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Setting Up an Open Access Journal

Setting Up an Open Access Journal

A Texas Digital Library Guidebook

Setting Up an Open Access Journal using the Open Journal System

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NEW JOURNAL PLANNING

Questions to Ask Before you Begin

In addition to choosing what type of journal to publish, content, and title, there are a number of other decisions that you will need to make during the planning stage. Whether you are launching a new journal or transitioning an existing journal to Open Journal Systems (OJS), consider the following questions:

  • What need will your journal be filling?

  • Are you offering a unique contribution to the field?

  • What discipline(s) does this journal fall into?

  • How will the journal be funded? Time and money?

  • Who will be on the editorial board?

  • Do you have defined aims and scope?

  • Who is the journal for?

  • What type of material will be accepted?

  • How often will issues be published?

  • How will you recruit items for the journal?

  • Is the journal going to be peer-reviewed?

  • Who can be a peer reviewer?

  • What will the copyright policy be?

Guides to Setting up an OA Journal

There are many paths to open access publishing and elements to consider in your planning. A key element in an open access publishing model is making the research information available to readers at no cost, as opposed to the traditional subscription model for paywall-only access through a subscription (usually via an institutional library). Below are guides to resources on setting up an OA journal:

Generating a New Journal Prospectus

  • TDL Open Journal Hosting Application

    • Name of journal

    • Slug for journal (an abbreviated form of the journal title that serves as part of the website URL after journals.tdl.org/...)

    • Name and email address(es) for Journal Manager(s)

    • Purpose and scope of journal

    • Plan for publication, including publication frequency, editorial board, journal staffing, and estimated timeline to first issue)

    • Is this an existing journal with back issues that must be migrated?

      • If so, how many issues?

      • How many articles?

      • In what format are the articles (e.g. PDF)?

      • In what platform do the issues currently reside (e.g. OJS, Bepress journal, on a hard drive, etc.)?

    • What is your Open Access policy?

    • What language(s) does the journal use?

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

OPEN JOURNAL HOSTING SERVICE

The Texas Digital Library (TDL) hosts peer-reviewed Open Access scholarly journals using Open Journal Systems (OJS), the world's most widely used journal management and publishing system. OJS is an open source software platform developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), "a multi-university initiative developing (free) open source software and conducting research to improve the quality and reach of scholarly publishing."

Faculty, staff, and students at TDL member institutions who subscribe to this service can set up and publish an online journal without any costs to faculty for the software or TDL technical assistance.

TDL’s open journal software helps with every stage of peer-reviewed publishing, handling online submissions from authors, managing the peer-review process, publishing issues online, and indexing content. Workflow for faculty, staff, and student journals are managed within the software.

If you’re new to OJS, there are many resources available to help familiarize and guide you through the process. More information is available on the TDL OJS Hosting guide, below, and through the PKP School with online, self-paced courses to help teach basic OJS concepts and skills divided into a series of modules.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Roles and Responsibilities for Service Provision

The Journal Hosting service is a collaboration among (at least) three parties, each with important roles to maintaining a successful journal:

  • Journal Team (including the Journal Manager(s), Editors(s), other journal staff and Editorial Board), which undertakes the work of policy setting, workflow decision-making, and editorial workflow management within the journal site. The Journal Team is also responsible for custom site design.

  • The Library, which serves as a liaison between the TDL and the Journal Team and provides value-added services like consulting on scholarly communications issues.

  • The Texas Digital Library, which provides hosting and technical support for the journal.

Roles and Responsibilities for Journal Team

In addition to your institutions’ Library Liaison(s) and the Texas Digital Library, your Journal Team will have important roles in the process. Key roles for your Journal Team Members:

  • Managing Editor This person is the main contact for the journal and is responsible for assigning articles to reviewers or editorial board members.

  • Editorial Board - The board is absolutely crucial. Every journal should have a board willing to serve, before setting up the journal. An editorial board should be made up of respected individuals in the field.

What will be the structure of your editorial board?

  • Are the editorial board going to be faculty members?

  • How are you going to recruit for the editorial board?

  • Do they have a range of expertise?

  • How much work is expected of editorial board members?

  • What will be the term and process for regular replacement/ongoing reappointment of members?

  • How many members will you need on your editorial board?

  • Reviewers - People knowledgeable in the field who are willing to read and review the articles that are submitted to the journal.

    • How will you solicit reviewers?

    • How many peer reviews are needed?

    • How long will you give your reviewers to review the papers?

