image: This is the cover of the forthcoming first issue of MycoKeys. view more
Credit: Pensoft Publishers
MycoKeys – a new journal in systematic and biology of fungi (including lichens) was launched by Pensoft Publishers. The Editor-in-Chief of the new journal is Dr Thorsten Lumbsch from The Field Museum, Chicago assisted by an authoritative Editorial Team. All content is published open access and is free to read, download, print, and distribute.
MycoKeys builds upon the success of its sister journals ZooKeys and PhytoKeys. It is more than a journal. It is a linked environment built upon its own content management software. MycoKeys offers numerous innovative ways to publish and disseminate information on the taxonomy and ecology of fungi (including lichens). The journal will provide mandatory registration of all new taxa in MycoBank. All new species will be supplied by the publisher to the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), Globalnalmes, the Plazi Treatment Repository and the Wiki Species-ID on the day of publication of the article. The content of the article itself will be marked-up at the level of taxonomic descriptions, taxon names, citations and references, identification keys, georeferenced localities, and other taxon information.
MycoKeys provides automated cross-linking through the Pensoft Taxon Profile of all taxa names mentioned on its pages with major indexing and aggregation platforms, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Encyclopedia ofLife (EOL), the International Plant Name Index (IPNI), MycoBank, Index Fungorum, the National Center for Biodiversity Information (NCBI), Genbank and Barcode of Life , the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), PubMed, PubMedCentral, Mendeley and many others.
MycoKeys will provide a strong support and infrastructure for open data publishing, either as supplementary data and/or multimedia files or through internationally recognized indexers (GBIF) and data repositories, such as Genbank, Barcode of Life, Dryad, TreeBASE, Pangaea and others.
MycoKeys will increase public awareness of science results in all aspects of mycology and lichenology through its own established system of press releases and news announcements associated to published articles, to mass media, science and general blogs, social networks and others.
"This in exciting time for systematic mycology, with rapid advances being made through molecular phylogenetic approaches, and the concomitant development of online information repositories. Increasingly effective ways of making the results of such work rapidly and widely available are required. MycoKeys is especially attractive as it provides a means of promptly disseminating substantial works with large numbers of coloured photographs at no cost to the authors. It does this with an innovative publishing approach, with fair open access policies, and most significantly a linked association with the world's leading biodiversity platforms and databases. " said Professor David L. Hawksworth CBE, an Honorary President of the International Mycological Association.
"Undoubtedly, there is a growing need of an authoritative, cutting-edge technology journal in mycology to respond to the challenges of cybertaxonomy era and especially of the forthcoming semantic Web of linked data. The phenomenal success of ZooKeys in zoological systematics, and the excellent start of PhytoKeys in botany, on which experience MycoKeys builds upon, convinced a team of editors from leading mycological institutions to put efforts in establishing of a just new-generation mycology journal" adds Dr Thorsten Lumbsch, Editor-in-Chief of MycoKeys.
MycoKeys is published in four different formats: (1) high-resolution, full-color print version (2) PDF identical to the printed version; (3) HTML to provide links to external resources and semantic enhancements to published texts for interactive reading; (4) XML version compatible to PubMedCentral archiving and providing a machine-readable copy to facilitate future data mining. Neither restriction nor charges are imposed on the use of color illustrations.
MycoKeys will be presented at the International Botanical Congress (IBC2011, Booth No 21) in Melbourne (24-30 July 2011) and at all forthcoming international mycological congresses and conferences. Mycologists and lichenologists are welcome to submit manuscripts and discuss innovative publishing projects.
Posted by Pensoft Publishers.
Journal
MycoKeys