Today we publish issue 770 of our dear cutting-edge journal ZooKeys! It has been exactly
ten years since the launch of the journal on 4 July 2008 that emanated from a delightful
breakfast at the Entomological Society of America meeting in December 2007 in San
Diego, California, when our Managing Editor and founder of Pensoft, Lyubomir Penev,
proposed the idea to Terry Erwin, our Editor-in-Chief. The journal’s tenth birthday
is a great occasion to trace back its development and achievements since then, which
has exceeded far beyond that initial breakfast dream of two colleagues enjoying the
southern California sun.
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. Later, ZooKeys was followed by the journals
PhytoKeys and MycoKeys in the field of plant and fungal systematics, which are now
also amongst the most popular titles in their respective domains. 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. ZooKeys started with merely 32 published
papers in 2008 and just in a few years time became a mega-journal, publishing 466
papers in 2011. The number has been increasing since reaching its maximum in 2016–581
(Table 1, Fig. 1). To date, the journal has received more than 5200 submissions (no
accurate data available for 2008–2010) and published 4103 articles, including 110
monographs. The number of published pages increased from 657 in 2008 to 16582 in 2016.
The average rejection rate for the period 2016–2017 was around 25%, which we believe
is optimal and sustainable for a primarily taxonomic journal.
Figure 1.
Growth of submitted manuscripts and published articles in ZooKeys from 2008 to 2018
(*until 27.6.2018).
Table 1.
Total number of submitted manuscripts published articles, and printed pages since
2008. No accurate data for number of submissions 2008–2010.
Year
Submitted manuscripts
Published articles
Published pages
2008
32
657
2009
155
3738
2010
180
4871
2011
510
466
11145
2012
442
435
12205
2013
505
488
13382
2014
554
525
14178
2015
674
501
12634
2016
713
581
16582
2017
841
482
14091
2018 (as of 27 June 2018)
460
258
7250
Total
4904
4103
110733
The number of all authors publishing in ZooKeys is 5720 (ZooBank, courtesy of Richard
Pyle, Bishop Museum, Honolulu) from altogether 131 countries. The highest numbers
come first from China, then United States of America, followed by Brazil, Italy, Germany
and Canada in that order. The Impact Factor of ZooKeys continues to grow, starting
at 0.517 and currently it is 1.079.
Altogether, 8977 new species-group, 650 new genus-group and 45 new family-group taxa
have been published in the journal since its launch (Table 2, Fig. 2) (ZooBank, 29
June 2018, courtesy of Richard Pyle). This makes 9672 new taxa in total or 967.2 new
taxa per year. This places ZooKeys as the second most prolific journal in Zoological
Systematics after Zootaxa which began publishing in 2001.
Figure 2.
New taxa published in ZooKeys, registered in ZooBank (courtesy of Richard Pyle; *until
27.6.2018).
Table 2.
New taxa published in ZooKeys, registered in ZooBank (courtesy of Richard Pyle).
Year
Family
Genus
Species
2008
0
3
24
2009
1
51
360
2010
4
42
384
2011
12
90
840
2012
3
52
851
2013
3
75
1660
2014
3
71
1445
2015
2
50
911
2016
4
86
1035
2017
6
85
935
2018
7
45
532
Total
45
650
8977
Pensoft has been heavily investing in the technological advancement of its journals.
A list of the most significant technologies implemented by its flagship ZooKeys in
the recent years to facilitate editors, reviewers and authors is available in Table
3.
Table 3.
New technological solutions implemented in the journal.
Feature
For the benefit of:
Link
Use
Automatic registrations of reviews at Publons
Reviewers and Editors
https://publons.com
Publons helps reviewers and editors get recognition for every review they make for
the journal.
Dimensions
Authors, editors, administrators, publisher
https://www.dimensions.ai
Powerful tracker of citations; provides ranking of given research in a given field
Scopus CiteScore Metrics
Authors, editors, administrators, publisher
https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/19700170477
Interactive tool providing information on journal’s performance
Export of published figures & supplementary materials to Biodiversity Literature Repository
at ZENODO
Authors, data scientists, community in general
https://zenodo.org/communities/biosyslit/?page=1&size=20
Increases visibility and traceability of article and sub-article elements
Hypothes.is
Authors, readers
http://hypothes.is
Annotations on selected texts from the published article
Over the past ten years, ZooKeys published a variety of papers on systematic zoology,
including several world records, such as the deepest cave-dwelling centipede, the
tiniest free-living insect and the smallest land snail. The journal also served as
a platform for many of the world’s first-of-a-kind, like the first insect description
solely from photographs, the first study supported by crowd-funding in Japan, the
first-of-a-kind footage of shrimp filter-feeding at depth of a 4826 m in the Mariana
Trench, the first amphibious centipede and the second fossil beetle found on Antarctica.
