Open Journal Systems (OJS) is an open source solution to managing and publishing scholarly journals online. It is a highly flexible editor-operated journal management and publishing system that can be downloaded for free and installed on a local w Read more...
OJS includes the following features:
Actively being developed through collaborationg. Provides world class standardization. Plugin architecture and framework. Cost effective publishing solution. OJS is installed locally and controlled locally Read more...OJS can be downloaded from our OJS Download Center.
Read more...Please review this document and the RELEASE document prior to installing OJS. If you encounter problems, please also see the FAQ document in this directory. To install OJS:
Extract the OJS archive to the desired location in your web documents Read more...Please visit our OJS Demo Center to test-drive OJS 2.4.8-2.
Read more...Open Journal Systems has been designed as a multi-journal system which can host any number of journals on a single installation. Visitors have access to overall site-level pages, and can also navigate to any journal’s individual pages from t Read more...
There are a number of common interface elements at the Site and Journal levels of any default OJS system.
The topmost navigation bar includes Home, About, Login, Register and Search links. If you are logged in as a user, the Login and Regis Read more...
There are a number of interface elements that are only seen when you are browsing at the journal level.
When browsing at the journal level, the topmost navigation bar includes two extra links by default:
The Current link takes you to t Read more...By default, Open Journal Systems is installed with a very simple, functional user interface. This includes a top header, a top navigation bar, a series of navigation blocks to the right, and a main content block in the mid Read more...
OJS uses a comprehensive roles system to divide work between users, assign workflows, and limit access to different parts of the system. Since one installation of OJS can host multiple journals, users can be enrolled in di Read more...
The Site Administrator is responsible for the overall OJS installation, ensuring the server settings are accurate, adding language files, and creating any new journals on the installation. The Read more...
Unregistered visitors to a journal can normally register as a Reader, Author, and/or Reviewer. Journal Managers are able to remove the ability for visitors to self-register, in which case a notice will appear stating that registration is currently Read more...
To view and edit your profile, log in and click the Edit My Profile link from your User Home page. Alternatively, once logged in you can always click the My Profile link from the User Navigation block on the sidebar, if available. From here, you c Read more...
Resetting your password is a simple process if you remember it and just want to change it to something else: log in, and from your User Home page click the Change Password link. You will have to enter your current password Read more...
As part of installing OJS, you will have created a Site Administrator user account. When you log into OJS with that account you will have access to Site Administrator settings from your User Home page. You will be able to create new hosted journal Read more...
To change your site’s title, any text on the home page, or your principal contact information, you will want to review your Site Settings.
From the Site Ad Read more...
From the Hosted Journals page you can create, edit and delete hosted journal sites. You can also migrate old journals from earlier OJS installations and manually sort the order by which the journals are displayed on the m Read more...
OJS is designed to be a multilingual system, allowing journals supporting a wide variety of languages to be hosted under a single site. The Site Administrator can specify the default language o Read more...
By default, OJS authenticates users against its internal database. It is possible, however, to use other methods of authentication, such as LDAP. Additional authentication sources are implemented as OJS plugins; refer to t Read more...
Creating categories can help organize large sets of journals hosted on a site.
After selecting Categories from the Site Administration page, you can choose whether or not to allow journals to be organized into categories.
From this p Read more...
To access detailed system information, from the Site Administration page, under the Administrative Functions menu, click the System Information link.
OJS Ver Read more...
Journal Management involves managing the overall publishing system. The Journal Manager does the setup for the journal, and enrolls and managers the Editors, Section Editors, Copyeditors, Layout Editors, Proofreaders, and Read more...
The Journal Management Pages allow Managers to configure the journal’s web site, its policies, and workflow. The Journal Manager also has access to the journal’s other management systems and advanced features, and can create new sectio Read more...
The Journal Manager sets up the journal, after the system has been installed on a web server, by working through five steps which requires filling in web-based forms. The setup does not have to be done all at once; the for Read more...
This form provides general details about your journal including the name, abbreviation, address, and print or online ISSN. The Journal Title and Journal Initials fields are mandatory. OJS provides links to the ISSN web site if you wish to learn mo Read more...
Setup Step Two allows you to configure many different policy aspects of your journal: the journal’s scope; review policy; author guidelines; and so on.
This form will add information to the About the Journal section of your journal we Read more...
These guidelines will appear on the About the Journal page and be available for potential authors to consult before submitting.
You can also configure the Submission Preparation Checklist in this section. When submitting an article to your Read more...
Here you can set the journal’s Open Access policy, control how users register on the site and for what, and define copyedit and layout instructions.
