Why Upgrading OJS is Key to Participating in Open Scholarly Infrastructure

DOI: https://doi.org/10.59350/9prg7-yqe71

Scholarly journals don’t operate in a vacuum — they are part and parcel of disciplinary, community, practitioner, and professional networks exposed and connected via open scholarly infrastructure. Upgrading OJS is how journals connect to that network reliably.

Scholarly publishing doesn’t happen in isolation. Journals today, including those using Open Journal Systems (OJS), exist within a connected ecosystem of repositories, funders, institutions, indexing services, researcher profiles, and metadata registries – all linked together through open scholarly infrastructure.

For journals using OJS, staying connected to that ecosystem increasingly depends on one foundational step – keeping OJS up to date.

An OJS upgrade is not simply a software maintenance task. It is how journals maintain interoperability with the broader scholarly communications network, improve discoverability for authors, and support growing expectations around institutional reporting, metadata, quality, and trust.

What “open scholarly infrastructure” means

While there are variations in how “open scholarly infrastructure” is defined (and named; Goudarzi and Dunks, 2023), generally it refers to shared, open source, community-governed digital platforms, tools, and services that support the research lifecycle.

Functions of open scholarly infrastructure include:

Register and connect metadata
Identify researchers and institutions
Support indexing and discovery
Enable preservation and archiving
Facilitate reporting and statistics
Ensure portability and interoperability of scholarly outputs

But more than the physical and digital means, the concept addresses values. Organizations (like PKP) aligned with principles like the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI), and supporting initiatives like the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information (Barcelona DORI) emphasize openness, stakeholder-governance, transparency, trust, and sustainability so that knowledge can be freely and openly created, shared, used, and preserved.

Why interoperability matters more than any single platform

In scholarly publishing, infrastructure is valuable because of how well systems connect – not because one single tool or platform can do everything on its own.

This is especially important in the context of diamond open access and emerging community frameworks such as Diamond Open Access Standards (DOAS), where sustainability depends on shared services and open interoperability rather than proprietary lock-in.

A journal may use OJS to manage submissions and publishing workflows, but its articles can also connect to:

Metadata exchange services and DOI registration systems (e.g., Crossref)
Discovery indexes (e.g., Directory of Open Access Journals aka DOAJ)
Institutional reporting tools (e.g., COUNTER, OA Switchboard)
Researcher profiles (e.g., Open Researcher and Contributor ID aka ORCiD)
Funding and affiliation tracking systems (e.g., Research Organization Registry aka ROR)
Preservation systems (e.g., LOCKSS, CLOCKSS)

There are many other open infrastructures and organizations that are interoperable with OJS. To explore more, please check out the post we published for International Love Data Week 2026, “Where’s the Data? Finding it, Moving it, and Loving it through PKP Interoperability.”

The quality of these connections directly affects the visibility, trustworthiness, and reusability of journal content.

Poor metadata or broken integrations can limit journal discoverability, reduce citation tracking accuracy, and create compliance challenges for authors and institutions.

OJS as the journal’s infrastructure layer

OJS is now used by more than 58,000 journals around the world. For many journals, OJS serves as the operational foundation of publishing workflows. But increasingly, OJS also functions as the journal’s infrastructure layer – the point where local publishing activity connects outward into the global scholarly ecosystem.

Newer OJS versions support stronger integrations with key infrastructure providers, improved metadata handling, better API support, and evolving publishing standards. These capabilities are essential for journals seeking to fully participate in open scholarly publishing and communications.

Crossref’s role as a central metadata connector

Among the many organizations supporting open scholarly infrastructure, Crossref plays a particularly important role.

Crossref is best known for DOI registration, but its broader function is metadata connectivity. They run open infrastructure to link research objects, entities, and actions, creating a lasting and reusable scholarly record that underpins open science. Together with 25,000 members in 167 countries, they drive metadata exchange, facilitating global research communication, for the benefit of society.

When journals deposit metadata with Crossref, they are contributing information that helps scholarly outputs become discoverable, trackable, and linked across the research ecosystem.

That metadata supports:

Citation linking
Funding information
Institutional affiliation tracking
Research analytics
Preservation systems
Discovery platforms
Scholarly integrity workflows like plagiarism checkers

The more rich and accurate the metadata, the more effectively articles can circulate throughout the ecosystem.

Newer OJS versions are better equipped to support these metadata workflows and evolving Crossref requirements, including better affiliations handling, contributor identifiers, and metadata schemas.

Why Journals on older OJS versions struggle to keep up

Open scholarly infrastructure evolves continuously. Metadata standards mature, APIs change, integrations improve, and new expectations emerge from institutions, funders, and indexing services.

Older OJS versions were developed before many current interoperability practices became standard. When journals remain on older OJS versions, they can encounter interoperability limitations such as:

Incomplete metadata support
Limited integration with external services
Missing core features, plugins, and plugin compatibility issues
Security and maintenance issues
Reduced support for evolving industry standards

Over time, these limitations make it harder for journals to remain connected to the systems that researchers and institutions increasingly rely on.

A useful example comes from de Jonge and Kramer (2026), who identify technical infrastructure and system configuration as key factors affecting metadata completeness and transfer. While there are also policy and collection reasons for incomplete metadata records, this highlights the importance of maintaining up-to-date OJS installations, integrations, and plugins to ensure metadata is properly captured and deposited with services such as Crossref.

Upgrading OJS is a strategic infrastructure decision

Upgrading OJS is often framed as a technical project. But increasingly, it’s an infrastructure strategy.

As open scholarly infrastructure becomes more interconnected, journals that invest in updated interoperable systems will be better positioned to support authors, institutions, and readers.

If your journal relies on open infrastructure, upgrading OJS is essential!

Upgrading events and resources

Be sure to join us! Upcoming events are:

Upgrading and learning resources include:

What’s New in OJS 3.5 (PKP Docs Hub)
What’s New in OJS 3.5 (PKP YouTube)
An OJS 3.5 Playlist (PKP YouTube)
Overview of 3.5 Features (PKP YouTube)
Install and Upgrade Guide for System Administrators (PKP Docs Hub)
Learning OJS 3.5 for Site Administrators (PKP Docs Hub)
Learning OJS 3.5 for Journal Managers (PKP Docs Hub)
Learning OJS 3.5: The Editorial Workflow (PKP Docs Hub)
Learning OJS 3.5 for Reviewers (PKP Docs Hub)
Learning OJS 3.5 for Authors (PKP Docs Hub)
Learning OJS 3.5 Courses in English (PKP School)
Cursos de OJS 3.5 en español (PKP School)
How to Upgrade to OJS 3.5 (PKP YouTube)
Updating OJS (and OMP / OPS) with Builds aka Patch Releases – keeps your installation secure (PKP YouTube)

The call to action is to upgrade your OJS installation. OJS version 3.5.0-4 was released April 9th, 2026. OJS 3.5 has not yet received a Long-Term Support (LTS) designation but it is planned. If you are already on 3.5, keep up to date with patch releases and your system will be on LTS when the designation is applied.

Join in contributing fully to the global open scholarly publishing ecosystem by upgrading today, and be sure you are making the most out of all that OJS and interoperability partners have to offer!

This post is part of a PKP-Crossref series. Please stay tuned for more.