If you use the "Open Journal System" (http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs) in your university, how is it being implemented? What is the extent of awareness and distinct attitude of faculty members and students on the “open access” policy of published materials as well as on the OJS as a journal publishing tool?
Discuss the various problems or concerns that you encountered when the OJS was implemented at your university. What are the "best practices" that you did to successfully establish the OJS in support of online publication of research materials?
Hi Gerry,
We have used OJS for the past 3 years with great success for our internationally peer reviewed journal Jamba: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies (see www.jamba.org.za). We actually are using a third party (OASIS) who manages most of the admin process for us. We found that OJS takes up a lot of time in terms of its management and I would rather not have my researchers spending time on this issue.
It works fairly easy once you get to know it but it is not very intuitive. In terms of open access, well you can go have a look at the number of times articles are downloaded....this speaks for itself. In our field of study I cannot understand how we even dare lock our knowledge behind paid journal walls!
Best
Dewald
We are using the OJS for four different journals at our university - one of them you will find here http://zfhe.at
It's a little bit tricky in the first run, but once you get it, the whole process is running very smoothly. We developed also a mobile app for it, so every article is available on mobiles :-)
Dr. Van Niekerk, I have seen the journal you mentioned. It's really nice and very professional. I completely agree with you that products of intellectual endeavors which would benefit mankind should not be used as a profit-making venture. Paid journals are nasty, alleging that its articles were of quality due to the cost of publishing. However, it cannot be denied that open access journals have produced relevant and highly technical researches. And besides, due to the fact that everyone can read and peruse such output, the product of research can further be enhanced or modified that may result to greater advantage.
By the way, would it be possible if I could submit to your journal (www.jamba.org.za) a research on disaster management? I have an article, albeit case analysis and qualitative in nature, on the experience of our place as the "Ground Zero" of Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest typhoon in history. Thank you in advance!
Dr. Ebner,the online journal publication you mentioned, though in German language, is still easy to navigate and highly operational. I will take your word for it since our university is also planning to establish an online system of journal publications. It would also very much appreciated if I could be informed of how you design and integrate the mobile app in your OJS.
Hi everyone,
I am the Portal of Journals coordinator in the University of Costa Rica. The University is using OJS for all of the Jounals in the institucion (http://revistas.ucr.ac.cr) since 2 years ago. In my opinion, the key of success is that our collaboratores work in accompanying and trainning the editors, for they to feel comfortable and confident using the system. The journals have wide international visibility and indexations. According to Webometrics, the portal is one of the bests regarding visibility and size.
We are a small group of people constanty researching about cientific comunication. Also we work with the institucional repository and promoting open access policies in the University.
On the other hand, the quality of the journal depends on the editorial board, but the University is helping to reduce the workload. In brief, based on our experience with OJS, the key of success is to keep the teamwork researching about the subject and also trainning people regarding open access so that they will know both the theoretical and the technical scopes.
Dr. Ebner, we are also interested in how to integrate the mobile app in OJS. Some guidelines will be great.
We use OJS at Universidad Nacional de La Plata since 2008, when we launched the Portal de Revistas ( http;//revistas.unlp.edu.ar ). In our case, we give training when they first contact us (mainly workshops), and we have prepared some documents for them to get started to the "most interesting" parts: journal configuration, styling, etc. Before any workshop, we try to identify if the (future) editors need support with OJS only, or if the need to learn how to run a scientific journal, beyond the software used behind.
We give support to journal editors by email and by phone, and we constantly monitor each journal in our portal. Even though we give access to journal managers, we try to deal with as many technicals issues as possible: interoperability, journal configuration, i18n, etc. (that means: to make it as easy as possible for them)
Lastly, we work very close with SEDICI, our institutional repository (http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar). Together we talk to editors about open access, impact, dissemination and preservation (all fields that SEDICI guys already manage very well).
I am the Webmaster for Arid Zone Journal of Engineering, Technology and Environment (AZOJETE) a Faculty of Engineering journal from University of Maiduguri. We use OJS to manage the content of the journal online http://www.azojete.com.ng
I really enjoy managing the content on OJS.
But on the new version, we are limited to one template and the side bars could not be edited.
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