“PhytoKeys has been among the first decided

supporters of the open-access idea,

and it has the experience, structures and wits

to combine speed of publication, high quality

standards and sophisticated editing techniques.”

Werner Greuter

OPTIMA Newsletter No. 40

PhytoKeys was launched on the 1^st of November 2010 as a novel, peer-reviewed, open-access outlet for plant biodiversity research (Penev et al. 2010a). The journal quickly gained the support of the international botanical community and since its launch continues to grow in reputation and volume.

The journal implemented several innovative technologies, such as a domain specific XML markup based on the TaxPub Schema (Catapano 2010; Penev et al. 2010b, Penev et al. 2011), compliant to the PubMedCentral standards, data publishing, automated export of content through web services to various aggregators, such as the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), the Global Biodiversity Information Facilities (GBIF), Species-ID, bibliographic indices and so on (see e.g., Kress and Penev 2011). PhytoKeys became one of the very few journals in plant systematics to be accepted for coverage and archiving in PubMedCentral. The journal was the first to implement mandatory registration of new species and nomenclature changes with the International Plant Name Index (IPNI). PhytoKeysis CrossRef-compliant and plans also to use ORCID authors’ registry once it becomes fully operational, hopefully in 2013. The data publishing workflow in PhytoKeys is already integrated with the Dryad Data Repository and GBIF.

PhytoKeys was the first journal to announce the revolutionary changes instituted in the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants (ICN) in a paper published during the actual proceedings of the XVIII International Botanical Congress in Melbourne in July 2011, bringing the news to a world-wide audience (Miller et al. 2011). Thanks to the decisions of the Nomenclature Section of the Congress (see Knapp et al. 2011a), electronic publication of new taxa was allowed and PhytoKeys was again the first journal to demonstrate an immediate implementation of the Congress decisions, starting on the 1^st of January with a series of exemplar papers (e.g., Vorontsova and Knapp 2012, Tepe et al. 2012, Thomas et al. 2012), each paper with its individual publication date. The completed journal issue was printed on paper on the 7th of January 2012, demonstrating our commitment of the multiple archiving of botanical content.

Since its launch the journal has received 130 submissions in total. Out of this number, 90 articles (1, 456 pages) were published in volumes 1–18. Twenty-one manuscripts have been archived by the system because they were rejected during the review process, withdrawn from consideration or cancelled for other reasons. The yearly growth in numbers of published articles, issues, and number of pages in PhytoKeys has been substantial (Table 1; Fig. 1). The growth in number of published pages in the second year of PhytoKeys exceeds by 120% that of year 1. Starting with 35 articles in 2010–2011, in the second year the journal showed a substantial growth in submissions (66%) and published articles (50%). Based on the analysis of 30 randomly selected papers, the average publication time (from submission to publication) for the first two years of the existence of the journal is 78 days. The period between submission and acceptance is 63 days, and from acceptance to publication 15 days.

Altogether, four new genera, one subgenus, 90 species, and one variety have been published in the journal since its launch, or 96 new taxa in total (Table 2). The number of new combinations (55) and new names (10) published for the same period is considerable (Table 3). Thus, the number of all nomenclatural novelties published in PhytoKeys for this short period totals 161. These new taxonomic contributions encompass 42 vascular plant families, with a predominance in the families Euphorbiacea, Solanaceae and Asteraceae, with 42, 22, and 20 contributions, respectively (Fig. 2).

PhytoKeys has always been engaged with open data publishing. One of the pioneering methods for data publishing converted a conventional floristic checklist, written in a standard word processing program, into structured data in the Darwin Core Archive format (Remsen et al. 2012). A manuscript (De Egea et al. 2012) consisting of more than 4, 100 taxon names, was submitted to PhytoKeys as a Microsoft Word file. After peer-review and editorial acceptance, the final revised version was converted into the Darwin Core Archive format from the original manuscript and published both as a conventional paper in PhytoKeys and as DwC-A structured data through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT). In addition, and for the convenience of the readers and data users, the same data were also published as a supplementary Excel file in an Appendix to the checklist (doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.9.2279.app1). After publication, the data became available through the GBIF infrastructure in order to be re-used on their own or collated with other data.

The first data paper in PhytoKeys was published in May 2012 by Van Landuyt et al. (2012). It described “Florabank1” – a database comprising distributional data on the wild plants of Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region of Belgium.

The top ten papers in PhytoKeys through the 5^th of December 2012 have been accessed 55, 502 times (Table 4). The article by Popovkin et al. (2011) on a new, genuflexing plant from Brazil took the lead as the most downloaded paper by reaching more than 10, 200 views in 14 months. Among the top ten most viewed articles, the paper by Miller et al. (2011), a review article on the outcomes of the Botanical Nomenclature section at the XVIII International Botanical Congress and its Spanish version (Knapp et al. 2011b), was downloaded more than 12, 500 times

In order to promote plant taxonomy, Pensoft’s Public Relations office has initiated a new service aimed at facilitating our authors in promoting their research among the general public and science media. Since its launch, altogether 17 international press releases have been prepared and distributed through EurekAlert!, one of the world largest online distributors of science news, supplying information to more than 7, 500 mass media and independent science journalists, and Pensoft’s own channels (see Table 5 for the top ten most accessed press releases of PhytoKeys articles). At the top, with approxmately 5, 000 views, is the press release of the article by Vallejo-Marín (2012) describing a new monkey flower, Mimulus peregrinus (Phrymaceae) discovered on the bank of a stream in Scotland created by the union of two foreign plant species. This paper described a rare example of a new species that originated in the wild in the last 150 years.

In conclusion, PhytoKeys, along with its 'brother' journals Zookeys and MycoKeys, continues to evolve its editorial workflow, constantly implementing new and improved publishing and dissemination technologies, thus always being on point for digital biodiversity science. We would like to thank all of our authors, reviewers, subject editors, readers, and journalistic followers without whose support PhytoKeys would not have become such a successful journal in just two years time! We also thank Christine Barker (IPNI) for providing information on the nomenclatural novelties published in PhytoKeys that have been registered in IPNI.