European Union’s conclusion, that “it is essential to avoid situations where researchers are limited in their choice of publication channels due to financial capacities rather than quality criteria”.
There are also several alternative OA models designed to lessen the burden of publication costs for both individual researchers, libraries and journal owners. However, each comes with its own drawbacks. Here – we believe – is where the freedom of choice is perhaps most needed, in order to keep researchers’ and publishers’ best interests at heart.
One of those alternatives is open-source publishing platforms, which – by design – are well-positioned to deliver actual Diamond OA for journals, while maintaining independence from commercial publishers. However, the operational model of this type of publishing and hosting platforms would most often only provide a basic infrastructure for editors to publish and preserve content. As a result, the model might require extra staff and know-how, while remaining prone to human errors. Additionally, a basic technological infrastructure could impede the FAIRness of the published output, which demands advanced and automated workflows to appropriately format, tag semantically and export scientific outputs promptly after publication.
Similarly, large funders and national consortia have put their own admirable efforts to step up and provide another option for authors of research and their institutions. Here, available funds are allocated to in-house Diamond OA publishing platforms that have originally been designed according to the policies and requirements of the respective funding programme or state. However, this type of support – while covering a large group of authors (e.g. based in a certain country, funded under a particular programme, and/or working in a specific research field) – still leaves many behind, including multinational or transdisciplinary teams. Additionally, due to the focus on ‘mass supply’, most of these OA publishing platforms have so far been unable to match their target user base with the appropriate scale of services and support.
What we have devised and developed at Pensoft with the aim to contribute to the pool of available choices is an OA publishing model, whose aim is to balance cost affordability, functionality, reliability, transparency and long-term sustainability.
To do so, we work with journal owners, institutions and societies to create their own business and operational model for their journals that matches two key demands of the community: (1) free to read and free to publish OA model, and, (2) services and infrastructure suited for Diamond OA at a much lower cost, compared to those offered by major commercial publishers.
In our opinion, independent small publishers differentiate from both large commercial publishers and publicly funded providers by relying to a greater extent on innovative technology and close employee collaboration.
As a result, they are capable of delivering significantly more customisable solutions – including complete packages of automated and human-provided services – and, ultimately, achieving considerably lower-cost publishing solutions. Likewise, they might be better suited to provide much more flexible business models, so that libraries and journal owners can easily support (subsets of or all) authors to the best of their capabilities.
While we realise that there is no faultless way to high-quality, transparent, open and equitable scholarly publishing, we are firm supporters of an environment, where healthy competition prompts the continuous invention and evolution of tools and workflows.
Our own motivation to invest in scholarly publishing technology and its continuous refinement and advancement, coupled with a number of in-house and manually provided services, which is reflected in our APC policies, aligns with the Council’s statement that “scientific practices for ensuring reproducibility, transparency, sharing, rigour and collaboration are important means of achieving a publishing system responsive to the challenges of democratic, modern and digitalised societies.”
Our thinking is that – much like in any other industry – what drives innovation and revolutionary technologies is competition. To remain healthy and even self-policing, however, this competition needs to embrace transparency, equity and inclusivity.
Last, but not least, researchers need to have the freedom to choose from plenty of options when deciding where and how to publish their work!
Readers at some of the journals published by Pensoft, who have downloaded/printed a publication or ordered a physical copy of a journal issue over the last few weeks, might be in for a surprise concerning the layout of the PDF format of the articles.
Research papers published in ZooKeys demonstrating the former (left) and the current (right) article layout seen in the PDF format.
Even though it’s been years since online publishing has become the norm in how we are consuming information – including scientific publications – we understand that academia is still very much fond of traditional, often paper-based, article layout format: the one you use when accessing a PDF file or a print copy, rather than directly scrolling down through the HTML version of the article.
Even if today large orders of printed volumes from overseas are the exception, rather than the rule, we know we have readers of ours who regularly print manuscripts at home or savе them on their devices. Trends like this have already led to many journals first abandoning the physical- for digital-first, then transitioning to digital-only publication format.