This section provides a number of options for access to your Read more...
Titles and images can be added to give your journal a unique appearance and identity. Title text will add the text to the top of your journal web site’s home page (NOT to all the other pages — see below). Title image allows you to uplo Read more...
If you have chosen the announcements option in Step Four for your journal, a link to manage Announcements will appear under Management Pages. Select this link to discover your announc Read more...
The Files Browser is an advanced feature that allows the files and directories associated with a journal to be viewed and manipulated directly. In addition to directories for article and issue files, you can also see any layout templates uploaded Read more...
OJS journals may contain several sections (e.g., Articles, Reviews, Research, etc.). You will need to create at least one section for your journal (all journals start with a default “Articles” section, which ca Read more...
By default, Reviewers will have a text form to add their comments on the submission they are reviewing, with a text field for Authors and Editors, and a separate field for Editors only. By using the Review Forms, however, Read more...
OJS can be made available to users in any of several supported languages. As well, OJS can operate as a multilingual system, providing users with an ability to toggle between languages on each page, and allowing Authors to submit content in any su Read more...
The Masthead is used to list people associated with the journal. You can access this from the Journal Manager’s Management Pages. The Masthead information will appear in About the Journal, under People.
The Ma Read more...
OJS facilitates work flow communication through the use of prepared email messages. The wording of these messages has been added to get you started, but they can be easily modified.
Go to Management Pages section an Read more...
The Reading Tools are designed to assist experienced and novice readers by providing a rich context of related materials from a wide variety of largely open access sources. These optional tools use an author’s keywords to automatically searc Read more...
OJS provides a number of statistical and reporting features for your journal. To access them, go to the Journal Management Pages and select Stats & Reports.
The Statistics section provides a summary of your j Read more...
OJS includes a Payment module for charging various fees. Fees can be charged for author actions (including fees for article submission, fast-track peer review, and article publication); article access (subscriptions and pay-per-view options); and Read more...
If you have chosen the subscription option for your journal (see Journal Setup Step 4: Management), a link to manage your subscriptions will appear on your Journal Management Pages me Read more...
The Individual Subscriptions section allows you to see all individual subscribers, edit their accounts, and create new ones.
To create a new individual subscription, select the Create New Subscription link. If the user already has an accoun Read more...
Institutional Subscriptions differ from Individual Subscriptions in a number of important ways. Obviously, one is for entire institutions and the other is just for single users. Individual Subscribers access the content of Read more...
System plugins allow OJS to expand its functionality, and accept contributions from participating developers, without altering the core of the program. The most widely used plugins are shipped with OJS by default, but it i Read more...
Additional metadata standards can be implemented using Metadata plugins.
NLM, OpenURL, Dublin Core and MODS are installed with OJS.
Authorization Plugins allow for alternative systems of user authentication. Most journals do not make use of these plugins.
Read more...Block Plugins add components to the user interface. For example, the Reading Tools Block controls the display of the Reading Tools link on the sidebar, if Reading Tools has been activated for the journal. Most journals do not modify these plugins. Read more...
Citation Format Plugins are used as part of the Reading Tools, allowing readers to export the article citation in a variety of formats. Most journals do not modify these plugins.
Citation Database Connector Plugins connect to Read more...
Gateway Plugins provide your data to external systems. Most journals do not modify these plugin
Read more...Generic Plugins cover a wide range of functionality. The more commonly-used ones are the Static Pages, Web Feeds, Custom Block Manager and Google Analytics plugins.
This plugin allows you to create new OJS pages for additional content (e.g. Read more...
These plugins provide your data to external systems. Most journals do not modify these plugins.
Read more...Import/Export Plugins: These plugins share information between systems. Details on these plugins are provided in the section on Importing and Exporting.
Read more...These plugins allow you to enable different payment types for your journal’s subscriptions, author fees, donations, and so on. Details on configuring payments can be found in the Payment section.
Read more...These plugins allows you to export content from your journal into a .csv (comma separated value) format suitable for opening in a spreadsheet programs such as Excel or Calc.
The Review Report will provide information about the review proces Read more...
These plugins make different CSS themes available for your journal website. See
For simple changes including header colour, link colour, page background colour, foreground (i.e., text) colour, use the Custom Theme plugin.
Once you ha Read more...
Not a plugin itself, this utility allows you to easily upload a new plugin file (in .tar.gz format) to your journal. New plugin files can be found on the Support Forum’s Plugin Gallery.
