Journal Setup Guide OJS
Once a journal has been created by the Site Administrator, the Journal Manager can begin the 5-Step process for setting up a new journal. There are two easy ways to navigate to the Setup page. Sign in to an account that has been assigned the Journal Manager role, and click on “User Home” in the navigation bar. There is a quick link to “Setup” on the User Home screen next to “Journal Manager.” Alternatively, if one clicks the “Journal Manager” link, one can choose “Setup” on the next page.
The Setup process is divided into 5 Steps: “1. Details,” “2. Policies,” “3. Submissions,” “4. Management,” and “5. The Look.” This guide will walk you through the contents of each section and highlight required fields. After completing each step please make sure you click the “Save and Continue” button at the bottom of each page before continuing to the next step. Moreover, the Setup process can be revisited and edited by the Journal Manager at any time should the journal’s information or policies change.
Details (Step 1)
General Information (1.1)
In this section you will enter some of the general information about your journal. Only the Journal Title and Journal Initials fields are required.
Principal Contact (1.2)
In this section you much fill out information for the principal contact of your journal. Only a Name and an Email are required. The principal contact might be the Journal Manager, an Editor, or the Site Administrator. Their information will be listed on the homepage of your journal under “Contact.” If you are unsure of who to list as the Principal Contact please consult with your Site Administrator.
Technical Support Contact (1.3)
Similar to the Principal Contact section, in this section you will list the information for your Technical Support Contact. Their information will also appear on the “Contact” page for Editors, Authors, and Reviewers to email should issues arise during the submission, review, editing, and publishing process. Again, if you are uncertain about who to list as the Technical Support Contact, please contact your Site Administrator.
Email Identification (1.4)
In this section you will fill out the signature of the prepared emails that OJS will send. A basic signature is already filled out, but you can customize this signature with whatever information you wish to include.
Publisher, Sponsoring Organizations, and Sources of Support (1.5-1.7)
In sections 1.5, 1.6, and 1.7 you will enter information about Publishers, Sponsoring Organizations, and other Sources of Support. In these sections you can write a note, identify the publisher/organization/source of support and provide a URL to the institution or organization’s website. This information will appear on your “About the Journal” page.
Search Engine Indexing (1.8)
In this section you can enter a Site Description, Keywords, and Custom Tags that will assist users of search engines in discovering your journal.
Journal History (1.9)
In this section you can enter information about your Journal’s History which will appear in the “About” section of your journal’s website.
Policies (Step 2)
Focus and Scope of Journal (2.1)
This form will add information to the “About the Journal” section of your journal website.
Peer Review (2.2)
In this section you will outline your journal’s peer review policy and processes for readers and authors. “Review Policy” will appear on the “About the Journal” page of your journal website, whereas the “Review Guidelines” will be made available to reviewers at the time of review.
In this section you will also choose between two options for your Review Process (Standard Review Process or Email-Attachment Review Process). Descriptions for both are provided in the form and you are required to choose one of the options.
Finally, you can configure a number of review options including how long reviewers have to complete their review, when to send reminders to reviewers, whether or not to have Editors rate reviewers after completing each review, and how reviewers access assigned submissions. You can also choose whether or not to include links to OJS’s internal instructions for “Ensuring a Blind Review” throughout the review process.
Privacy Statement (2.3)
In this section you can fill in a Privacy Statement for your journal, which will appear in the “About the Journal” section of your website.
Editor Decision (2.4)
If checked, this option will automatically add all co-authors of a submission to the include list when the Editor sends a Notify Author email.
Add Item to Appear in “About the Journal” (2.5)
In this section you can create additional items to appear on your journal website on the About the Journal page. You can add multiple items by clicking “Add About Item.”
Journal Archiving (2.6)
OJS supports LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe), which is an open source solution to to archiving online journals. If you wish to enable LOCKSS support for your journal follow the instructions in this step and click the checkbox to “Enable LOCKSS.” If checked, a LOCKSS license will appear on your “About the Journal” page.
