In using OJS, have you ever wondered how to contribute something back to those developing it or how to say thank you modestly and helpfully? Take a few moments to help us learn more about the community we serve.
Open Journal Systems (OJS) has grown to become one of the most widely adopted journal management and publishing platforms globally. With tens of thousands of journals in over 150 countries utilizing OJS, our software plays a pivotal role in supporting scholarly communication worldwide. As the conversation around Open Access (OA) continues to evolve, particularly with the growing interest in Diamond OA, the need for sustainable economic models and robust yet innovative editorial practices has become more pressing than ever. After more than 20 years of using OJS, our community holds a wealth of insights and collective problem-solving potential that has, so far, remained untapped.
Over the coming months, we will be conducting a series of surveys to better understand how journals using OJS operate, how they are structured, and what kind of outcomes they are achieving. We will be looking to better understand where the community is thriving and where it faces challenges, drawing on its evolving expertise to inform broader discussions on the future of OA and scholarly publishing.
Why This Research Matters
As Diamond OA continues to garner attention, many journals using OJS have been leading the way for a long time. Unfortunately, dominant discourses and policies often overlook the diverse practices, strategies, and local knowledge within the global OJS community. Through this research, we seek to shed light on a segment of scholarly publishing that has been growing steadily over the past few decades, yet remains peripheral in the mainstream academic debates, under-understood, under-valued, and under-explored.
The findings will benefit both the OJS community and the broader scholarly communications ecosystem by providing valuable insights into:
- The variety of funding and business models, as well as operational structures, that are currently being used by journals using OJS and how they may differ based on geographic, institutional, and cultural context.
- Editorial practices that ensure high-quality peer review, ethical publishing standards, and efficient workflows.
- The strategies and resources available to this community of journals for technical support, infrastructure upgrades, and for improving visibility and impact.
Our hope is that the research will contribute to a broader understanding of sustainable publishing models in the OA landscape, providing a knowledge base for policy-making and initiatives within non-commercial scholarly publishing. Naturally, we will also use our findings to inform PKP’s software, research, and advocacy development priorities and to explore ways of improving OJS to meet the diverse needs of its global community.
By contributing to this research, you are helping build a more resilient, equitable, and accessible scholarly publishing system.
How You Can Get Involved
If you are involved in a journal using OJS, please keep an eye out in your inbox for a PKP email invitation to participate in a survey, and take a few minutes to complete knowing that this is making a real contribution to the community. Feel encouraged to share the invitation among others involved in using OJS. It is a way of giving back that is bound to benefit you.
All told, this input will be invaluable in informing the global conversation about OA and for shaping the future of OJS itself. Stay tuned for more details on how to participate!