Read more...Open Journal Systems offers a variety of tools and Import/Export plugins which allow the Journal Manager to inject data into and extract data from OJS. More information can be found for each plugin’s documentation within OJS’ plugin di Read more...
In addition to managing the journal web site, the Journal Manager is also responsible for all of the user accounts in the system. From the Journal Manager’s User Home page, you’ll find the Users menu, which includes all possible user m Read more...
The ability to send an email message to several, or all of your users at once is another useful feature available at the bottom of this page. To use this function, check each of the desired recipients (or use the Select All button), and click Emai Read more...
Users already enrolled in the journal can be given additional roles, and users registered to the site with other journals (if you are working in a multi-journal OJS installation) can be enrolled with your journal. To do so Read more...
Occasionally, you may end up with a user without a role. They may have been accidentally unenrolled by the Journal Manager (by using the Remove option described earlier). When this user logs in, they have no options to choose from. To find any Read more...
To create a new user for your journal, select Create New User from the Journal Management Page under Users. Fill in the form and press Save. You can optionally send the user a welcome email containing their username and password, which is a very u Read more...
Occasionally, a user may have created two separate accounts (using two different email addresses), or you may find yourself in a situation where one or more users have to be removed entirely from the system. To accomplish either task, you must use Read more...
OJS exists to serve Authors as well as journals. Not only does OJS provide an easy-to-use submission process, it can collect and disseminate key information about Authors and their work across important research and citati Read more...
After clicking on the Author link on your User Home page, you will be directed to your Author User Home page, which includes information on Active Submissions; a link to start a New Submission; and information on any Refbacks you may have.
Read more...This page will list any of your submissions to the journal that are still in process and are either complete or incomplete (in which case you can return and finish the submission at any point).
The RefBacks section displays any incoming links from external web sites such as blogs, news sites, or other articles that link directly to your articles. Each RefBack can be edited: it can be ignored, deleted, or published, in which case it appea Read more...
Your Archive page will list all published submissions along with information on which issue they appear in, as well as any declined submissions.
Read more...There are five steps for submitting an article in OJS.
To begin, from the Author User Home page click or from the Author page with Active Submissions, select the Click Here link under Start Read more...
Step One ensures that the Author understands the journal’s submission rules. The Author will have to pick the appropriate section to submit to, and will be provided with information on the journal’s privacy statement, copyright notice, Read more...
Submission Step Two allows you to upload the submission file, typically a word-processing document.
Click Browse to open a Choose File window for locating the file on the hard drive of you Read more...
The third step of the submission process serves to collect all relevant metadata from the author. The first section of metadata covers the authors. The submitting author will have their personal information automatically appear. Any additional inf Read more...
This step is optional. If you have any supplementary files, such as research instruments, data sets, etc., you may add them here. These files are also indexed by the author, identifying their relation to the submission, as Read more...
This final step provides a summary of your submission.
If the journal charges submission, fast-track review, or publication fees, your required payment will also be detailed here. If you paid previously, use the che Read more...
To track your submission’s progress through the review and editorial process, you will need to log into the journal web site and choose your role as Author. Click on the linked title to go a particular submission record.
From the resu Read more...
The Summary page contains several sections, including Submission, which displays the author name, submission title, original submission file, any supplementary files, the ability to add a supplementary file, the name of the submitter, the date sub Read more...
If your submission is In Review, you can view its details in the Review section linked from the top of the page.
First, you will see the basic submission information again. An editor has now been assigned to the submission.
Below tha Read more...
Your submission is considered “In Editing” once it has been approved for publication. Next it will go through Copyediting to correct any grammatical or stylistic errors, Layout Editing to create the published g Read more...
The Editor oversees the entire editorial and publishing processes. The Editor, working with the Journal Manager (or playing both roles), typically establishes the policies and procedures for the journal, which are used in Read more...
You can reach the Editor Home page by logging in and clicking the Editor link from your User Home page. Note the addition of quick links that can take you directly to various tasks (Create Issue, Notify Users, etc.).
The Editor Home page is Read more...
On the Editor Home page under the Submissions section you will see links to Unassigned, In Review, In Editing and Archives. We will look first at Unassigned Submissions. The submission record appears after clicking on a si Read more...
As an Editor you can search through all submissions from your Editor Home page. Between your Submissions queues and your Issues options is a comprehensive search field: you can use it to search against a submission title, or against any user assoc Read more...
As an Editor you have four issue-specific pages available: Create Issue, Notify Users, Future Issues, and Back Issues.
Only Editors can create issues and publish issues. Section Editors can add (schedule) submission Read more...
