Accelerating innovative publishing in taxonomy and systematics: 250 issues of ZooKeys

A peer-reviewed open-access journal ZooKeys 251: 1–10 (2012) Accelerating innovative publishing in taxonomy and systematics: 250 issues of ZooKeys doi: 10.3897/zookeys.251.4516 editoriAl www.zookeys.org 1 Launched to accelerate biodiversity research Accelerating innovative publishing in taxonomy and systematics: 250 issues of ZooKeys Terry Erwin1,†, Lyubomir Penev2,‡, Pavel Stoev2,§, Teodor Georgiev3,§ 1 Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA 2 Bulgarian Academy of Sciences & Pensoft Publishers, Soia, Bulgaria 3 Pensoft Publishers, Soia, Bulgaria Corresponding author: Lyubomir Penev (info@pensoft.net) Received 11 December 2012 | Accepted 17 December 2012 | Published @@ December 2012 Citation: Erwin T, Penev L, Stoev P, Georgiev T (2012) Accelerating innovative publishing in taxonomy and systematics: 250 issues of ZooKeys. ZooKeys 251: 1–10. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.251.4516 ‘Every good product I’ve ever seen is because a group of people cared deeply about making something wonderful that they and their friends wanted. hey wanted to use it themselves’ Steve Jobs On 13th of December ZooKeys published issue 250, the 76-page monograph “Introduction of the Exocelina ekari-group with descriptions of 22 new species from New Guinea (Coleoptera, Dytiscidae, Copelatinae)” by Shaverdo et al. (2012). Likewise, this semiquincentennial issue is a milestone for the editorial team to take a look back and evaluate the journal’s progress in the past year. he year 2012 has been important for the journal and the entire zoological community in many aspects. On the 4th of September, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) passed an amendment that considers a publication in a digital scientiic journal ‘legitimate’ if meeting archiving criteria and the publication is registered at the ICZN’s oicial online registry, ZooBank. Pensoft was among the irst supporters of the open-access idea, and one of the most active advocates of the e-only publishing of taxonomic data. Taking this into account and as recognition of Pensoft’s active role in promotion of taxonomy, the Commission decided to announce the Amendment of the Code in ZooKeys (ICZN 2012). his revolutionary change in ICZN publication rules will undoubtedly speed the process of publishing biodiversity information and improve access to this information. Copyright Terry Erwin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 (CC-BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. 2 Terry Erwin et al. / ZooKeys 251: 1–10 (2012) As a result of a fruitful collaboration, he Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) and ZooKeys on February 10th, 2012 announced a new joint project (EOASP) aimed at increasing the low of new species descriptions from scientists in developing countries into the Encyclopedia of Life and promoting the open access publishing model in taxonomy. Another goal of this initiative was to support and educate the next generation of taxonomists in open science principles and to motivate publishers to modernize their publishing models and worklows to it the changing needs of scientists and researchers around the world. Up to now, the EOASP project has supported 22 articles, in which 32 species, 7 genera and 1 family were described as new to sciences, and several more taxa were re-described. he EOASP project was preceeded by another joint initiative with EOL called “Fabulous New Species collection” launched in January 2012. Its main aim was to bring together and promulgate the scientiically notable new taxa described every year in ZooKeys and other Pensoft’s journals and simultaneously registered in EOL. A short annotation written in a popular language explains why the new species is interesting in an attempt to draw the attention of the general public and the world mass media to it. In 2012, a new pilot project for establishing the Online Identiication Key (OIK) as a new type of scientiic article that is a derivative of the Data Paper was put forward by ZooKeys. he publication of an online key in the form of a scholarly article is a pragmatic compromise between the dynamic structure of the internet and the static character of scientiic articles. he authors of the keys will be able to continuously update their products, to the beneit of users. At the same time, the users will have available a citation mechanism for the online key, identical to that used for any other scientiic article, to properly credit its author(s). he model is illustrated by an exemplar