Featured Events Recap
In this segment of Archipelago, we look back at PKP events from April through July 2026.
The months between April and July brought PKP back into rhythm after a busy start to the year, centered on strengthening the tools and relationships that keep OJS, OMP, and OPS running well for the community: journal managers learning the platform for the first time, systems administrators preparing for a major upgrade, and community members gathering in Warsaw to build alongside PKP staff and partners.
Events Hosted by PKP
Getting Started with OJS
April 6
PKP hosted a live, hands-on webinar for anyone preparing to launch a journal but unsure where to begin. Publication Support Specialist Müge Bakioglu walked attendees through the full arc of setting up a journal in OJS, from initial configuration through the editorial workflow to production and publication. The session was designed with newcomers in mind: editors, librarians, and faculty members who may be encountering OJS for the first time and want a clear, practical starting point rather than a feature-by-feature tour. Sessions like this remain one of the most direct ways PKP lowers the barrier to entry for new and prospective OJS communities worldwide.
PKP Warsaw Sprint 2026
May 18 – 19, Warsaw, Poland
PKP returned to in-person sprinting with a two-day event in Warsaw, organized in collaboration with the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN), OPERAS-PL, SCIROS, and the National Information Processing Institute (OPI PIB). Programmers, journal managers, librarians, and interface specialists worked side by side on plugins, documentation, and usability improvements, with generous support from sponsors DataCite, Paradigm, and Crossref.
Read the roundup here.
PKP Q2 Development News Webinar 2026
May 25
PKP hosted its quarterly development news webinar, giving Strategic Partners, Development Partners, and the wider community an up-to-date view of what’s in progress across OJS, OMP, and OPS. These sessions have become a dependable touchpoint for contributors who want visibility into the roadmap without combing through changelogs themselves. Keeping this cadence steady reflects PKP’s commitment to transparency about where its software is headed and why. For partners planning their own upgrade timelines, the update offered a useful signal on what to expect later in the year.
PKP 2026 Annual General Meeting
May 27
PKP hosted its Annual General Meeting, bringing together Advisory Committee Chair Marco Tullney, Managing Director Teresa Lee, Scientific Director Juan Pablo Alperin, and community team members Urooj Nizami, Emma Uhl, and Jeanette Hatherill for a review of the past fiscal year and a look ahead. The agenda covered strategic plan progress, financial highlights, and updates from across PKP’s community engagement work. As PKP’s single largest annual gathering open to the public, the AGM is where the organization is most directly accountable to the community it serves. The recording was shared publicly for anyone unable to attend live.
PKP and Crossref Present: Introducing OJS 3.5
June 3
PKP and Crossref co-hosted the first in a new webinar series aimed at editors and journal managers preparing to upgrade. The session walked through what’s new in OJS 3.5 — a redesigned editorial dashboard, an automatically compiled editorial team listing, a new user invitation process, and improved ORCID, ROR, and DOI metadata integrations. This partnership reflects a shared interest between PKP and Crossref in keeping OJS journals well-integrated with the broader metadata ecosystem. For journals still weighing whether to upgrade, the webinar offered a concrete look at what the move would actually change day to day.
Watch the recording | Read the Blog post
PKP and Crossref Present: How to Upgrade to OJS 3.5
June 17
The second installment of the PKP–Crossref webinar series turned from features to logistics, giving systems administrators a detailed, technical walkthrough of the upgrade process along with a requirements checklist. Pairing this session with the June 3 webinar let PKP speak to two different audiences — editorial staff and technical staff — without overloading either one. Additional versions of both webinars are already planned in Indonesian for later this year and in Spanish and French in 2027. For the many journals still running older OJS versions, this session offered a practical roadmap toward the current Long Term Support release.
Watch the recording | Read the Blog post
Events PKP Participated In
OPERAS 2026 & SCIROS Conference
May 18 – 21, Warsaw, Poland, and Online
Held alongside PKP’s own sprint, this conference brought together European open scholarly communication networks for several days of programming. On May 21, Coalition Publica’s Jeanette Hatherill joined a panel titled “Advancing Canada’s Diamond Open Access Infrastructure,” speaking to how the PKP–Érudit partnership supports non-commercial, community-governed publishing in Canada. The overlap in timing and location with the Warsaw sprint made this a natural extension of PKP’s presence in Poland that week. The panel gave a Canadian perspective on Diamond Open Access to a largely European audience already deep in similar conversations.
Looking Back on the Quarter
Taken together, these months reveal a quarter less about announcements and more about follow-through. Nearly every event traced back to a single thread: helping the community move confidently through change, whether that meant a first-time journal manager learning OJS basics, a systems administrator preparing for the 3.5 upgrade, or community members gathering in Warsaw to build the next round of improvements together. The recurring presence of partners reassures how much of PKP’s work now happens in collaboration.