University of Edinburgh Digital Library OJS at St Andrews OA week 2012
1. Journal hosting with OJS
(Janet Aucock, Jackie Proven, Gillian Duncan
(University of St Andrews); Angela Laurins, Claire
Knowles (University of Edinburgh)
2. Open Journal Systems (OJS)
Public Knowledge Partnership (PKP)
Partners PKP systems
• Simon Fraser University Library • Open Journal Systems
• the School of Education at • Open Conference Systems
Stanford University • Open Harvester System
• University of British Columbia • Open Monograph Press – launched
• the Canadian Centre for September 2012
Studies in Publishing at Simon
Fraser University
• the University of Pittsburgh
• Ontario Council of University All Open Source
Libraies
• the California Digital Library.
3. At the end of June 2012 there were over
14,100 OJS titles around the world
Source: http://pkp.sfu.ca/node/5323
5. Why are academics and student
groups publishing with OJS?
• Low financial cost
• Easy to install & easy to use
• Allows academics and student groups to publish ‘born digital’
journals
• Preserves ‘at risk’ journals and provides opportunities to re-launch
journals
• Provides a platform for early career academics to publish & learn
about the publishing process
• Creates opportunities for collaboration between institutions and
individuals on a global platform
• Engages with a global readership and through Google Analytics and
COUNTER statistics allows you to gather stats on who is reading
your journal
• There is an active support community and opportunities to contribute
to the development of the software.
6. OJS helps manage the entire
publishing workflow
• Editorial workflow (based around roles)
• Author submission
• Peer review process
• Manage reader access, registration and notifications
• Recommends default policy text
• Can publish articles as HTML and/or PDFs and include
abstracts, publish multimedia content -video and audio
files
11. After the pilot
• Concept and Critical African Studies continue to
publish .. With little support from the library and no
strong UoE identity
• There was recognition that OJS had potential but there
was no impetus to explore it further….until Spring 2012
• Driven by demand and enthusiasm of two student
groups
• Timely: forthcoming Finch report and OA publishing very
much on the agenda
• Benefited from experience- both of pilot and from
colleagues at St Andrews- and the realisation that
supporting the journal publishing process goes beyond
the 5 easy steps
12. Not publishers, but supporting the publishing process
"By implication publishers are perceived as contributing very little, other than simply assembling
articles into journals and pushing them onto cash-strapped libraries to make a gargantuan
profit.
That is a gross distortion of reality. The publishing process involves: soliciting and managing
submissions; managing peer review; editing and preparing manuscripts;
producing the articles; publishing and disseminating journals; and of course
archiving. And the end result acts as a calling card and mark of quality, helping
readers find content that is relevant to them and is trusted.......
Perhaps most important of all, from an access point of view, is the amount publishers have
invested in platforms that support researchers in numerous ways. These
include investments in article enhancement, visualisation, social networking,
and mobile technology; valuable tools such as searchable image databases,
navigation, alerts and citation notifications, and reference analysis. Publishers
are also working on text-mining tools; linking to the datasets behind journal
articles; and research performance measurement tools such as SciVal.
These are all part of the academic ecosystem and are provided by publishers, not to
mention that almost 100% of journals are available electronically - created,
digitised, structured, tagged and disseminated by publishers.”
Attacking publishers will not make open access any more sustainable, Graham Taylor, The
Guardian, 25th May 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/may/25/attacking-publishers-open-access-sustainable?IN
13. UoE journal hosting service….
• Is an integrated library service – drawing on the
broad range of skills available in the library
• Within limits the service is provided free of
charge to academics and student groups
• Providing a branded platform – individual designs
but obvious UoE identity - adds credibility to
journal
• Taken the decision not to support subscription
based journals and to only support OA journals…
this has not been tested yet….nor has the service
been actively promoted…..
14. UoE Journal hosting service
• Provides a secure and managed platform
• Offers training & support to publishers a
• Provides help with journal design and article
layout
• Offers advice regarding publishing best practices
and ethics.
• Including providing copyright advice, providing standard text for
policies - copyright, take down, Open Access
• Helps increase journal visibility through
registration with DOAJ and offering advice on SEO
• Sets up and monitors Google Analytics accounts
• Hosts multimedia content with UoE streaming
service
18. Branding and Design
1.Colours – 2 or 3
2.Header – Image or logo and title
3.Font – check on web pages
4.Journal Image – Optional
5.Issue Image
Check on other browsers and devices
Continue on other websites and pdfs eg blogs
19. UoE Footer
• Copyright
• Link to School
• Link to UoE hosting service
• Privacy and Cookies
• Take Down Policy
20. PDF Templates
• Journal URL
• Journal Name
• ISSN
• Volume
• Issue
• Page Numbers
• Logos
• Relationship between issues and articles- should
still be identified as part of the journal if read in
print or online
21. HTML Articles
• Statistics
• Easier for search engines to index
• PDFs can be a barrier to reading with low-
bandwidth internet connections
• Can include images and links
• Templates for consistency
• Embed videos
22. Journal Description and Abstracts
• Indexed by Google
• Not too long
• Keywords for articles and journal
23. Statistics
• OJS COUNTER statistics
– Full text article requests by month by journal
• Google Analytics
– Register with Google who provide a tracking
code
– Inbuilt Generic OJS plugin, just add tracking code
– Landing pages, browsers, visitors by day, in and
out pages, visitors by location, etc, etc . . .
24. Google Analytics
• Shows trends
• How people are reading your journal
– Importance of templates
• Find your readers
– Are they who you expect?
– Where people are reading your journal
