Content from 15 journals published by Pensoft will now be archived in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), the world’s largest open-access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives.
A global consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries, BHL digitises and freely shares essential biodiversity materials. A critical resource for researchers, it provides vital access to material that might otherwise be difficult to obtain.
Under the agreement, over 16,000 articles published by Pensoft are now available on BHL . Both legacy content and new articles are made available on the platform, complete with full-text PDFs and all relevant metadata.
More Pensoft journals will gradually be added to the BHL archive.
Pensoft content in BHL will be included in the Library's full-text search, allowing researchers to easily locate relevant publications. Crucially, the scientific names within the articles will be indexed using the Global Names Architecture , enabling seamless discovery of information about specific taxa across the BHL collection.
This automated workflow is facilitated by the ARPHA platform and uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) to enable exposure and harvesting of repository metadata.
“Pensoft is pleased to collaborate with BHL in our joint mission to support global biodiversity research through free access to knowledge. Thanks to this integration, content in our journals will become even more accessible and readily discoverable, helping researchers find the biodiversity information they need,” said Prof. Lyubomir Penev, CEO and founder of Pensoft.
The news comes soon after BHL announced it is about to face a major shift in its operation. From 2026, the Smithsonian Institution - one of BHL’s 10 founding members - will cease to host the administrative and technical components of BHL. As the consortium explores a range of options, the BHL team is confident that "the transition opens the door to a reimagined and more sustainable future for BHL."
List of the 15 journals published by Pensoft already archived in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (as of May 2025):
Biodiversity Data Journal
BioRisk
Comparative Cytogenetics
Contributions to Entomology
Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift
International Journal of Myriapodology
Journal of Hymenoptera Research
Journal of Orthoptera Research
MycoKeys
Nature Conservation
NeoBiota
PhytoKeys
Subterranean Biology
Zookeys
Zoosystematics and Evolution
Additional information:
About BHL:
BHL is a global consortium of member organizations that contribute annual membership fees, in-kind contributions, and – most importantly – content. The consortium is currently run by a small secretariat and a technical team. Its working data (~250 GB) and software is hosted on 7 servers (4 physical, 3 virtual) at the Smithsonian Institution. BHL’s 40 terabytes of digitized images, data, and OCR text are generously hosted free of charge by the Internet Archive and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Open Data Sponsorship Program.
About Pensoft:
Pensoft is an independent academic publishing company, well known worldwide for its novel cutting-edge publishing tools, workflows and methods for text and data publishing of journals, books and conference materials. Through its Research and Technical Development department, the company is involved in various research and technology projects. Pensoft also provides services in website design and development, building of integrated publishing platforms and in science communication. For more information about Pensoft, please visit pensoft.net .