Potential Reviewer Database (2.7)
In this section you can add a link to any number Reviewer Databases to the “Select Reviewer” page in the Review Process. These reviewers databases, however, must be open to Editors without subscription.
Submissions (Step 3)
Author Guidelines (3.1)
Here you will enter your journal policies for authors submitting their material to your journal. First there is a text box where you can explain your journal’s bibliographic and formatting standards and identify which Supplementary files you encourage authors attach with their submissions (if applicable).
Next, you will fill out entries in the Submission Preparation Checklist. Before completing the submission process, Authors will be prompted to agree to all conditions in this checklist. OJS provides six default checklist items, but you can edit, rearrange, or delete these entries. You can also enter additional items by clicking “Add Checklist Item” and filling out the textbox.
Copyright Notice (3.2)
In this section you can craft a Copyright Notice for journal submission in the text box. This will appear on your website’s “About the Journal” page. You can also require authors to agree to the Copyright Notice in the submission process and/or include a Creative Commons license with all published work for your journal by checking the appropriate checkbox in this section.
Competing Interests (3.3)
This section allows you the option of requiring Authors and/or reviewers to file a Competing Interest (C.I.) Statement. If your journal will require a C.I. Statement, this section includes a textbox where you can enter your journal’s guidelines for crafting their C.I. statement.
For Authors to Index Their Work (3.4)
One of the key features of OJS is its innate system for indexing published submissions. In OJS, authors are responsible for indexing their own work, but Editors can revisit submissions to edit or enter additional keywords. In this step of the Setup process, you will select which fields your journal will require authors to fill out. These fields include Academic Disciplines and Sub-Disciplines, Subject Classification, Keywords, Coverage (Geo-spatial, Chronological, and Research Sample), and Type (Method/Approach). For each of the selected fields, you can provide example keywords separated by semicolons and entries should be introduced as examples by using "E.g.," or "For example,".
Register Journal for Indexing (3.5)
In this section you do not need to fill anything out, but it includes useful instructions for registering your journal for metadata harvesting. By following these instructions you can register the contents of your journal with the PKP Metadata Harvester, which will allow for comprehensive searching among sites that also adhere to OAI protocols for metadata harvesting.
Notification of Author Submission (3.6)
After completing the submission process, authors are automatically sent an acknowledgement email. In this section you can choose to send a copy of this acknowledgement email to your journal’s primary contact (identified in Setup Step 1). You can also choose to send a copy to an alternative email address.
Citation Markup Assistant (3.7)
In this section you can choose to enable citation and reference editing. After authors submit their work, Editors can use the Markup Assistant to check author’s raw citations against external databases for accuracy. This step provides detailed instructions for configuring the Citation Markup Assistant, but some of them require more technical knowledge. If you are interested in configuring your Citation Markup Assistant please consult with your Site Administrator and Technical Support Contact.
Management (Step 4)
Access and Security Settings (4.1)
PKP prioritizes open access publishing of journals using OJS, but it supports varying levels of access to cater to individual journal’s needs. In this section you will first identify your journal’s access. You can choose whether your journal will provide full open access to all its contents or will require subscriptions to access some or all of its contents. If you select the open access option, you can enter your Journal’s Open Access Policy in a textbox, which will then appear on your website’s “About the Journal” section under “Policies.” If you select the subscription option, you will need to assign a Subscription Manager who will manage your subscription and access policies. It is important to note that the Subscription Manager has the option of allowing delayed open access for the journal’s contents.
Next you can configure some of the User Registration options. You can require users to be registered and logged in to view the site and/or your journal’s contents. You can also allow self-registration to for Readers, Authors, and/or Reviewers. Alternatively, you can require the Journal Manager to register all users to the journal site.
Publication Scheduling (4.2)
This section allows the Journal Manager to set the publication schedule for their journal. First, you can fill out a statement for readers about the expected frequency of publication. This statement will appear on the “About the Journal” page. Next you can set the format your journal will use to identify issues (Volume, Number, Year, Title), establish the initial issue/volume numbers and year for the first publication of your journal, and define the intended frequency of issues/volumes per year.
