Editorial |
Corresponding author: Lyubomir Penev ( l.penev@pensoft.net ) Academic editor: Yasen Mutafchiev
© 2018 W. John Kress, Sandra Knapp, Pavel Stoev, Lyubomir Penev.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Kress WJ, Knapp S, Stoev P, Penev L (2018) PhytoKeys at 100: progress in sustainability, innovation, and speed to enhance publication in plant systematics. PhytoKeys 100: 1-8. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.100.27591
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Eight years have passed since the launch of PhytoKeys (
In a very short time period after its inception, PhytoKeys became one of the most popular and appreciated Open Access journals in botany. The journal started with only 48 submissions in 2011; by 2017 that number quadrupled to 187 manuscripts submitted annually (Table
Total number of submitted manuscripts, published articles, and printed pages since 2010.
Year | Submitted manuscripts | Published articles | Published pages |
2010 | 9 | 5 | 75 |
2011 | 48 | 39 | 397 |
2012 | 56 | 54 | 1042 |
2013 | 57 | 52 | 1494 |
2014 | 66 | 46 | 1342 |
2015 | 113 | 72 | 2035 |
2016 | 153 | 112 | 3141 |
2017 | 187 | 98 | 1973 |
2018* | 70 | 54 | 1097 |
Total | 759 | 532 | 12569 |
The journal indexes all nomenclatural changes and additions in the International Plant Names Index (IPNI) (
Over the years PhytoKeys has attracted a diverse range of botanical researchers from all parts of the world, with the highest numbers coming from the United States of America (193), Brazil (93), China (80), United Kingdom (53) and Germany (49). Altogether 939 scientists from 67 countries have published in the journal from its launch until 1 June 2018 (Table
Country | N | Country | N | Country | N |
United States of America | 193 | Philippines | 8 | Taiwan | 2 |
Brazil | 93 | Austria | 7 | Tanzania | 2 |
China | 80 | Peru | 7 | Ireland | 2 |
United Kingdom | 53 | Slovakia | 6 | Norway | 2 |
Germany | 49 | Portugal | 6 | Mauritius | 2 |
Belgium | 39 | Czech Republic | 6 | French Polynesia | 2 |
Turkey | 33 | Ecuador | 5 | Hong Kong | 1 |
Australia | 27 | Denmark | 5 | French Guyana | 1 |
India | 25 | Sweden | 5 | Gabon | 1 |
Netherlands | 24 | Poland | 5 | Ukraine | 1 |
Spain | 23 | Korea, South | 5 | Uganda | 1 |
France | 22 | Colombia | 4 | Cuba | 1 |
Japan | 19 | Switzerland | 4 | Uruguay | 1 |
New Zealand | 17 | Panama | 4 | Nepal | 1 |
Vietnam | 17 | Paraguay | 3 | Lao PDR | 1 |
South Africa | 16 | Cameroon | 3 | Uzbekistan | 1 |
Thailand | 14 | Finland | 3 | Cambodia | 1 |
Argentina | 13 | Myanmar | 3 | Kyrgyzstan | 1 |
Canada | 12 | Papua New Guinea | 3 | Kenya | 1 |
Mexico | 12 | Bulgaria | 3 | Hungary | 1 |
Russia | 10 | Singapore | 3 | Costa Rica | 1 |
Italy | 10 | Venezuela | 3 | ||
Malaysia | 8 | Chile | 2 |
In 2015 PhytoKeys was granted its first impact factor of 0.68, and it has gradually increased in the subsequent two years and reached 1.11 in 2017. The increase can be best explained by the stringent peer review of content, improved quality control, and manuscript management. In 2014 the journal was also accepted for coverage by Scopus. In December 2016 Scopus announced the introduction of CiteScore – a new journal level metrics. Currently for 2017, the Cite Score value of PhytoKeys is 1.08.
Along with our overall editorial improvements and advancements, a number of new technological solutions and features have been implemented in PhytoKeys in order to facilitate the efforts of editors, reviewers and authors (see Table
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 of 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/19700201507 | 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 |
PhytoKeys content is integrated with a significant number of global indexers and archives, such as PubMedCentral, CLOCKSS, Google Scholar, CAB Abstracts, DOAJ, Vifabio, BHL Citebank, to name just a few. In the two years from 2015 to 2017 Pensoft journals have been integrated with a number of global archives and data repositories that significantly increase visibility and searchability of published content. All journals operating on Pensoft’s innovative platform ARPHA, including PhytoKeys, have benefited from these developments. The list of the online libraries and databases which harvest and manage PhytoKeys content includes:
Library of Congress (USA)
CNKI (China)
CINIPIEC (China)
eLibrary (Russia)
ORCID (International)
Dryad Data Repository (International)
Open Citations Corpus (International)
Since 2016 PhytoKeys has been using Altmetric – a technology providing article level metrics which enables authors to track the online shares and discussions of their published articles. Figure
Pensoft continues to invest in the popularization of PhytoKeys via media campaigns. Some examples of press releases on articles published in the journal that grasped the attention of journalists and received large media coverage are listed in Table
Article | Press release | Media coverage |
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Science and Twitter join forces to uncover a globally imperiled plant species | Sverige Radio, Earth.com, PLOS Ecology, IFLScience |
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Two Caribbean bird-catcher trees named after 2 women with overlooked botanical works | Der Standard, Mongabay |
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New Colombian plant discovered by Kew scientist honors Colombian president | Express, El Tiempo, La Nacion |
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Orchid or demon: Flower of a new species of orchid looks like a devil’s head | The Washington Post, FOX news, РИА Новости, El Mundo |
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Curious new bush species growing ‘bleeding’ fruits named by a US class of 150 7th graders | Science News, AOL, ABC |
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New bush tomato species is the link between botany and an Oscar-nominated Hollywood movie | Live Science, New York Daily News, Huffington Post |
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Serendipitous orchid: An unexpected species discovered in Mexican deciduous forests | Scientific American, National Geographic Indonesia, Газета.ru |
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Plants cheat too: A new species of fungus-parasitizing orchid | Asian Scientist, Nature World News, La Vanguardia |
Couvreur TLP, Niangadouma R, Sonké B, Sauquet H (2015) Sirdavidia, an extraordinary new genus of Annonaceae from Gabon. PhytoKeys 46: 1-19. | A rare new plant inspires the first plant genus named after Sir David Attenborough | The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Discover Magazine |
Fernando E, Quimado M, Doronila A (2014) Rinorea niccolifera (Violaceae), a new, nickel-hyperaccumulating species from Luzon Island, Philippines. PhytoKeys 37: 1-13. | New species of metal-eating plant discovered in the Philippines | International Business Times, Russia Today, Asian Scientist |
Over the eight years of the existence of PhytoKeys, the journal has positioned itself among the world’s leading journals in systematic botany. Started by the editors primarily as a taxonomically-oriented journal, the journal has since extended its scope to enable publications across other botanical disciplines, such as plant ecology, genomics, evolutionary biology, paleontology, bioinformatics, ethnobotany, etc.
As the chief editors of PhytoKeys we have worked hard to expand the journal’s editorial board, which has grown significantly and today is comprised of more than 80 experts from various scientific disciplines and geographical areas. The journal has achieved an international reputation by publishing milestone works that will affect all botanists, such as the changes to publication requirements made at the XVIII International Botanical Congress in Melbourne (
With its continuous technological innovation and support from subject editors and reviewers, PhytoKeys continues to receive recognition by the international community of plant researchers. This success would not have been possible without our authors, reviewers, subject editors, production staff, readers, and supporters, to which we express our sincerest gratitude and thanks! We cannot wait to see what the 200th issue will look like!