paper describing a new software platform for creating online keys, MOSCHweb (Cerretti et al. 2012). he paper describes the main features of an interactive key to the Euro-Asiatic genera of tachinid lies implemented as an original web application and discusses briely the advantages of these tools for both biologists and general users. he year 2012 will be remembered also with the ZooKeys special issue “No specimen left behind: mass digitization of natural history collections” initiated by the Natural History Museum in London. he editors Vince Smith and Vladimir Blagoderov brought together 18 papers by 81 authors to look at progress and prospects for mass digitizing of entire natural history collections. he compendium examines recent advances in imaging systems and data gathering techniques, combined with more collaborative approaches to digitization. Examples of research covered by the articles include a description of eforts to digitize 30 million plant, insect and vertebrate specimens at NCB Naturalis in the Netherlands; new scanning and telemicroscopy solutions to digitize the millions of pinned insect specimens held in the Australian National Insect Collection and its European and North American counterparts; and, new data portals providing central access to millions of biological specimens across Europe, etc. he discovery of any organism in the world matters equally, be it a minute insect or a mammal. Several newly discovered animals published in ZooKeys at the verge of 2011/2012 and in 2012 were of immense interest and attracted the attention of the global society. hese include, among others, the world’s smallest tetrapode, the largest Accelerating innovative publishing in taxonomy and systematics: 250 issues of ZooKeys 3 wasp, and the leggiest animal, as well as a new fanged dinosaur from Africa and new family of cave spiders from the USA. In December 2011, ZooKeys announced the publication of the world’s smallest vertebrates – the New Guinean frogs Paedophryne dekot and Paedophryne verrucosa, which average length rarely exceeds 8–9 mm (Kraus 2011). he press release associated with the publication grabbed the interest of the world’s media and shortly reached 44, 000 views – an absolute record for ZooKeys – in Eurekalert! alone. Shortly after the publication even smaller species of the same genus were found in New Guinea and published in PLoS One (Rittmeyer et al. 2012). Figure 1. Portraits in life of Paedophryne dekot (A, B) and Paedophryne verrucosa (C, D). Photos: Fred Kraus, 2011. ZooKeys: doi: 10.3897/zookeys.154.1963. A new species of plant-eating dinosaur, named Pegomastax africanus, or “thick jaw from Africa”, was described in ZooKeys by Professor Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago in October 2012 (Sereno 2012). he new species had a short, parrot-shaped beak up front, a pair of stabbing canines and tall teeth tucked behind for slicing plants. he dinosaur was of cat size and lived some 200 million years ago in Africa. It was placed by its inder in the heterodontosaurs or “diferent toothed reptiles,” that were among the irst dinosaurs to spread across the planet. he discovery was featured by all the world’s leading news media, e.g.,: BBC: Dwarf ‘vampire dinosar was a plant eater, CNN: Scientist describes fruit-loving, housecat-sized dino, National Geographic: New fanged dwarf dinosaur found, “Would be nice pet”, New York Times: Bizarre species of miniature dinosaur identiied, he Guardian: “Fanged vampire parrot” identiied as a new species of dinosaur, Scientiic American: Diminutive dinosaur bore 4 Terry Erwin et al. / ZooKeys 251: 1–10 (2012) beak, bristles and fangs, USA Today: Fanged dinosaur feasted on fruit, Time: A parrotheaded, big-fanged, porcupine dinosaur. Figure 2. he head of Pegomastax africanus. Reconstruction by Todd Marshall, 2012. An unusually large wasp species, named by the authors Megalara garuda, was discovered during an expedition to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi (Kimsey and Ohl 2012). With a body size of 32–34 mm and fearful jaws in males, the new species difers from all known related digger wasps, so much so that it was placed in a new genus of its own, Megalara. Figure 3. Habitus of Megalara garuda. Photo: Kimsey and Ohl, 2012. ZooKeys: doi: 10.3897/zookeys.177.2475 Accelerating innovative publishing in taxonomy and systematics: 250 issues of ZooKeys 5 A team of citizen scientists from the Western Cave Conservancy and arachnologists from the California Academy of Sciences found in caves in southwest Oregon, USA, a new, previously unknown family of spiders, named Trogloraptoridae (after the genus Trogloraptor or “cave robber”) that was published in ZooKeys in August 2012 (Griswold et al. 2012). he discovery has turned into the most visited ZooKeys paper ever, with more than 34,000 at the time of publishing this Editorial. he paper was also featured by CNN, he New York Times, Scientiic American and on BBC Today, among many other media. he new species is named for its cave home and spectacular, elongate claws. International recognition was received also on the discovery of Kollasmosoma sentum, a new tiny parasitic braconid wasp with unusual behavior (Gómez Durán and Achterberg 2011). It was selected by the International Institute for Species Exploration and included in their 2011 top 10 list of world’s most interesting new species. Figure 4. Habitus of live Trogloraptor marchingtoni. Photo: Griswold et al. 2012. ZooKeys: doi: 10.3897/ zookeys.215.3547 Marek et al. (2012) re-described the leggiest animal in the world, the millipede lllacme plenipes, re-discovered several years ago in California. he females have up to an astounding 750 legs, outclassing the males who only have a maximum leg count of 562. Not only is this species the leggiest animal known on the planet, it also has surprising anatomical features: body hairs that produce silk, a jagged and scaly translucent exoskeleton, and comparatively massive (given its diminutive size) antennae that are used to feel its way through the dark because it lacks eyes. he video associated with the publication enjoyed more than 46,500 views in YouTube within only a month. 6 Terry Erwin et al. / ZooKeys 251: 1–10 (2012) Figure 5. Habitus of live Illacme plenipes ♀ with 170 segments and 662 legs. Photo: Marek et al. 2012. ZooKeys: doi: 10.3897/zookeys.241.3831 Four and a half years ZooKeys From the 4th of July 2008 until the 10th of December 2012 the number of published articles and monographs has reached 1,245 or 32,416 pages overall. he number of published pages has grown from 11,344 in 2011 to 12,292 in 2012 (Fig. 6). Based on the analysis of 40 randomly selected papers published in 2012, the average publication time (from submission to publication) is 95 days. he average time from submission to acceptance is 72 days, and from acceptance to publication – 23 day. 11,344 3,792 12,290 4,932 664 466 155 94 42 27 4 2008 2009 2010 Pages Arcles 180 87 32 428 2011 2012 Figure 6. Total number of published pages, articles and issues for the period 2008–2012. Issues Accelerating innovative publishing in taxonomy and systematics: 250 issues of ZooKeys 7 Altogether, 2,904 new species-group, 233 new genus-group and 19 new familygroup taxa have been published in the journal since its launch. Another 69 are currently in press (being registered in ZooBank) and will probably be published by the end of 2012 or early 2013. his makes 2,973 new taxa in total. he top 10 most accessed ZooKeys papers through the 10th of December 2012 are listed in Table 1. he remarkable discovery of the new spider family Trogloraptoridae by Griswold et al. (2012) published in August is taking unquestioningly the lead with 33,492 page views, or approximately 20,000 views more than the Bouchard et al.’s monograph (2011) “Family-Group names in Coleoptera (Insecta)” taking a second place. he total number of views of the top 10 most accessed ZooKeys articles exceeds 135,000, which along with the fact that half of them were published in 2012, speaks enough of the continuous importance of the published content and the increasing interest in taxonomic community in the ZooKeys publications as a whole. In 2012, ZooKeys continued to popularize the published research through press releases, which in most cases were broadly mirrored by the global science media and increased the visibility of the journal on the global scene. A list of the top 10 most accessed posted through EurekAlert! press releases of ZooKeys articles is given in Table 2. Top two places are taken by press releases that were viewed by more than 44,000 science media and individual journalists, third position lying far below that number attracting the attention of ‘only’ around 16,000 communication experts. he top three table 1. Top ten most viewed articles of ZooKeys (according to the ZooKeys website counter accessed on the 10th of December 2012). Article Griswold et al. 2012 – An extraordinary new family of spiders from caves in the Paciic Northwest (Araneae, Trogloraptoridae, new family) Bouchard et al. 2011 – Family-Group names in Coleoptera (Insecta) Winterton et al. 2012 – A charismatic new species of green lacewing discovered in Malaysia (Neuroptera, Chrysopidae): the