Elements of TDL Journal Hosting Service

The Texas Digital Library (TDL) provides hosting and professional management of OJS installations in the Amazon Cloud including:

  • Journal hosting through OJS

    • A journal website

    • Online submission tools

    • Editorial administration tools for managing the peer review and copy-editing workflows, and for creating online issues

    • Reporting on acceptance rates and journal usage, including via optional integration with Google Analytics

    • The ability to configure submission requirements, sections, and review processes

    • Indexing of content with search engines

  • All system administration tasks handled by TDL staff.

  • Asynchronous training and documentation available for Journal Teams via PKP.

  • TDL Helpdesk support for library staff, Journal Teams, and other users (e.g. peer reviewers, readers, etc.).

TDL currently deploys new journals in OJS version 3.2.1.4 (as of June 2019)

If you would like to create an e-journal, please contact the TDL Helpdesk via web form or email (support@tdl.org).

Hosting Policies and Requirements

Faculty, staff, and students at TDL member institutions with OJS hosting are eligible for free hosting and technical support for open access, peer-reviewed journals. Below are general criteria and guidelines. Contact your local library liaison(s) for more information.

  • Eligibility: Journal Managers must be affiliated with a TDL member institution. If journal management transfers to individuals affiliated with another institution, the sponsoring TDL Member Institution may choose to continue sponsorship of the journal at their discretion.

    • Journal teams may apply for a TDL-hosted journal site via the TDL Helpdesk. More information on the TDL Wiki Starting a New Journal.

    • Student-run journals must be sponsored by a faculty member or academic department.

    • TDL does not provide hosting services to individuals or individual journals outside of institutional memberships.

    • TDL Member Institutions may have additional eligibility requirements.

  • Open Access. TDL-hosted journals must have a posted Open Access policy that provides free access to published articles.

  • Migration. TDL can provide support for migration of OJS journals hosted elsewhere. It does not currently provide system administration support for journals currently housed in other platforms (such as WordPress or BePress). That said, OJS does come with import tools and a Quick Submit plugin that can help Journal Teams move issue and article archives into a new TDL-hosted journal.

  • Theming. TDL journals come out of the box with several theme options. Journal teams may use these theming options or adapt and upload customized CSS for their journal site. TDL does not at this time provide theme customization services.

  • Code customization. TDL does not provide customization services that require changes to the php code.

POLICIES & GOVERNANCE

Best practice indicates establishing policies for journal managers, editors, as well as authors in order to establish guidance on issues such as publishing, copyright and licensing, as well as journal governance and editorial policies. SPARC offers guidance and examples in these areas. Please note, these are suggestions on how to set up policies for individual journals, TDL member institutions may have additional policies as to how to start a new journal on your campus. Please contact your library liaison for more information.

Publishing Policies, Copyright and Licensing

  • SPARC offers guidance on Publishing Program Policies:

    • Examples for Submission and Content Policy are included

    • Examples for Access and Preservation Policy are also included

Governance and Editorial Policies

PROCESSES & MANAGEMENT

Staffing

When starting a new journal, there are many considerations, and those include accounting for sustainability in staffing and time commitments. Recruiting members for the journal’s editorial board should be one of the first actions. A strong editorial board of leaders in the field and those with a commitment to the journal help build the credibility of the journal and attract submissions and reviewers.

Some tips to help you get started:

  • Reach out to established scholars in your field. These may be colleagues at your institution or elsewhere that are willing to actively participate and collaborate in building and sustaining your journal.

  • Start with a small group on the editorial board and, as needed, those can recommend other new members to bring on board.

  • Reach out to your institution’s departmental faculty and ask around for recommendations to discuss the topics and issues that you will be addressing in the journal.

Students often play an integral role in journal publishing. These may be undergraduate or graduate students serving as editors, reviewers, and/or authors. Involving students in an open access journal provides hands-on experience and opportunities to be involved in all areas of academic publishing. A requirement for the TDL OJS hosting service is that journals that incorporate students must also have at least one faculty sponsor from the member institution.

Some tips for including students in journal staffing:

  • Keep in mind that student efforts with the journal will likely be time-limited. Students will be managing time between other coursework and move on after graduation.

  • Incorporate documentation for all roles, and especially for student roles. These can serve as reference points and be updated later as new students are brought in.

  • Consider timelines and having current students begin training incoming students before they graduate. This offers valuable experience to the students as part of their role in the journal publication process.

Roles in OJS

In the OJS system, users must have one or more roles. Roles define what a user can do within the system. One user can have more than one Role, for example, being a Journal Manager, Editor, and Author in the same journal. OJS includes multiple roles available with different permission levels.

