Paper presented at Libraries ⇆ Research. Erasmus Staff Week for Libraries and Learning centers 2018 (Sapienza University, June 18-22 2018)

1. Roberto Raieli – Sistema Bibliotecario Sapienza (SBS)
roberto.raieli@uniroma1.it
The ideals of Open Journal Systems
and the Sapienza project
Erasmus staff week – Rome, 18-22 June 2018

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Principles of OJS
• The Open Journal Systems (OJS) software
(https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/) is an open source tool for the
creation of e-journals, developed and disseminated within
the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) (https://pkp.sfu.ca/).
• The development of OJS began in about 2001, within the
PKP program founded in 1998 by John Willinsky, and its
coordination is at Simon Fraser University Library (Canada).
• The aim of PKP is to support the improvement of research
outputs and their dissemination, optimizing and facilitating
access to scientific content.

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Principles of OJS
• In Willinsky's ideas, it is necessary to follow a series of
ethical principles in designing technologies for academic
publishing, aimed at supporting the highest sharing of
research outputs.
• A strong ideal is present behind the development of one of
the currently most recognized software for creating
institutional OA journals.
• OJS is made up of only open source components,
developed in collaboration by the user community, which
deals with the costs of development and experimentation, as
well as the translation into different languages, making really
sustainable the choice of OA.

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OJS organization
• OJS ‘organizes’ both the journal and the staff that deals with
it, and is based on a strict editorial cycle and architecture.
• The software is centered on a database that allows:
structuring of each journal (using management and
bibliographic metadata, also in multiple languages);
structuring of editorial processes (with the documents and
the scheduling and recording of the phases of the work);
structuring of reading activities (via a series of search and
reading tools).
• Communication, traceability and transparency are
guaranteed with these shared and interactive tools.
• Furthermore, this organization of the system favors the
creation of international editorial teams.

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OJS organization
• The cycle begins with the author’s submission, driven by the
system according to the guidelines of the journal, which
uploads the metadata, different or new versions of the paper,
files, and follows the ‘path’ interacting with editors.
• Editors, through OJS, receive notifications about activities of
authors and other editors, manage the review system and
the processing of articles, interact with each other, publish
and monitor the issues.
• Readers receive from the system a set of reading tools,
search tools for metadata and full-text, customization tools,
alerts and notifications.

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OJS organization
• The OJS general project also includes the development of a
series of applications, reading tools and annotation tools,
oriented to the social sharing of published content, often
developed by the user community itself.
• Apps for counting articles views and other altmetrics tools
are increasingly available.
• Plugins also provide different possibilities for indexing
contents and metadata, allowing exposure, dissemination
and searchability through other systems (OAI-PMH).
• Also the publication of DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and
long-term preservation systems, such as LOCKSS (Lots
Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), are integrable.

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The philosophy of OJS
• The whole project is endowed with a specific philosophy,
which makes it possible to consider OJS as a ‘cultural
software’.
• By simplifying the definition given by Lev Manovich in 2008,
the «software culture» is shaped by the most ‘influential’
software of a given period.
• The software then becomes a dimension of culture, because
as a technology it can ‘readapt’ and ‘reshape’ the things it
applies to, impressing on the cultural contents that it
mediates the values, the principles, the codes on which
itself is based.

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The philosophy of OJS
• OJS technology can not remain neutral in the publication
and dissemination of the contents of the scientific culture.
• OJS was born rich in intellectual purposes for the
transformation of academic publishing from an analogue,
proprietary and closed communication system towards a
new digital, social and open system, sustainable and shared,
actually oriented to the future of scientific communication.
• These principles have greatly contributed to the spread of
OJS, continuously growing, everywhere in the world:
https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/ojs-usage/ojs-map/

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Sapienza OJS program
• The new Sapienza OJS program started in about
September 2017, involving Sistema bibliotecario Sapienza
(SBS), Sapienza università editrice (SUE) and Centro
lnfoSapienza (CINFO).
• The new portal of the Sapienza digital journals was
activated on May 30, 2018: https://ojs.uniroma1.it/
• There are currently 17 OA journals, among which some are
scans of printed journals, and it is planned to include at least
other 6 journals in a short time.
• The OJS version in use is 2.4.8.3, but the new version
3.1.1.0 is being studied, and it will be activated as soon as
some functional problems are resolved.

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Goals and projects
• The first goal of the OJS program is to expand the number
of OA journals in the Sapienza portal, as close as possible to
the 50+ journals produced by the university departments.
• We need a regulation, which invites Sapienza journals to
enter the OJS portal with a OA digital version, and a plan to
promote OA principles and practice is needed.
• We will also need a program to help the journals to be
indexed in Scopus, WoS, DOAJ, and other databases.
• Finally, integration with the Sapienza digital library (SDL)
and the institutional repository IRIS (Institutional Research
Information System) is planned, as well as the definition of a
long-term preservation policy.

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•roberto.raieli@uniroma1.it