YOUR GO-TO INTELLIGENCE RESOURCE FOR THE SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

In a groundbreaking pilot project earlier this year, Knowledge Pixels, a high-tech startup, and Pensoft, an open-access scholarly publisher and technology provider, introduced a revolutionary workflow aimed at sharing and preserving scientific discoveries through nanopublications.

Nanopublications complement traditional scientific narratives with concise, machine-actionable statements that enhance sharing, discoverability, accessibility, citability, and interoperability of scientific knowledge. This approach not only simplifies tracing findings to their sources and tracking updates but also enhances the traceability of biodiversity data.

These semantic statements, grounded in community-accepted terms and openly linked to controlled vocabularies, ontologies, and standards, are freely accessible to all in both human-readable and machine-actionable formats. They are designed to be easily processed by computer algorithms and AI-powered tools.

Building on their initial pilot project, and with support from the Horizon 2020-funded BiCIKL (Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library) project, these collaborators have extended their work within the Biodiversity Data Journal. They have created a specialized nanopublication solution to address the pressing need for FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data in the field of biodiversity science.

Researchers in biodiversity science often require access to extensive and diverse datasets, including information about organism groups, classifications, collections, authors, and genetic sequences. However, this valuable data is typically scattered across numerous articles or fragmented databases, presenting a significant obstacle to progress in biodiversity research, conservation, and ecosystem restoration.

With the newly introduced nanopublication workflow, biodiversity researchers can seamlessly integrate nanopublications into their manuscripts to safeguard their critical assertions regarding biological taxa, organisms, or statements about associations of taxa or organisms with their environments.

Furthermore, authors have the flexibility to create standalone nanopublications that comment on or derive from existing research published in academic journals or other citable sources, regardless of the source's authorship.

This innovative approach to scientific publishing promises to revolutionize the way biodiversity knowledge is generated, shared, and accessed. It not only facilitates more effective collaboration among researchers but also accelerates progress in understanding and conserving our natural world.