Journal Managers can add, edit, disable, and remove a user account, and assign one or more of the 17 default roles to the journal account. These roles have six permission levels: Journal manager, author, reader, reviewer, section editor, and assistant. A brief explanation of each permission level is available in Settings > Users & Roles > Roles > Help.

To access, Journal Managers can go to the Settings > Users & Roles > Roles to view the default roles. This page displays each role in the editorial stage and allows the Journal Manager to check or uncheck a box to define the access and permissions. These are default roles, but the Journal Manager also has the option for Editing Roles or Creating New Roles.

Tip: The Role setting determines the list of Participants you can assign tasks to (see Assign your team to their roles). Click on Help in the upper right corner to read more about how to invite participants to the workflow.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Editorial Workflow

In OJS 3, the editorial workflow consists of the following four stages:

  1. Submission

  2. Review

  3. Copyediting

  4. Production

In Dashboard → Submissions → All Active, you’ll see all submissions in progress. The progress status is marked by the current workflow stage.

Submissions

This is where new submissions land while being assigned to Section Editors and considered for moving into the Review stage. This is where the journal editor/manager can modify the metadata, check the editorial history, assign tasks to fellow staff members, and initiate discussions.

Note: Some submissions are clearly inappropriate and never make it beyond this stage.

In Dashboard → Submissions, a click on the article title or author names will lead you to the detailed submission record (as shown below):

This is where the journal editor/manager can modify the metadata, check the editorial history, assign tasks to fellow staff members, and initiate discussions.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Review

This is where the peer review happens, as well as any revisions required by the author. Some submissions will not pass review and end here. Those that are accepted move to the next stage. It is important to note that open access journals provide service to the academic community with advantages in increasing access and furthering research. It is equally imperative that open access journals consistently apply rigorous processes from article submission through publication.

Types of Review

  • Editorial review: An assessment of an article undertaken by members of the editorial staff. For some sections of the journal, such as book reviews and commentaries, an editorial review may be the only assessment for an article. Editorial review can also be a part of the peer-review process. The purpose is to evaluate if the article is within the journal’s publishing scope and of sufficient quality to send out for peer review.

  • Peer review: The process of obtaining advice on individual manuscripts from experts in the field who are NOT part of the journal’s editorial staff. Peer review is the widely accepted method for validating the quality of a research article. It is a crucial step for:

    • Journal content quality assurance

    • Managing competition for publication space

    • Meeting the precondition to be indexed by major databases, such as PubMed, Scopus, DOAJ, etc.

Journals typically have one to three reviewers per article. The peer review procedures and policies should be clearly described on the journal’s website.

Reviewer Guidelines

It is important for journals to provide guidelines for reviewers. This provides a framework for the reviewers’ assessment. Some journals also provide forms or rubrics for their peer reviewers.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

For setting up your journal’s review guidelines, see also the Editorial Workflow in OJS 3 document. The editorial and review process workflows are further explained in the below flowchart:

(Image credit: Image credit. © Jessica Lange. Licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 International)

Types of Peer Review

Type of peer review

Description

Benefits

Drawbacks

Single-blind review

Authors’ names are disclosed to reviewers, but reviewers are anonymous to authors.

Encourage reviewers to give feedback without fear of a negative reaction from the author(s).

Potential bias on the reviewer’s part based on the author rather than the article itself.

Double-blind review

Both the reviewer and the author are anonymous.

Reduce potential reviewer bias based on an author's country of origin, previous work, affiliation, or reputation.

Lack of information about the author that may assist in completing the review.

Open review

Names of both the author and reviewers are available, and the review may be made publicly available.

Encourage honest, accountable reviewing and persuade reviewers to do a thorough job.

Reviewers’ concerns about the consequences of being identified as the source of a negative review and the potential inclination of refusing to review in an open system.

 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Set up Review

In the Dashboard of your OJS account, in the Navigation panel, choose Settings → Workflow → Review. You can set up the following:

  • Reviewing deadlines

  • Automated email reminders for reviewers

  • Peer review type

  • Feedback form for reviewers

Watch the PKP video tutorial here: Setting up your journal in OJS 3: Module 9 Unit 3 or on YouTube: Module 9 Unit 3.

Implement Reviews

For a demonstration of reviewer assignment, watch the PKP video tutorial here: Editorial Workflow in OJS 3: Module 5 Assigning a Reviewer or on YouTube: Module 5.

To see how to respond to a review, watch the PKP video tutorial here: Editorial Workflow in OJS 3: Module 7 Responding to the Reviews or on YouTube: Module 7.

