Learning Open Journal Systems

I’ve been learning Open Journal Systems (OJS) this week at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute. OJS is really best thought of as a customized content management system (CMS) for academic journals. Even though there are quite a few steps in setting it up, I can see the pay off it provides in better organizing workflow, version control of documents and communications. I’m taking plenty of notes and I can feel my confidence with the system increasing. From my perspective, there’s an opportunity for librarians to contribute here – libraries and librarians can serve as publishers, technical support, advisors and more. In addition to the tangible benefits, I am especially happy to see the rise of open access content that is encouraged by OJS.

Tomorrow, we are going to go over installation in greater detail, some PHP (which I am learning more about on my own, along with brushing up on my MySQL skills) and more administration. Already, I am wondering about how OJS (and other similar practices) may change the practice of publishing, tenure requirements and more.

While some may be unfamiliar with it, OJS is a major force in scholarly communication. According to the Public Knowledge Project (which produces and gives away OJS for free as an open source application), at least 2000 journals use it in fields such as law, banking, political science, applied mathematics and much more. Developed in North America, OJS is used around the world (+900 journals use it in South America and +300 in Africa). I’m curious to know what readers, editors and authors think of it and how it might compare against other methods (digital and otherwise) of managing journals.

Related posts:

1. York University Adopts Open Access Policy for Librarians and Archivists
2. Open Access Week, October 19-23
3. University of Ottawa adopts open access
4. New iSchool Podcast episode is online: Open Education Round the World