Identification of Journal Content (4.3)
OJS supports the assignment of Digital Object Identifier (D.O.I.) numbers to articles and issues. Visit http://doi.org for more information on registering for a DOI for your journal. You may also check the “Page Number Option” to have OJS automatically generate and assign page numbers for journal issues (which will be displayed on the issue’s Table of Contents).
Announcements (4.4)
In this section you can choose whether or not to enable OJS’s Announcements page. Journal Managers will compose and published announcements. You can also select how many of the most recent announcements will appear on the journal homepage. Finally you can enter any additional information you want to appear on the Announcements page in the text box provided.
Copyeditors (4.5)
In this section you will choose whether your journal’s copyediting will be assigned to users registered as Copyeditors or by the journal Editors and Section Editors. Additionally, a textbox is provided with sample Copyediting Instructions. This text can be edited or changed to explain your journal’s specific Copyediting policies and will be made available to Copyeditors, Authors, and Section Editors during the Submission Editing stage.
Layout Editors (4.6)
In this section you will choose whether your journal’s layout editing will be assigned to users registered as Layout Editors or by the journal Editors and Section Editors. A textbox is provided where you can enter instructions for Layout Editing, which will be made available to the Layout Editor and Section Editor on the Editing page of each submission. You can also upload a Layout template for each of the standard formats published in your journal to serve as a guide for Layout Editors and Proofreaders. Finally you have the option of supporting reference linking (detailed instructions included) and providing instructions for reference linking to your Layout Editors.
Proofreaders (4.7)
In this section you will choose whether your journal's proofreading will be assigned to users registered as Proofreaders or by the journal Editors and Section Editors. Sample proofing instructions are provided in the textbox, which can be editing or changed according to the journal’s proofing policies. These instructions will be available to Proofreaders, Authors, Layout Editors, and Section Editors in the Submission Editing stage.
The Look (Step 5)
Journal Homepage Header (5.1)
In this section you can customize the look of your journal website’s header. You can choose either to enter your journal title as text or as a custom header image. The header image can be any size, but a common size is 800px X 150px. You can also upload a Journal Logo (which will appear in the upper left of your header) and a Journal Thumbnail. These are often square images (E.g. 125px X 125px). Accepted image formats are .gif, .jpg, or .png files. Make sure for each image, you click the “Upload” button after selecting the applicable file.
Journal Homepage Content (5.2)
This section allows you to customize your journal homepage content. You can write a brief description of your journal, upload an image, add the table of contents for your current issue, and enter additional content to appear on your journal homepage.
Journal Page Header (5.3)
This section allows you to place a different title, image, or logo on pages other than your journal homepage. Many of these options are identical to those in Step 5.1 Journal Homepage Header, but you can also enter an HTML version of your header in the text box provided.
This section provides a textbox for you to enter text or HTML that will appear on the footer of every page of your journal.
OJS generates a default navigation bar based on some of the choices you have made in the Setup process. In this section you can add items to your navigation bar by entering the Title (words that appear in the navigation bar) and a URL. You can add multiple items to the navigation bar by clicking the “Add Item” button.
Journal Layout (5.6)
This section allows you to further customize the look of your journal site. You can either select one of fourteen themes provided by OJS or upload a custom CSS stylesheet. Please consult PKP’s Documentation for Customizing OJS if you wish to upload your own stylesheet. This section also includes a Layout interface for orienting the various “Blocks” into the left and right sidebars. For information on OJS’s “Blocks,” see more here.
Information (5.7)
In this section you can fill out additional information for Readers, Authors, and/or Librarians in the “Information Block.” The Information Block can appear in the left or right sidebar (or not at all), depending on how you configured your journal layout in 5.6 Journal Layout.
Lists (5.8)
This section will determine how OJS displays lists on your journal site. You can enter the maximum number of items (E.g., submissions, users, editing assignments, prepared emails). You can also set the number of page links that will display on pages where the number of items exceeds the maximum number entered above.