conluence of citizen scientist, online image database and cybertaxonomy Sereno 2012 – Taxonomy, morphology, masticatory function and phylogeny of heterodontosaurid dinosaurs Penev et al. 2009 – Data publication and dissemination of interactive keys under the open access model Kraus 2011 – At the lower size limit for tetrapods, two new species of the miniaturized frog genus Paedophryne (Anura, Microhylidae) Hagedorn et al. 2012 – Creative Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information Kimsey and Ohl 2012 – Megalara garuda, a new genus and species of larrine wasps from Indonesia (Larrinae, Crabronidae, Hymenoptera) Sereno and Larsson 2009 – Cretaceous Crocodyliforms from the Sahara Baldwin et al. 2011 – Seven new species within western Atlantic Starksia atlantica, S. lepicoelia, and S. sluiteri (Teleostei, Labrisomidae), with comments on congruence of DNA barcodes and species Total Page views 34,003 13,619 12,776 12,724 12,307 12,139 10,885 9,698 9,392 8,087 135,119 8 Terry Erwin et al. / ZooKeys 251: 1–10 (2012) table 2. Top 10 most accessed press releases of ZooKeys articles posted through EurekAlert! (from the EurekAlert! counter) for the period 1 December 2011 – 10 December 2012. he counter registers only the downloads from EurekAlert! mostly by science media and journalists. he actual number of readers may actually be a much higher than this number. Title Megalara garuda: the King of Wasps: A new, giant wasp comes from Indonesia World’s smallest frogs discovered in New Guinea Spider version of Bigfoot emerges from caves in the Paciic Northwest he Auburn Tiger trapdoor spider -- a new species discovered from a college town backyard Millipede border control better than ours 9 colorful and endangered tree-dwelling tarantulas discovered in Brazil DNA barcoding veriied the discovery of a highly disconnected crane ly species Scorpio rising: An elusive new scorpion species from California lives underground Italian vineyards invaded from North America by new species of leafminer A new, beautifully colored lizard discovered in the Peruvian Andes: Named ‘mountain dweller’, it is the highest-altitude living member of its genus Author/s and year of publication of the original article Kimsey, Ohl 2012 Kraus 2011 Griswold et al. 2012 Bond et al. 2012 Mesibov 2011 Bertani 2012 Pilipenko et al. 2012 Webber et al. 2012 Nieukerken et al. 2012 Chávez, Vásquez 2012 Date posted 23-Mar2012 12-Dec2011 17-Aug2012 8-May-2012 23-Dec2011 30-Oct2012 18-May2012 23-Mar2012 23-Feb2012 17-Feb2012 Page views since posted 44,669 44,247 16,361 5,012 4,592 4,252 4,205 3,247 3,160 3,093 most accessed press releases logically ind place also in the “top 10” list of most viewed papers on the ZooKeys website. In conclusion, Pensoft Publishers’ lagship taxonomic journal ZooKeys continues to experience growth in 2012. Furthermore, ZooKeys continues to evolve its editorial worklow, constantly implementing new and improved publishing and dissemination technologies, thus always being on point for digital biodiversity science. his is backed up by the fact that the Impact Factor of ZooKeys has increased from 0.517 to 0.897 in 2011, and is expected to continue growing due to the high quality and great visibility of the published content. We are deeply indebted to all our authors, reviewers, subject editors, and readers, and journalistic followers without whose support ZooKeys would not have become such a successful journal! We also thank Rich Pyle for providing information on the new taxa registered in ZooBank. Accelerating innovative publishing in taxonomy and systematics: 250 issues of ZooKeys 9 references Baldwin CC, Castillo CI, Weigt LA, Victor BC (2011) Seven new species within western Atlantic Starksia atlantica, S. lepicoelia, and S. sluiteri (Teleostei, Labrisomidae), with comments on congruence of DNA barcodes and species. ZooKeys 79: 21–72. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.79.1045 Bertani R (2012) Revision, cladistic analysis and biogeography of Typhochlaena C. L. Koch, 1850, Pachistopelma Pocock, 1901 and Iridopelma Pocock, 1901 (Araneae, heraphosidae, Aviculariinae). ZooKeys 230: 1–94. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.230.3500 Blagoderov V, Smith VS (2012) Bringing collections out of the dark. In: Blagoderov V, Smith VS (Ed) No specimen left behind: mass digitization of natural history collections. ZooKeys 209: 1–6. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.209.3699 Bond JE, Hamilton CA, Garrison NL, Ray CH (2012) Phylogenetic reconsideration of Myrmekiaphila systematics with a description of the new trapdoor spider species Myrmekiaphila tigris (Araneae, Mygalomorphae, Cyrtaucheniidae, Euctenizinae) from Auburn, Alabama. ZooKeys 190: 95–109. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.190.3011 Bouchard P, Bousquet Y, Davies AE, Alonso-Zarazaga MA, Lawrence JF, Lyal CHC, Newton AF, Reid CAM, Schmitt M, Ślipiński SA, Smith ABT (2011) Family-group names in Coleoptera (Insecta). ZooKeys 88: 1–972. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.88.807 Cerretti P, Tschorsnig H-P, Lopresti M, Di Giovanni F (2012) MOSCHweb — a matrix-based interactive key to the genera of the Palaearctic Tachinidae (Insecta, Diptera). ZooKeys 205: 5–18. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.205.3409 Chávez G, Vásquez D (2012) A new species of Andean semiaquatic lizard of the genus Potamites (Sauria, Gymnophtalmidae) from southern Peru. ZooKeys 168: 31–44. doi: 10.3897/ zookeys.168.2048 Gómez Durán J-M, van Achterberg C (2011) Oviposition behaviour of four ant parasitoids (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, Euphorinae, Neoneurini and Ichneumonidae, Hybrizontinae), with the description of three new European species. ZooKeys 125: 59–106. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.125.1754 Griswold CE, Audisio T, Ledford JM (2012) An extraordinary new family of spiders from caves in the Paciic Northwest (Araneae, Trogloraptoridae, new family). ZooKeys 215: 77–102. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.215.3547 Hagedorn G, Mietchen D, Morris RA, Agosti D, Penev L, Berendsohn WG, Hobern D (2011) Creative Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information. In: Smith V, Penev L (Eds) e-Infrastructures for data publishing in biodiversity science. 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ZooKeys 241: 77–112. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.241.3831 Mesibov R (2011) A remarkable case of mosaic parapatry in millipedes. In: Mesibov R, Short M (Eds) Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Myriapodology, 18-22 July 2011, Brisbane, Australia. ZooKeys 156: 71–84. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.156.1893 Nieukerken EJ van, Wagner DL, Baldessari M, Mazzon L, Angeli G, Girolami V, Duso C, Doorenweerd C (2012) Antispila oinophylla new species (Lepidoptera, Heliozelidae), a new North American grapevine leafminer invading Italian vineyards: taxonomy, DNA barcodes and life cycle. ZooKeys 170: 29–77. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.170.2617 Penev L, Sharkey M, Erwin T, van Noort S, Buington M, Seltmann K, Johnson N, Taylor M, hompson FC, Dallwitz MJ (2009) Data publication and dissemination of interactive keys under the open access model: ZooKeys working example. ZooKeys 21: 1–17. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.21.274 Penev L, Cerretti P, Tschorsnig H-P, Lopresti M, Di Giovanni F, Georgiev T, Stoev P (2012) Publishing online identiication keys in the form of scholarly papers. ZooKeys 205: 1–3. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.205.3581 Pilipenko VE, Salmela J, Vesterinen EJ (2012) Description and DNA barcoding of Tipula (Pterelachisus) recondita sp. n. from the Palaearctic region (Diptera, Tipulidae). ZooKeys 192: 51–65. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.192.2364 Rittmeyer EN, Allison A, Gründler MC, hompson DK, Austin CC (2012) Ecological Guild Evolution and the Discovery of the World’s Smallest Vertebrate. PLoS ONE 7(1): e29797. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0029797 Sereno PC (2012) Taxonomy, morphology, masticatory function and phylogeny of heterodontosaurid dinosaurs. ZooKeys 226: 1–225. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.226.2840 Sereno PC, Larsson HCE (2009) Cretaceous Crocodyliforms from the Sahara. ZooKeys 28: 1–143. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.28.325 Shaverdo HV, Surbakti S, Hendrich L, Balke M (2012) Introduction of the Exocelina ekarigroup with descriptions of 22 new species from New Guinea (Coleoptera, Dytiscidae, Copelatinae). ZooKeys 250: 1–76. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.250.3715 Webber MM, Graham MR, Jaeger JR (2012) Wernerius inyoensis, an elusive new scorpion from the Inyo Mountains of California (Scorpiones, Vaejovidae). ZooKeys 177: 1–13. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.177.2562 Winterton SL, Guek HP, Brooks SJ (2012) A charismatic new species of green lacewing discovered in Malaysia (Neuroptera, Chrysopidae): the conluence of citizen scientist, online image database and cybertaxonomy. ZooKeys 214: 1–11. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.214.3220