Meanwhile, it is true that needs and demands have fundamentally changed in recent times.
As we speak, readers are accessing PDF files from much higher-quality desktops, in order to skim through as much content as possible.
In the meantime, authors are relying on greater-quality cameras to document their discoveries, while using advanced computational tools capable of generating and analysing extra layers of precise data. While producing more exhaustive research, however, it is also of key importance that their manuscripts are processed and published as rapidly as possible.
So, let’s run through the updates and give you our reasoning for their added value to readers and authors.
Revised opening page
One of the major changes is the one to the format of the first page. By leaving some blank space on the left, we found a dedicated place for important article metadata, i.e. academic editor, date of manuscript submission / acceptance / publication, citation details and licence. As a result, we “cleaned up” the upper part of the page, so that it can better highlight the authors and their affiliations.
Bottom line: The new layout provides a better structure to the opening page to let readers find key article metadata at a glance.
Expand as much – or as little – as comfortable
As you might know, journals published by Pensoft have been coming in different formats and sizes. Now, we have introduced the standard A4 page size, where the text is laid in a single column that has been slightly indented to the right, as seen above. Whenever a figure or a table is used in a manuscript, however, it is expanded onto the whole width of the page.
Before giving our reasons why, let’s see what were the specific problems that we address.
Case study 1
Some of our signature journals, including ZooKeys, PhytoKeys and MycoKeys, have become quite recognisable with their smaller-than-average B5 format, widely appreciated by people who would often be seen carrying around a copy during a conference or an international flight.
However, in recent times, authors began to embrace good practices in research like open sharing of data and code, which resulted in larger and more complex tables. Similarly, their pocket-sized cameras would capture much higher-resolution photos capable of revealing otherwise minute morphological characters. Smaller page size would also mean that often there would be pages between an in-text reference of a figure or a table and the visual itself.
So, here we faced an obvious question: shall we deprive their readers from all those detailed insights into the published studies?
Yet, the A4 format brought up another issue: the lines were too long for the eye comfort of their readers.
What they did was organise their pages into two-column format. While this sounds like a good and quite obvious decision, the format – best known from print newspapers – is pretty inconvenient when accessed digitally. Since the readers would like to zoom in on the PDF page or simply access the article on mobile, they will need to scroll up and down several times per page.
In addition, the production of a two-column text is technologically more challenging, which results in extra production time.
Bottom line: The new layout allows journals to not sacrifice image quality for text readability and vice versa. As a bonus, authors enjoy faster publication for their papers.
Simplified font
If you have a closer look at the PDF file, you would notice that print-ready papers have also switched to a more simplistic – yet easier to the eye – font. Again, the update corresponds to today’s digital-native user behaviour, where readers often access PDF files from devices of various resolutions and skim through the text, as opposed to studying its content in detail.
In fact, the change is hardly new, since the same font has long been utilised for the webpages (HTML format) of the publications across all journals.
Bottom line: The slightly rounder and simplified font prompts readability, thereby allowing for faster and increased consumption of content.
What’s the catch? How about characters and APCs?
While we have been receiving a lot of positive feedback from editors, authors and readers, there has been a concern that the updates would increase the publication charges, wherever these are estimated based on page numbers.
Having calculated the lines and characters in the new layout format, we would like to assure you that there is no increase in the numbers of characters or words between the former and current layout formats. In fact, due to the additional number of lines fitting in an A4 page as opposed to B5, authors might be even up for a deal.
________
* At the time of the writing, the new paper layout has not been rolled out at all journals published by Pensoft. However, most of the editorial boards have already confirmed they would like to incorporate the update.
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As an expert in science communication, dissemination and exploitation, Pensoft joins TRANSPATH for transformative changes at consumer, producer and organisational levels.
As an expert in science communication, dissemination and exploitation, Pensoft joins the Horizon-funded project TRANSPATH to identify leverage points and interventions for triggering transformative changes at consumer, producer and organisational levels.