While ZooKeys is regularly featured in the annual “Top 10 species” by the International
Institute for Species Exploration, in 2017, there were two species published in the
journal, which appeared on the list: the world’s second leggiest millipede – the 414-legged
Illacme
tobini
and the first known amphibious centipede
Scolopendra
cataracta
.
The ten most viewed ZooKeys articles can be seen in Table 4.
Table 4.
ZooKeys articles by number of views.
Article
Nr of uniques views
Nr of total views
Helgen et al. (2013) Taxonomic revision of the olingos (
Bassaricyon
), with description of a new species, the Olinguito
56191
62724
Ledford et al. (2012) An extraordinary new family of spiders from caves in the Pacific
Northwest (
Araneae
,
Trogloraptoridae
, new family)
51668
55952
Bouchard et al. (2011) Family-Group Names In
Coleoptera
(
Insecta
)
32446
36687
Nazari (2016) Review of
Neopalpa
Povolný, 1998 with description of a new species from California and Baja California,
Mexico (
Lepidoptera
,
Gelechiidae
)
24654
33103
Sereno (2012) Taxonomy, morphology, masticatory function and phylogeny of heterodontosaurid
dinosaurs
27168
30394
Hagedorn et al. (2011) Creative Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition:
Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information
27173
29685
Winterton et al. (2012) A charismatic new species of green lacewing discovered in
Malaysia (
Neuroptera
,
Chrysopidae
): the confluence of citizen scientist, online image database and cybertaxonomy
25329
28429
Laciny et al. (2018)
Colobopsis
explodens
sp. n., model species for studies on “exploding ants” (
Hymenoptera
,
Formicidae
), with biological notes and first illustrations of males of the
Colobopsis
cylindrica
species-group
22795
28258
Hamilton et al. (2016) Taxonomic revision of the tarantula genus
Aphonopelma
Pocock, 1901 (
Araneae
,
Mygalomorphae
,
Theraphosidae
) within the United States
14515
25536
Wizen and Gasith (2011) Predation of amphibians by carabid beetles of the genus
Epomis
found in the central coastal plain of Israel
24477
14876
Total
281087
282920
Thanks to the collaboration between Pensoft and Altmetric, it is possible to track
the popularity of each article published in ZooKeys within the public domain (Fig.
3). Provided the DOI link of a paper is included in an online publication, its citations
from across a diverse range of both conventional and social online media platforms,
including news outlets, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Reddit etc., are all visible
in the article menu to give our readers a clear insight into the attention and interest
which the research published in the journal brings about beyond academia.
Figure 3.
Total number of ZooKeys mentions in social media and popular magazines (Altmetric,
June 2018).
The description of a species of moth named after then US President-elect Donald Trump
is an excellent example for a study with remarkable popularity across platforms (available
from https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.646.11411). While as many as 964 tweets have
been registered (likely many more, given that the count only registers the tweets
featuring the DOI link to the paper), a total of 124 international news outlets (again,
many have gone unaccounted) ran the story, including The Washington Post, FOX News,
CNN, BBC News, The Independent, The Huffington Post, Ria.RU (RIA Novosti), Gazeta.ru,
Wired (Italy), Le Figaro, Die Welt, Spiegel, National Geographic Australia, The Japan
Times and The Hindustan Times.
A more recent study describing a new species of exploding ant was not only featured
in 89 news stories by news outlets from around the world, such as National Geographic,
The New York Times, FOX News, BBC News, Sky News, The Guardian, ABC, Gazeta.ru, Publico,
Stern, El Pais, The Hindu, but also tweeted along with its DOI as many as 52 times.
In fact, the remarkable species was even ‘assigned’ with its own hashtag (#ExplodingAnts)
to trigger further discussion and engagement over the social media platform.
Table 5 shows the top ten ZooKeys papers, which attracted the largest media interest,
according to data available from the global science news service Eurekalert.
Table 5.
The top ten ZooKeys papers that attracted largest media interest.
