Eight years have passed since the launch of PhytoKeys (Penev et al. 2010) – Pensoft’s flagship journal in plant systematics – and six years from our last editorial commemorating the second year of its existence (Kress et al. 2012). Today we are publishing the journal’s 100th issue! There is no better occasion to look back and consider the development and most significant achievements 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 1, Fig. 1). The number of published articles has grown as well, from 39 in 2011 to 112 in 2016, while the number of published pages increased from 75 in 2010 to 3141 in 2016. To date the journal has received in total 759 submissions and published 532 articles, of which 21 are full monographs. The average acceptance rate for the period 2011–2017 was 70%, which we believe is optimal and sustainable for a taxonomic journal.

Figure 1. 

Growth of submitted manuscripts and published articles in PhytoKeys from 2010 to 2018 (until 1.6.2018).

The journal indexes all nomenclatural changes and additions in the International Plant Names Index (IPNI) (Penev et al. 2010, 2016). In all, one new tribe, 26 new genera or subgenera, and 439 new species or infraspecies have been described in the journal since its launch; this equates to 466 new taxa in total. In addition to new taxa, more than 400 new combinations, replacement names, new status designations, and other nomenclatural acts have been proposed in the journal since we began.

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 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 3).

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 2 demonstrates the combined results of the social media presence of PhytoKeys articles on Altmetric. The graph clearly shows an increase in the presence and visibility of the published content in social media and popular outlets since September 2016.

Figure 2. 

Total number of PhytoKeys mentions in social media and popular magazines.

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 4. Altogether the top ten articles with the highest number of unique views on PhytoKeys site have received 147,865 views. Four species described in PhytoKeys – the flowering tree named as a new genus Sirdavidia solannona, the dragon tree Dracaena kaweesakii, the orchid Telipogon diabolicus and the bush tomato from northwestern Australia, Solanum ossicruentum made it to the top 10 new species nominated by the State University of New York College of Environmental Science’s International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE) (Deutsche Welle, Daily Mail, Publico, CoolEarth, EurekAlert!).

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 (Knapp et al. 2011a, b), the report on the nomenclature section of the 2005 XVII International Botanical Congress, Vienna (Flann et al. 2015) and the Shenzhen Declaration on Plant Sciences endorsed by 7,000 plant scientists from 77 countries at the XIX International Botanical Congress held in Shenzhen, China (Kress and Knapp 2017).

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!