Why TRANSPATH?
The magnitude of biodiversity loss and climate crisis has grown exponentially in recent years, which will inevitably lead to serious consequences at a global scale. Although reversing the degradation of ecosystems and reducing greenhouse gas emissions are top priorities for the European Union, science and policy communities are united in the belief that conventional policies alone are not enough to halt biodiversity loss or mitigate climate change.
In order to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, whilst simultaneously reshaping people’s relations with nature, we need transformative changes in our economies and societies urgently.
How?
TRANSPATH (short for TRANSformative PATHways for synergising just biodiversity and climate actions) – a new European Union-funded project, plans to satisfy this need by accelerating diverse transformative pathways towards biodiversity-positive and climate-proofed societies, with sensitivity to social-cultural contexts and rights.
TRANSPATH will identify leverage points and interventions for triggering transformative changes at consumer, producer and organisational levels. A research team, consisting of leading academics, science-policy experts, and early-career professionals, will directly engage with diverse stakeholders, who affect and are affected by trade regimes and associated ‘greening’ mechanisms.
As a leader of WP5: Dissemination, outreach and catalysing transformative pathways, Pensoft is responsible for providinga dissemination and communication strategy, as well as taking care of the project branding and website. In addition, the Pensoft team is to organise joint activities with other projects or initiatives on transformative change and related topics.
What?
Funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, TRANSPATH was launched on 1st November 2022 and will be running until October 2026. The official kick-off of the project took place online and was followed by an in-person kick-off meeting of all consortium members on the 2nd and 3rd February 2023 in Wageningen, the Netherlands.
For the next four years TRANSPATH will be focussing on the design and integrated assessment of a suite of transformative pathways that hold potential to accelerate shifts in unsustainable patterns of extraction, production, consumption and trade. The project’s mission will be achieved by four objectives:
Set up a Policy Board and Science-policy-practitioner Labs at multiple scales to engage and jointly deliberate on implications of diverse visions and pathways of change.
Identify and characterise leverage points for diverse contexts that lead to positive synergies between biodiversity, climate and trade domains.
Integrate and customise European and global pathways by considering coupled biodiversity-climate actions and critical leverage points.
Identify and test alternative interventions at global and European scales that can trigger transformative change at the level of consumers, producers and organisations.
TRANSPATH will bring together and advance several strands of recent research, which hold potential for triggering and accelerating transformative changes that can restrain biodiversity loss and climate change.
The project will draw on diverse contexts in Eastern and Western Europe, Africa and Latin America, to engage with policy makers and practitioners, individuals, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and multinational corporations.
In addition, policy packages and other interventions will be designed to facilitate the emergence of leverage points at different scales of action in ways that change the decision-making framework of everyday choices.
These interventions take into account the synergies and trade-offs of actions across multiple individuals and locations, as well as the role of incentives and political obstacles to implementation.
The EU project will provide a suite of Transformative Pathways along with a Toolbox of Transformative Interventions to trigger and enable these pathways. The Transformative Navigation Toolkit assists practitioners in enabling and navigating these pathways, acknowledging that determining what constitutes a ‘transformative pathway’ is also a product of an iterative and adaptive process that emerges and evolves over time.
Whom?
The TRANSPATH project brings together leading academics, science-policy experts, and young professionals from different social-cultural origins across Eastern and Western Europe, Africa and Latin America. Represented by nine countries and twelve nationalities, the consortium comprises a diverse range of scientific disciplines in environments, economics, and social sciences.
Dedicated to ensuring sufficient engagement from local to global levels in this project, the experts are focused on integrated and inclusive deliberation that is essential for identifying, legitimising, and navigating transformative pathways.
You can find more about the project on the TRANSPATH website: transpath.eu. Stay up to date with the project’s progress on Twitter (@TRANSPATH_EU) and Linkedin (/transpath-project).
