“Starting a scholarly journal may seem daunting, but it can be done with a strong and dedicated team,” says Mahta Amanian, UBC alumna and former Editor-in-Chief and current Senior Advisor of student-led Canadian Journal of Undergraduate Research (CJUR), which is published on UBC Library’s open journal hosting platform.
UBC Library currently hosts 30 active open access journals by providing server space, support, and access to Open Journal Systems (OJS), a popular open source software used for managing and publishing scholarly journals. OJS was created by the Public Knowledge Project, (PKP) a not-for-profit multi-university initiative in which UBC Library is a partner and major contributor, and is currently used by more than 25,000 journals worldwide.
The library’s hosted journals include a mix of student and faculty publications, like CJUR, which switched to using OJS one year after the journal’s inception. The CJUR team wanted to streamline their submission and editorial process and enhance the quality and reach of their publications, says Amanian, who notes that UBC Library has been very helpful in their set-up and usage of the platform and receptive to feedback.
Read more about CJUR’s open publishing journey.
Choosing an open publishing platform
“If someone gets in touch with the library about [open journal hosting], I’m the person who responds ,” says Stephanie Savage, Scholarly Communications and Copyright Services Librarian at UBC Library Digital Initiatives. Not only does Savage act as a liaison for the technical aspects of OJS, fielding questions about the platform and working directly with the team at PKP to troubleshoot issues, but she also offers support as journal staff set-up or fine tune their workflows. In fact, the content management side of OJS is a major draw, with many journals choosing not to publish on OJS, but simply use the platform to manage submissions and streamline the editorial process.
Often for journals that are not using a platform like OJS, the editorial workflow is a mishmash of different technologies and platforms that get picked up along the way, says Savage, citing popular apps like DropBox, WordPress, personal email inboxes, Google Forms: “You can easily lose track of things because nothing is preserved or accessible in [a central repository].”
For student journals that tend to have regular staff turnover, with editorial board members graduating each year and new members cycling on, Savage also serves as a “point of continuity,” training new staff and introducing them to the largely informal OJS community at UBC.
Read how That’s What [We] Said connects with community through open publishing.
New open publishing services offered
While UBC Library has been hosting journals via OJS since 2006, more recently the library has started offering new services to the journals they host and has been able to better articulate its offerings. These services include Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) assignment, ORCID ID integration, and digital preservation services, which are quickly becoming essential features for digital-only publications.
For the Undergraduate Journal of Experimental Microbiology and Immunology (UJEMI), a suite of publications founded in 2001 at UBC, moving to OJS meant that UBC Library could also help them permanently preserve their content.
“We wanted to make sure the journal articles actually have value and that they’re read by people in the field. And so like any sort of scientific documentation, you want it to persist and endure, and so we decided to reach out to UBC Library to see if there’s a way to make that happen,” says David Oliver, Associate Professor of Teaching in UBC’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology and current faculty lead for UJEMI. The library was able to assign persistent unique identifiers to each journal issue, ensuring journal issues will be found even if their locations change.
Read more about UJEMI’s move to open access hosting.
UBC Library is committed to advancing open scholarship
Sharing new research with the world is made much easier when researchers are able to distribute their scholarly work through an open access publication. By eliminating barriers—like paywalls, subscription fees, and exclusionary licensing restrictions—open access allows research to be more discoverable and increases opportunities for increased citation, broader collaboration and takes a step towards a more equitable distribution of knowledge.
UBC Library’s commitment to advance open scholarship through leadership and collaboration is front and centre in the newest offering from the Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office. UBC Library’s Open Publishing Program is an exciting new chapter in open access at UBC. Through this free service, the library provides the consultative, training and technical supports needed to make UBC information resources openly available. This service is available to current UBC faculty members, researchers, instructors, staff members, and students with open journal or open text proposals that meet the eligibility requirements. Submissions are open now.
About the UBC Library Open Publishing Program
UBC Library’s Open Publishing Program is an open access journal and text service to help UBC faculty, researchers, instructors, students, and staff develop open access publications for scholarship and instruction. This free service aims to advance open scholarship by providing the supports needed to make UBC information resources openly available. Learn more about our eligibility criteria and how to submit a proposal.
Awesome! Congrats on this new adventure. Cheers from a student and an open-access advocate.