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.

Introducing the ARPHA Writing Tool

The former Pensoft Writing Tool (PWT) appears under a new name with exciting functionalities customized to your needs

It’s been almost two full years since we first launched the Pensoft Writing Tool (PWT) as the first ever workflow that supports the full life cycle of a manuscript, from authoring, to peer-review, publishing and dissemination. Now it is time to move a step forward with an updated tool that incorporates all our accumulated experience and your invaluable feedback. PWT is now transforming into ARPHA Writing Tool (AWT) – a rebrand that means much more than a change of name and design.

So, what is so cool about the new ARPHA Writing tool? Here it is:

  • New modern outlook and user-friendly design
  • All editing happens in the manuscript preview mode
  • Plug-in for mathematical formulas
  • Pre-submission technical validation, by automated tool and humans
  • Pre-submission external peer-review
  • Importing manuscripts through Application Programming Interface (API)

Those of you who have been using the PWT remember the two writing modes – Preview and Editing. Over the past two years, we’ve learned that this might sometimes be tricky. With the AWT, there will be no more flipping between modes. The tool now contains only one editing mode – this means rich editing functions and direct visualisation of your changes and comments straight into the the article preview.

Besides, the AWT will take a step beyond biodiversity data publishing towards providing a large set of predefined, yet flexible article templates to allow the publication of most types of research outcomes. As the scope is broadening, we also strive to simplify and improve the user experience.

The AWT is all about user-friendliness. With the new intuitive design and more comprehensible functions, the system is fast to navigate and get used to. While making every effort to improve user experience, we made sure functions are straightforward and easy to discover.

awt-screen-shot (2)The AWT makes collaborative work on a manuscript with co-authors or peers easier than ever. Mentors, pre-submission reviewers, linguistic or copy editors can now contribute to the manuscript side by side. The collaborative peer-review process provides easy communication thanks to a track-change function, comments and replies, as well as automated, but customisable email and social network notification tools.

The tool also provides authors with a two-step technical validation – the manuscript is examined for consistency automatically by the system, followed by a second check from our staff ahead of publication. After an article is published, the AWT also offers easy republication of updated article versions via the authoring tool.

Perhaps the most innovative feature of AWT, however, is the new functionality to invite reviewers still during the authoring process. This function is still globally unique as it allows the authors to discuss manuscripts with their peers before submission, and consequently to submit the reviews together with the manuscript. In case the editor approves the manuscript for publication based on the pre-submission review(s), the manuscript can be published just a few days after submission.

Go to the AWT now and test it yourself: http://pwt.pensoft.net/