Open Journal System

Origin
• In 1998, Public Knowledge Project (PKP) was founded by John
Willinsky in the Faculty of Education at University of British
Columbia (UBC), with Pacific Press Professorship endowment,
dedicated to improving the scholarly and public quality of
research.

• In 2001, Open Journals Systems released as open source

software.
• Open Journal Systems (OJS) is an open source software application for
managing and publishing scholarly journals. Originally developed and
released by Public Knowledge Project (PKP) in 2001 to improve access to
research. It is the most widely used open source journal publishing
platform in existence, with over 25,000 journals using it worldwide
released under General Public License (GNU).

• The latest version was released on August 2021. The software has been
translated into 30 languages.

• The software currently supports two databases (i.e) :

1. My Structured Query Language (MySQL)
2. Maria Database (MariaDB)
Features

• Online submission and management of all content.

• Extensive user guides and training videos.
• Locally installed and controlled.
• Recommended by Google Scholar for ease of indexing and
discoverability.
• Flexible and configurable editorial workflow.
• Integrated with scholarly publishing services such as Crossref,
ORCiD, and DOAJ.
• It has been designed to reduce the time and energy devoted to the
clerical and managerial task associated with editing a journal,
while improving the record-keeping and efficiency of editorial
process.
Purposes
• To assist editors to maintain proper record of
manuscripts and manage publication process.

• To assist faculty and researchers in publishing peer-

reviewed open-access journals at every stage of the
process, from submission to the final publication.

• To manage peer-reviewed academic journals from

submission through online publication and indexing.
OJS Workflow
• Submission: In this stage, new submissions from authors arrive for your journal and are assigned to
Section Editors. They review, edit, and move the submissions to the Review stage. Submissions that
fail to meet the journal standards do not get pushed to the next stage.

• Review: The peer review of author submissions is conducted in this stage, where the reviewers
also suggest revisions required from the author’s end. Submissions that do not get accepted never
make it beyond the review stage, and the approved articles move to the copyediting stage.

• Copyediting: Approved and reviewed articles land on the copyediting stage, where a copyeditor
works on the submissions to improve grammar, rectify errors, and bring clarity to the article
content. Copyeditors are also responsible for ensuring that the articles follow the journal’s textual
guidelines and bibliographic style. Authors can review the copyedits made in their research papers.

• Production: Post the copyediting, accepted articles reach the production stage. The copyedited,
production-ready article files are converted to galleys such as JATS XML, PDFs, HTML, etc. In this
stage also, authors have the option to proofread the galleys of their articles. Once submissions
pass through all the approvals, it is scheduled for publication in a future journal issue.
 Editorial Roles
• Journal Manager: Sets up the journal and staffs editorial roles (can also serve as an Editor and
other roles).

• Editor: Oversees editorial process; can assign submissions to Section Editors to see through
Submission Review and Submission Editing; undertakes scheduling of content and publishing
of journal.

• Section Editor: Oversees Submission Review and possibly Submission Editing for assigned
submissions.

• Copyeditor: Works with submissions to improve grammar and clarity, poses questions to

author on possible errors, and ensures strict adherence to journal's bibliographic and textual
style.

• Layout Editor: Transforms copyedited submissions into galleys in HTML, PDF, and/or PS files in
the proper format for electronic publishing.

• Proofreader: Reads galleys for typographic and formatting errors.

Benefits
• The platform is optimized for content discovery across search
engines such as Google, Google Scholar, etc., and provides
comprehensive indexing of your journals.

• Using its Export tools, you can easily export article data to third-
party agencies, databases, or systems such as CrossRef, PubMed,
ORCID, DOAJ, and more.

• A secure environment for archiving and stewardship of scholarly

content

• The OJS 3.x has a dynamic and more flexible editorial workflow
that you can customize easily.