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
Growth of submitted manuscripts and published articles in ZooKeys from 2008 to 2018 (*until 27.6.2018).
Total number of submitted manuscripts published articles, and printed pages since 2008. No accurate data for number of submissions 2008–2010.
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| 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 |
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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
New taxa published in ZooKeys, registered in ZooBank (courtesy of Richard Pyle; *until 27.6.2018).
New taxa published in ZooKeys, registered in ZooBank (courtesy of Richard Pyle).
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| 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 |
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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
New technological solutions implemented in the journal.
| Feature | For the benefit of: | Link | Use |
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| Automatic registrations of reviews at Publons | Reviewers and Editors |
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Publons helps reviewers and editors get recognition for every review they make for the journal. |
| Dimensions | Authors, editors, administrators, publisher |
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Powerful tracker of citations; provides ranking of given research in a given field |
| Scopus CiteScore Metrics | Authors, editors, administrators, publisher |
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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 |
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Increases visibility and traceability of article and sub-article elements |
| Hypothes.is | Authors, readers |
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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
The ten most viewed ZooKeys articles can be seen in Table
ZooKeys articles by number of views.
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| 56191 | 62724 | |
| 51668 | 55952 | |
| 32446 | 36687 | |
| 24654 | 33103 | |
| 27168 | 30394 | |
| 27173 | 29685 | |
| 25329 | 28429 | |
| 22795 | 28258 | |
| 14515 | 25536 | |
| 24477 | 14876 | |
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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.
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
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
The top ten ZooKeys papers that attracted largest media interest.
| Article | Press release | Media coverage |
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Science Daily, Physorg, Health Medicine Network | |
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Science Newsline, Physorg, Health Medicine Network, I4U News | |
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New York Times, The Guardian, Galileo, Gazeta.ru, New York Daily News | |
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The Scientist Magazine, Fox News, Science News | |
| Savary and Bryson Jr (2016) |
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Science Daily, Physorg, Health Medicine Network |
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CNN, BBC News, CBS News, The Guardian, The Columbian, Spiegel, Gazeta.ru | |
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BBC Focus Science & Technology, Science News, Gazeta.ru, Science Daily | |
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CNN, CBS News, The Straits Times, The Independent, Gazeta.ru, Focus, Galileo | |
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Nature World News, Health Medicine Network, Physorg | |
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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
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.