Article
Press release
Media coverage
Brannoch and Svenson (2016) A new genus and species (
Cornucollis
gen. n. masoalensis sp. n.) of praying mantis from northern Madagascar (
Mantodea
,
Iridopterygidae
,
Tropidomantinae
)
A new species and genus of ‘horned necked’ praying mantis from a French museum collection
Science Daily, Physorg, Health Medicine Network
Chen et al. (2017)
Oreoglanis
hponkanensis
, a new sisorid catfish from north Myanmar (
Actinopterygii
,
Sisoridae
)
Chinese scientists discover a new species of catfish in Myanmar
Science Newsline, Physorg, Health Medicine Network, I4U News
Laciny et al. (2018)
Colobopsis
explodens
sp. n., model species for studies on “exploding ants” (
Hymenoptera
,
Formicidae
), with biological notes and first illustrations of males of the
Colobopsis
cylindrica
species-group
New ant species from Borneo explodes to defend its colony
New York Times, The Guardian, Galileo, Gazeta.ru, New York Daily News
Van Dam et al. (2016) Four new species of
Trigonopterus
Fauvel from the island of New Britain (
Coleoptera
,
Curculionidae
)
New curiously scaled beetle species from New Britain named after ‘Star Wars’ Chewbacca
The Scientist Magazine, Fox News, Science News
Savary and Bryson Jr (2016)
Pseudouroctonus
maidu
, a new species of scorpion from northern California (
Scorpiones
,
Vaejovidae
)
A new scorpion from California reveals hidden biodiversity in the Golden State
Science Daily, Physorg, Health Medicine Network
Hamilton et al. (2016) Taxonomic revision of the tarantula genus
Aphonopelma
Pocock, 1901 (
Araneae
,
Mygalomorphae
,
Theraphosidae
) within the United States
New tarantula named after Johnny Cash among 14 spider species found in the United
States
CNN, BBC News, CBS News, The Guardian, The Columbian, Spiegel, Gazeta.ru
Guayasamin et al. (2017) A marvelous new glassfrog (
Centrolenidae
, Hyalinobatrachium) from Amazonian Ecuador
New species of frog from the Neotropics carries its heart on its skin
BBC Focus Science & Technology, Science News, Gazeta.ru, Science Daily
Nazari (2017) Review of
Neopalpa
Povolný, 1998 with description of a new species from California and Baja California,
Mexico (
Lepidoptera
,
Gelechiidae
)
New species of moth named in honor of Donald Trump ahead of his swearing-in as president
CNN, CBS News, The Straits Times, The Independent, Gazeta.ru, Focus, Galileo
Goto and Ishikawa (2016)
Borniopsis
mortoni
sp. n. (
Heterodonta
,
Galeommatoidea
,
Galeommatidae
sensu lato), a new bivalve commensal with a synaptid sea cucumber from Japan
Living together in mud: New bivalve species dwelling on a sea cucumber discovered
in Japan
Nature World News, Health Medicine Network, Physorg
Marek et al. (2016) A new species of
Illacme
Cook & Loomis, 1928 from Sequoia National Park, California, with a world catalog of
the
Siphonorhinidae
(
Diplopoda
,
Siphonophorida
)
New species of extremely leggy millipede discovered in a cave in California
New York Times, Washington Post, Gizmodo, Nature World News, Le Point
Apart from their remarkable findings, some of our authors have also been given a place
in the spotlight by the news media. A Skype interview with Dr Chris Hamilton – the
discoverer of the Johnny Cash tarantula – was aired live on Sky News, while Dr Vazrick
Nazari, who added the name
Neopalpa
donaldtrumpi
to the scientific records, was interviewed on BBC Radio 5. A podcast with Alice Laciny,
the lead author of the study describing the exploding ant
Colobopsis
explodens
, where she explains the curious behaviour of the new species and in the background,
the ant is seen to actually defend itself against a larger offender, was made available
on BBC News.
New species described in ZooKeys enjoy the attention of their celebrity namesakes,
as well. Earlier this year, shortly after a water beetle discovered in Borneo was
named after the famous actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio, the insect appeared
on his profile photo on Facebook – an act, which was itself reported by several news
outlets, including the Daily Mail, W Magazine and La Republica.
The success of ZooKeys would not be possible without the help of our authors, reviewers,
subject editors, and readers, to whome we are very very thankful!