Planning a journal with OJS
If you are interested in starting a journal with OJS, you should consider what you want the journal to achieve. You will need to consider the journal title, the scope and what role this journal will fulfil in your discipline. Will the journal be peer-reviewed, and what will be the frequency of publication and expected types of content?
OJS is primarily designed to deliver open access content, although full or partial subscription models can be supported.
We would encourage you to look at our OJS setup form (Word, 42 KB) to see the sorts of questions you need to consider and policies you need to establish for your journal. The form provides a detailed list of questions and closely mirrors the information needed to set up the journal in OJS. The Library will use the form as the basis for discussions for a project. The form also provides a useful record of the timeline for your project and records project milestones.
Roles and responsibilities
The table below demonstrates the related roles of Library, School, Journal managers and Editorial board.
| Library | Library / Journal Managers | School / Editorial Board |
|---|---|---|
| Technical support | Set up OJS functionality | Define journal policies |
| Create journal site | Configure templates | Create author guidelines |
| OJS user training | Customise look and feel | Be responsible for content |
| Advice on copyright | Register users and assign roles | Create and publish issues |
| Support for access and preservation | Set up supporting infrastructure | Manage submission and review process |
| Open Access advocacy | Devise workflows and procedures | Journal administration |
Library responsibilities (journal hosting)
- The primary hosting role is technical support for the journal platform on the internet. We provide a dedicated server and will liaise with ITS on hardware and software support and upgrades.
- We will divert library resource wherever possible to meet the needs of the busy startup period for a journal, to upload initial content and meet project deadlines.
- We will provide training and support in OJS functionality, especially in the intensive startup phase of a project.
- We will advise and assist in providing maximum discovery and visibility of publications by making full-text accessible to Google and Google Scholar and other search, aggregation and indexing services.
- We will give advice on external services such as CrossRef for DOIs and NLS for legal deposit.
- We will give support for archiving, preserving and migrating content for future technologies.
- We will provide help and advice for copyright issues and licences, plus support in creating redacted files if required.
- We will provide advice on shared network storage for offline archive and administrative files, for example copyright licences.
- We will provide advice and support for metadata creation.
- We will support publicity for journals.
- We will provide some support for the handover of journals to new editorial teams and provide re-training where required to aid journal sustainability.
- We will continue to investigate support for alternative formats, for example ePub.
Publisher responsibilities (journal managing editors)
- The publisher is responsible for quality control, the submission process, reviewing and editing, production of the journal issues.
- The publisher will carry out administration for the journal, such as registering users or managing payments
- We would suggest reviewing the Open Access Scholarly Association's Member Code of Conduct to double check the journal meets professional standards.
- The publisher is primarily responsible for the style and customisation of the look and feel of their journal. The degree of customisation should be considered carefully so as to be compatible with future software upgrades. This will be discussed in detail during project setup.
- The publisher will be responsible for setting up copyright agreements with contributing authors and making provision for the organisation and storage of copyright licences.
- We would ask publishers to acknowledge the standard non-exclusive deposit licence for the University of St Andrews Library Journal Hosting Service [Journal Hosting Licence]