Tip! If you have reviewers who are new to OJS, you can send them this 6-minute PKP tutorial link: Editorial Workflow in OJS 3: Module 6 The Reviewer’s Steps or the YouTube link: Module 6.

Ensure Blind Peer Review

In Dashboard → Submissions→ My Queue (or All Active), click on the article title to get access to the detailed submission record. Click on Add Reviewer (as shown below).

 

Choose Double-blind, Blind, or Open in the bottom of the pop-up window (as shown below).

NOTE: If you have decided on Double-blind or Blind peer review for your journal content, you need to customize the review setting before you proceed to the editorial workflow.

In Settings→ Workflow → Review, check the box for “Present a link to ‘Ensuring a Blind Review’ during upload” (as shown below):

With this option chosen, your authors will see an “Ensuring a Blind Review” link when they are making a new submission:

Clicking on the “Ensuring a Blind Review” link will bring out a checklist for removing the identities of the authors and/or the reviewers. Here is the checklist for your reference:

  • The authors’/reviewers’ names are removed from the manuscript text

  • With Microsoft Office documents, author/reviewer identification can be removed from the properties of the file. In File → Info → Check for Issues → Inspect Document, check the box of “Document Properties and Personal Information,” and click on Inspect. Then click on Remove.

  • With PDFs, you can anonymize the file by removing the metadata. Choose File → Properties → Description, and remove all the personal information about the authors/reviewers.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Copyediting

Manuscripts that have been revised based on peer-review suggestions and have been accepted for publication are then usually assigned for copyediting.

Copyeditors will:

  1. Polish the language, including spelling, grammar, terminology, and making improvements for the manuscript wherever necessary.

  2. Check style and formatting

Each journal should have a style manual of its own. You can find an off-the-shelf manual that works for your journal content, such as The Chicago Manual of Style, Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, etc. Or you could put together your own guide based on the speciality of your content. Typically, copyeditors will check the references against the reference style the journal adopts.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Production

Layout

When the edited manuscript is ready for publishing, you need to apply page layout to the content. You can outsource the task to a typesetting service provider or choose to use typesetting software and carry out the work in-house. For additional information on Layouts, see Learning OJS Production Publication: Layout Editing by PKP School.

Galleys

A Galley is the final publication-ready file that has been prepared for readers and will be published on the article page. Galleys should be in a stable non-editable format (e.g., HTML, PDF, ePub, or XML). If you are planning to publish your articles in HTML, ePub, XML, or other media format, refer to the Galley File Formats Tutorial by the PKP School. In this tutorial, you will find not only the steps to follow, but links to the recommended tools.

From the Production Ready Files panel, download the files to your desktop and work outside of OJS to convert them to galley files. Galleys can also include supplementary material such as multimedia files and research data. You can publish a galley for an article or for an entire issue. For more information and step-by-step instructions, see Prepare and Add Galley Files by PKP School.

Publishing

For a formatted manuscript, uploading is a straightforward procedure. In Dashboard → Submissions, click on the article title to get into the editorial status. In the Production tab, click on Add Galley (as shown below) and upload your ready-to-publish file (e.g., PDF, ePub, XML).

Before you click on Schedule for Publication, make sure that:

  • You have checked the metadata for completeness and accuracy

  • You have created a journal issue where the article will be published

To create a new journal issue, click on Issues → Future Issues → Create Issue. Fill out the volume, issue number, year, and title information, and add a brief description and cover image if available.

Now that you have created a new journal issue, when you Schedule for Publication for an article, the issue will appear in the drop-down menu (as shown below).

Once the journal has accumulated enough submissions, it is ready for publication. In the Issues tab, go to Future Issues → Issue → Publish Issue (as shown below).

If you want to send a notification to all registered users about the new issue release, check the box for Send notification email to all registered users and click OK (as shown below).

 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Journal Interface Design

Web design may be the last thing on your mind when setting up a journal, but the journal website will be the primary way your audience will interact with your publication. OJS provides options for customizing your site’s appearance and user interface, most of which can be found at: Dashboard → Settings → Website

Theming

OJS provides six theme plugins which will change the layout, formatting, and look of your site. PKP provides an overview and preview of each theme at this page: https://docs.pkp.sfu.ca/pkp-theming-guide/en/themes

Keep in mind that TDL does not support all themes: The OJS Bootstrap theme is the most notable example because it relies on an unsupported version of Bootstrap. Users may request the addition of a theme plugin not included in the default installation, and TDL will review it for appropriateness.

Colors

In the Appearance menu, you can choose your journal’s header and accent color. Any additional color changes can be made via a CSS Stylesheet.

