The IU Office of Scholarly Publishing is working on a lot of exciting projects this summer. One of those projects is planning its rollout of Open Journal Systems (OJS) 3. The Public Knowledge Project announced the release of OJS 3 last summer and they have been continually updating and improving the open source journals publishing software since the upgrade. The latest version of OJS offers more robust functionality and several new features, making it a major enhancement to the platform we currently provide to over 30 journals. We hope to migrate all of our journals to OJS 3 by spring 2018.
We believe that the new upgrade will make editors’ work more straightforward and will streamline the editorial processes from article submission through final publication. In addition to offering a more flexible interface for customizing each journal’s homepage, OJS 3 enables editors to easily tailor the editorial workflow to their journal’s specific needs and processes. OJS 3 was developed after extensive usability testing with both authors and editors and, as a result, the new system provides more flexible permissions and less restrictive author registration requirements.
OJS 3 will also include a plugin gallery, with new and updated plugins to improve our assessment of journals and DOI registration process. One of the most exciting plugins that OJS 3 will offer is Open Typesetting Stack (OTS). OTS will enable editors to publish their journals in full-text HTML as well as PDF. The plugin will make each journal’s born-digital content more readily accessible to all readers while enhancing the archiving and preservation of its content. We are excited about this new functionality, as it will enable us to integrate multimedia, 3D objects, and other innovative forms of scholarship into our publications.
We recognize that our editors will need personalized support as they learn to use and customize OJS 3 to fit their editorial needs. We plan to meet with each journal individually before next spring to discuss the migration timeline in depth and provide each editorial team with one-on-one training. We are committed to making sure that all content is migrated correctly and efficiently. In addition, we plan to customize PKP’s extensive documentation to our specific OJS instance and our editors’ needs.
The Public Knowledge Project has created an OJS 3 demonstration journal for your perusal. We encourage you to explore OJS 3 in more depth and send any questions you may have about the migration or the new platform to iusw@indiana.edu. If you aren’t one of our current editors but are still interested in launching or moving a journal to the new OJS platform, please contact us. The Office of Scholarly Publishing is excited to work with editors on this important update.
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