The "Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien" between tradition and innovation: A tale of more than 180 years of scientific publishing

The “Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien” between tradition and innovation: A tale of more than 180 years of scientific publishing Nesrine Akkari1, Anna E. Weinmann1, Andrea Krapf1, Andreas Kroh1 1 Natural History Museum Vienna, Vienna, Austria https://zoobank.org/DBA87795-A3E2-4D23-90BF-B8360C28AF3A Corresponding author: Nesrine Akkari ([email protected]) Published 10 November 2025 Established in 1836 as the “Annalen des Wiener Museums der Naturgeschichte”, the journal of the Natural History Museum Vienna (NHMW) left its imprint in time as one of the oldest periodicals in Europe with a long-lasting tradition of scientific publishing. In light of the firm believe that the main purpose of the “Hof-Naturalien-Cabinet” (the imperial predecessor institution of the NHMW) was beyond that of cumulating natural history objects in collections, but instead was meant to promote scientific research in general, the journal was created to allow researchers, e.g. employees of the “Hof-Naturalien-Cabinet”, foreign and native scholars including young Austrian naturalists, to present the results of their studies (Schreibers 1836). The first volume of the journal was published in 1836, followed by a second one in 1840 (Fig. 1), both edited by the Austrian naturalist and then director of the Viennese natural history collections (Hof-Naturalien-Cabinet) Carl Franz Anton von Schreibers (1775–1852). Thereafter, the publication of the journal had been interrupted for many years due to financial difficulties. However, it resumed in 1886 as the “Annalen des k. k. naturhistorischen Hofmuseums” (volume 1) (Fig. 2A) until 1917 (volume 31) (Fig. 2B) and “Annalen des Naturhistorischen Hofmuseums” in 1918 (volume 32) (Fig. 2C), before it became the “Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien” as we knew it until today (Fig. 2D). ANHMW 126 2025, 1–4 DOI 10.3897/anhmw.168572 Copyright Nesrine Akkari et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Figure 1. Covers of the first and second volumes of the Annals of the Natural History Museum Vienna as “Annalen des Wiener Museums der Naturgeschichte”. A. First volume published in 1936; B. Second volume published in 1940. anhmw.pensoft.net Nesrine Akkari et al.: The Annals between tradition and innovation2 The journal has regularly been published and printed almost annually (interrupted mainly during the second world war). In 1980 (volume 84), the publications were divided into three separate series, namely “Serie A” (earth sciences, anthropology, prehistory, and the history of the museum), “Serie B” (zoology and botany), and “Serie C” (annual reports) (Fig. 3A–C), the latter was discontinued after volume 92 in 1988. Besides being a valuable venue for scientific publications, the journal did also play an important role in the library exchange that already took place in the 19th century with 314 exchange partners in 1886, a number that reached a peak of 920 in 1998 (Gaal and Vitek 1998). Figure 2. The different covers with different titles of the Annals of the Natural History Museum Vienna in the period between 1886 and 1921. A, B. “Annalen des k. k. naturhistorischen Hofmuseums”, volume 1 and 31 in 1886 and 1917, respectively; C. “Annalen des Naturhistorischen Hofmuseums”, volume 32 in 1918; D. “Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien”, volume 33 published in 1920. Annals of the Natural History Museum Vienna 126 2025, 1–4 anhmw.pensoft.net 3 Figure 3. The series of the “Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien”, volume 84, published in 1980. A. “Serie A” (earth sciences, anthropology, prehistory, and the history of the museum); B. “Serie B” (zoology and botany); C. “Serie C” (annual reports, discontinued in 1988); D, E. Covers of Volume 125 of the Annals of the Natural History Museum Vienna before the transition to Pensoft. D. Serie A, published in 2024; E. Serie B, published in 2023. A B C D E The scientific journal of the Natural History Museum Vienna continues to evolve, embracing the rapid and incessant development of the publishing technologies of our time. Connecting the achievements of the past with the needs of the scientific community today, the decision was made to relaunch the museum’s scientific journal, reuniting the series under an English title “Annals of the Natural History Museum Vienna”. Volume 125 is the last published with series A and B being separate (Fig. 3D, E). The present volume (126) and forthcoming ones will combine the series A and B and embark on a complete novel area of modern publishing in collaboration with Pensoft Publishers (as a co-publisher). It is also worth mentioning that the entomological journal “Quadrifina – Bulletin of Research on the Lepidoptera”, which was running since 1998, is discontinued and the authors are anhmw.pensoft.net Nesrine Akkari et al.: The Annals between tradition and innovation4 now encouraged to submit their research to the Annals of the Natural History Museum Vienna. The journal will also change to a continuous publication model, with articles published online as soon as the review process, with acceptance of the publications, is finalized. Pagination of subsequent articles published within the same year will continue from the previous article within each volume. At the end of the year, all articles will be included in a printed volume available through library exchange to preserve the journals contents for future generations in the classic form of a paper copy. The Annals of the Natural History Museum Vienna will continue its role as an international, peer-reviewed scientific journal that focuses on topics related to the scientific collections of the museum and its current research projects, covering the fields of anthropology, biosciences, earth sciences, genetics, prehistory, and the history of the museum. At the same time, the collaboration with Pensoft Publishers marks a significant transition to a technologically modern diamond open access publishing using the ARPHA platform (https:// arphahub.com/about/platform). The journal will enjoy a tremendous upgrade of the way it is presented and published, ensuring a better visibility to the scientific community and general public, and a long-term sustainability. These goals will be achieved by introducing new procedures to streamline the general workflow for authors, editors, and reviewers, and shorten the processing time for publication and, most importantly, for the readers by providing DOIs for all articles, thus making citation and inclusion in reference managers much easier. The submission, peer review, and production processes of the journal are moving to a newly designed website (https://anhmw.pensoft.net/). Contributions presented as standard research articles, short communications, obituaries, method articles, and reviews in relation with the topics mentioned above will be considered for publication. All published articles will appear in different formats (HTML, JATS XML, high-resolution full colour PDF) and enjoy semantic enhancements. Contents of the published articles will also be converted into Linked Open Data and OpenBiodiv Biodiversity knowledge graphs. In order to satisfy the nomenclatural requirements for electronic publications, all published articles will be indexed and archived in international repositories such as Zenodo, CLOCKSS, Portico and others, while nomenclatural acts such as new species descriptions will be registered in ZooBank. Collaborating with Pensoft and applying state-ofthe-art publishing methods will hopefully make the journal more appealing to the scientific community and the public. This will ensure the journal's long-term viability as a valuable legacy deeply embedded in the scientific publishing tradition of the Natural History Museum Vienna. Acknowledgements We are grateful to all authors who chose this journal as a venue for their research and to all scientists who acted as editors, subject editors and reviewers of the previous volumes, devoting time and effort to ensure the high quality of the published articles and the continuity of the journal. References Gaal S, Vitek E (1998) Die Publikationsreihen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien. Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museum in Wien, Serie B 100: 11–14. Schreibers CV (1836) Vorwort. Annalen des Wiener Museums der Naturgeschichte I: III–IV.