Plugins

The Plugin Menu lists dozens of plugins that can customize your user experience, everything from tailored search functions to language toggling. Not all plugins are created equal, but depending on your journal’s goals and specific workflow, they can make your site more powerful and user-friendly.

The Sidebar Management tool on the Dashboard → Settings → Website → Appearance page allows you to configure the way certain plugins display on your website. This can be especially useful if you want to display institutional sponsorships, website settings, or search features alongside your content.

The PKP school covers several of these topics in depth in their Setting up a Journal in OJS 3.x course. Upon registering for the course, PKP will provide you with a sandbox website of your very own, but be mindful that TDL has limits on what you can customize that will not be reflected in PKP sandbox website. For example, the Bootstrap theme is not supported by TDL.

CSS Customization

For more advanced users, CSS is a tool to further customize your site, but it also carries more risk than OJS’ built in customization tools.

  • CSS allows you to change fonts and colors, alter the placement of some objects, and even add background images to your site. This makes theming consistent across your entire site, which makes your journal look more professional.

  • However, if done incorrectly, CSS can also make your site less responsive, slower, and less accessible to users, which is why we don’t recommend making a stylesheet unless you have experience working with CSS. Another constraint is that CSS cannot change the HTML code of your OJS site.

  • CodeAcademy offers free CSS tutorials and CSS Zen Garden is a lovely illustration of the power and versatility of CSS

All of these features are optional; OJS allows you to customize to your comfort level.

Open Access Journals Business Models

There are various approaches to an open access business model. Below are some examples:

  • APC: Article Processing Charges (APCs) are made to the author (or their funder or institution) to cover the publishing costs. Different publishers seek to cover different costs, depending on their model and their other sources of income, therefore APCs vary greatly from publisher to publisher.

  • Collaboration/Coalition: By joining forces, institutions or organizations can bring different skills and funding sources together to boost OA publishing.

  • Community: OA publishing is also undertaken by some academic-led presses, who operate on a community/volunteer basis.

  • Endowment: Many university presses receive a regular endowment to fund part of their operations, for both OA and for traditional publishing. This is particularly prevalent in the USA where subsidizing traditional university presses to a certain degree has always been common.

  • Freemium: Publishers make one online version free, and charge for other formats and additional functionalities, e.g. PDF, enhanced HTML or for e-readers.

  • Grant: Grants to launch open access ventures, or to fund open access publishing projects, are one of the ways publishers fund their OA activities.

  • Institutional: Many university presses in Europe, and newer OA publishers in the UK, receive funding from their institution to cover varying degrees of their publishing costs.

  • Library Funding: Some publishers and publishing services companies such as Knowledge Unlatched, operate library funding schemes, to secure library contributions to make books and journals available at the point of use.

  • Sales Revenue: Many publishers sell print copies, or other formats, while operating a fully OA press.

  • Services Revenue: Some publishers offer publishing services to other presses or institutions, alongside publishing books and journals in their own imprint.

Listed above are various business model examples of open access publishing. TDL member journals have operated in the following ways:

  • Volunteer effort

  • APC model

  • Sponsorship by university press or research center

  • Advertising

  • Sales of print copies

For more information: SPARC Report: Income Models for Open Access

Marketing & Promotion

Promoting a New Journal

An important aspect of Starting a new journal is to gain exposure to as wide an audience as possible. To be a success, readers will need to know about your journal, and be able to find it. By putting your content online and making it freely available through open access, you can reach millions of people around the world. But if they don’t know you are out there, they will not be able to become part of your scholarly community. However, as more people discover your journal, some will become regular readers, contributors, and reviewers. Getting your journal recognized and read is critical for its success.

One method of letting potential readers know about your journal is through marketing. Traditional methods of marketing may include expensive promotions and advertising. While this is one way of getting the word out, more economical alternatives exist. Professional networks can be used to inform the right people about your new journal. Take advantage of discussion lists, blogs, social media or other forums to announce the release of your new publication and make a “call for papers.”

Ask editors, authors, and other collaborators to do the same. You can also add the journal’s website to your email signature. Have your host institution add a link to your journal on their web site, libguides, list of journals in library resources, etc. It is important to make sure that your administrators are aware of your activities, and can include information about your project in their reports or goals and objectives.

For many researchers, Internet search engines are the primary tool for finding information online. Your electronic journal can be made more visible to search engines through good website design, application of meaningful metadata tags, and submitting your site to the major search engines (see Indexing). More information on search engine optimization is available here: Webmasters Complaining about Google by Search Engine Watch.

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