Journal publishing platform ARPHA partners with content recommendation engine TrendMD

Thanks to the new collaboration between content recommendation engine TrendMD and journal publishing platform ARPHA, readers of all journals under Pensoft’s imprint, as well as those using the white-label publishing solution provided by the platform, will be given a useful list of recommended articles related to the study they are reading. The new widget is to save the users a great amount of time, by simply pointing them to the most relevant papers on the topic from across a constantly expanding network of of peer-reviewed articles and research news.

While nearly 8,000 new scholarly articles are published each day, it is basically impossible staying up-to-date with the news from a single scientific field, let alone doing cross-disciplinary research. Furthermore, sifting out the quality literature is another painstaking activity no academic is looking forward to. Hence, TrendMD comes as the sensible solution to help a reader find the most relevant and fine studies on a particular topic. The widget’s recommendations are based on the topic a user is currently reading, what papers they have read in the past, and the articles others with similar interests have sought out – all available from the most authoritative and quality journals in the world.

“TrendMD is excited to welcome Pensoft, a highly innovative, open access, online publishing platform, to the TrendMD network! This partnership will bring over 5,000 open access articles and books in the field of natural history, predominantly taxonomy and organismal biology, to TrendMD’s ever expanding network,” says Paul Kudlow, CEO and co-founder of TrendMD.

“In our continuing effort to develop and implement the most novel tools and workflows in academic publishing, at Pensoft we are pleased to have integrated our journal publishing platform ARPHA with the new-age scholarly innovation that is TrendMD’s tool, so that our readers have an easy and constant access to the most relevant and best-quality research,” says Pensoft’s CEO and founder Prof. Lyubomir Penev.

Publishing platform ARPHA partners with Altmetric to track online attention to research

With a research output mentioned online every 1.8 seconds, it only makes sense for the science community to grow curious of how they could access the knowledge of this public interest to better and build on their work.

Journal publishing platform ARPHA, developed by academic publisher Pensoft, has partnered with Altmetric to enable authors, readers and other users to track the online shares and discussions relating to each research output in journals published on ARPHA.

Thanks to the integration, a single click in the top menu of an article reveals the Altmetric donut visualisation, which provides an at-a-glance summary of the attention the item has received. The colours of the donut reflect the source of the attention, and the user can click on the image to be taken to the Altmetric details page, which provides a record of all of the mentions. Data is updated in real-time to provide insight into how the item is being received and shared.

To deliver such detailed information, Altmetric follows 2,000 mainstream media outlets in over 30 languages, social networks, public policy documents, post-publication peer-review forums, online reference managers, blogs, and Wikipedia.

As a result, all authors, readers, editors and funders can easily and immediately track the popularity, reception and impact of each of their studies.

“Having built an extensive portfolio of innovations as a technological provider, we are always looking forward to making yet another effort at providing our users with the best-quality experience. The integration of Altmetric data provides us with another opportunity to do exactly this,” says Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof Lyubomir Penev.

“Furthermore, the science community has long been in need of a more adequate measure of the influence and engagement of individual research outputs, and Altmetric provides this.”

Altmetric’s Founder Euan Adie adds, “We’re excited to see the Altmetric badges being implemented across the ARPHA platform. Helping researchers get credit for their work and demonstrate its reach and influence is a core part of what we do, and this integration provides new opportunities to do so.”

The Altmetric badges and associated details pages are now available for all articles within Pensoft’s journals, as well as the journals using the white-label publishing available from ARPHA.

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Additional information:

About Altmetric:

Altmetric was founded in 2011 and has made it a mission to track and analyze the online activity around scholarly literature. Altmetric tracks what people are saying about research outputs online and works with some of the biggest publishers, funders, and institutions around the world to deliver this data in an accessible and reliable format. Altmetric is supported by Digital Science. Visit https://www.altmetric.com for more information, and follow on Twitter @altmetric.

About ARPHA:

ARPHA is the first end-to-end journal publishing solution that supports the full life cycle of a manuscript, from authoring through submission, peer review, publication and dissemination. With ARPHA, journals and publishers enjoy a complete set of services, which enable tailored, technologically advanced publishing solutions. The platform enables a variety of publishing models through a number of options for branding, production and revenue models to choose from.

End of an era: New sixth volume Research on Chrysomelidae the last with its original editors

The new and sixth volume of Research on Chrysomelidae consists of five research articles devoted to the latest findings about the amazing family of over 37,000 leaf beetle species from more than 2,500 genera. Among the studies, conducted by authors from all around the world, there is a new species of potentially dangerous legume-feeding pest, as well as new information regarding the life cycle,ecological interactions, species richness factors and taxonomy of some leaf beetles.

The latest volume devoted to one of the most intriguing beetle families also marks a turning point for the entomologists sharing special fondness for the leaf beetles. While the “spiritus rector” of the Chrysomelidae research community, Prof Pierre Jolivet resigned from his position last year, now Dr Jorge Santiago-Blay is also stepping down from the editorial board.

The third of the original trio, Prof Michael Schmitt, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität, takes the opportunity to look back to the beginning of the community and pay tribute to his long-year colleagues in his Editorial. He also confirms that the series, by now traditionally published in the open access journal ZooKeys, is far from over.

“I thank Jorge Santiago-Blay from the bottom of my heart for his tireless engagement in fostering leaf beetle research and his friendship, and wish him All the Best for whatever he may entertain in the future,” read his words.

In his short publication accompanying the five-piece issue, Prof Michael Schmitt recalls the very beginning of his team’s existence, started in 2001. He does not omit to note the numerous obstacles surrounding the first issues. At a point, having completed the enormous book “The green book – New Developments in the Biology of the Chrysomelidae”, comprising 62 chapters by 111 authors, as well as the first two volumes of Research on Chrysomelidae, they were made to drop the series due to unsatisfying selling numbers.

However, everything changed after the conversation Prof Pierre Jolivet and Prof Lyubomir Penev, Pensoft Publishers, had at the 9th European Congress of Entomology, held in Hungary in 2010. There they agreed to publish the next Research on Chrysomelidae volume as a special issue in ZooKeys, one of Pensoft’s journals.

Shortly after, the collaboration turned out so successful that it is now resulting in a fourth consecutive special issue. In the meantime, last December, the 30th anniversary of Symposia on Chysomelidae was celebrated in another leaf beetle-themed ZooKeys issue. Moreover, the next issue is already planned. It will cover the proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Chrysomelidae and will be edited by Prof Michael Schmitt and Dr Caroline Chaboo, University of Nebraska State Museum, USA.

“The present volume is the fourth, but certainly not the last, published by Pensoft. Although the pullout of Pierre Jolivet and Jorge Santiago-Blay marks a crucial cut in the history of Research on Chrysomelidae, I understand the reasons of their decision to step down,” concludes Prof Michael Schmitt. “I hope and wish that the series will prosper and remain accepted as a forum of leaf beetle research by the community of Chrysomelidae enthusiasts all over the world.”

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Research on Chrysomelidae 6 Special Issue is available to read and order from here.

Original source:

Schmitt M (2016) Editorial. In: Jolivet P, Santiago-Blay J, Schmitt M (Eds) Research on Chrysomelidae 6. ZooKeys 597: 1-2. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.597.8618

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: https://pwt.pensoft.net/