Open Journal Systems: An example of open source software for journal management and publishing

To provide an insider's review of the journal management and publishing software, Open Journal Systems (OJS), from the Public Knowledge Project, which the author directs at the University of British Columbia.

The paper outlines the history, development, and features of OJS, including some of the experimental aspects, as well as early research results and work underway, on which it is based.

OJS (http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs) is an open source solution to managing and publishing scholarly journals online, which can reduce publishing costs compared to print and other traditional publishing processes. It is a highly flexible editor‐operated journal management and publishing system that can be downloaded for free and installed on a local web server.

OJS has been designed to reduce the time and energy devoted to the clerical and managerial tasks associated with editing a journal, while improving the record keeping and efficiency of editorial processes. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of journal publishing through a number of innovations, from making journal policies more transparent to improving indexing.