Section Editors usually manage the review of submissions and the editing of those that are accepted. Depending on the journal’s policies, however, a Section Editor initially assigned to a submission by an Editor may Read more...
To access the Section Editor Home Page, users login and click User Home.
Submissions to the journal that are assigned to a Section Editor appear in that Section Editor’s Submissions In Review or In Editing que Read more...
The Section Editor’s Submission Summary page is almost identical to the Editor’s Submission Summary Page, with the exception that the Section Editor does not have access to the Editors Assignment section. Otherwise, the Section Editor Read more...
To begin the review process, select Review from the top of the submission record.
The first part consists of basic submission information, and a review version of the submission (automatically generated from the original submission file). Read more...
A Section Editor will wait for reviewer feedback to come in before making an editorial decision about an article. The Section Editor will synthesize the reviewer input into a decision about whether to publish the submission. She can see at a glanc Read more...
Upon acceptance, the submission moves from “In Review” to “In Editing”. You can go to “In Editing” by selecting the Editing link at the top of the submission record.
Copyediting consists of checking the submission for grammatical or stylistic errors. The journal has two options for the copyediting process. In Chapter 5 the Read more...
Use the scheduling dropdown menu to select the issue for this submission. You can change it later if you change your mind. If you have not yet created the required issue see the Issues p Read more...
Layout editing is another role that can be configured in different ways. A journal may have the section editor or copyeditor do the layout editing, or assign a separate layout editor. The journal must be configured by the Journal Manager in Step 4 Read more...
Now that the galleys have been created and uploaded into OJS, the next step will be to proofread those files, to ensure that no errors exist before publication.
The journal has two options f Read more...
At any point in the review and editing process, the Editor, Section Editor and Copyeditor assigned to the submission can access the submission’s References page. This page contains the Citation Markup Assistant tool Read more...
Submissions in this queue have been through the editorial process, whether they have been declined, scheduled to be published, or are published. This queue provides Editors and the assigned Section Editor complete access to the submission’s Read more...
The Reviewer is invited by email to review a submission. The email includes the submission title and abstract, as well as the journal’s URL and a username and password for the Reviewer to use to enter the journal. Th Read more...
This user is both an Author and Reviewer. To see the submissions to review, click the Reviewer link, or click the “x” Active link. Both will take you to your Active Submissions page. This page lists the submiss Read more...
You will first see a details summary of the submission you have been asked to review.
Next, you will see the review schedule, and the associated deadline.
Next, the Review process is divided into six or seven Review Steps (depending Read more...
A submission that has passed the review stage and been accepted by the Journal Editor or Section Editor will move into the Copyediting stage.
The Copyeditor receives an email request from th Read more...
After logging in, you will have access to your User Home Page. Clicking on the Copyeditor link in the User Home page, or on the linked number of items next to it, will lead to the Submissions queue.
This queue lists the Active Submissions Read more...Layout editing is another role that can be configured in different ways. A journal may have the Section Editor or Copyeditor do the layout editing, or assign a separate Layout Editor. The journal must be configured by the Read more...
Once you’ve logged in, as a Layout Editor you will have access to your User Home Page. This page includes a link to an Active Submissions page, as well an Archives link to view previously completed submissions. Clicking on the Active link fr Read more...
On the resulting page, you will see the layout version of the submission, which has been prepared by the Copyeditor according to the journal’s standards. Click on the linked file name (e.g., 8-24-1-LE.DOCX) to download a copy of the file. Yo Read more...
The Layout Editor assumes proofreading duties after the Author and Proofreader have proofed the galley files for typographical and formatting errors. They will record the corrections needed in the Corrections text-box, following the Proofreading I Read more...
The Proofreader will receive an email from the Section Editor requesting that the Proofreader complete a round, or rounds, of proofreading. It is then the Proofreader’s duty to accept or decline the responsibility; i Read more...
From here, you can review the submission metadata (using the Review Metadata link) and the galley files (under Layout), and also see the Proofreading Corrections identified by the Author by clicking the Proofreading Corrections icon.
Clicki Read more...
Readers include subscribers to subscription-based journals, and readers who choose to register for open access journals (whether immediately open access or open after a period of time after initial publication of journal c Read more...
For open access journals using OJS, accessing content is as simple as selecting the Current link to see the latest issue, or the Archives link to see previous issues. You do not need to login to access open access journals.
If a subscriptio Read more...
Reading Tools are intended to assist both expert and novice readers of the journal in building a context for interpreting, evaluating and utilizing the research they are reading.
Reading Too Read more...
