All PKP software is free and open source — you can download it from our website, use it, and even modify it at no charge, so long as you obey the rules of our open license. You receive all the software’s features whether you install and host it yourself or use our hosting service.
If you host the software yourself, you will need to maintain a web server, perform software updates, apply security patches and bug fixes, and troubleshoot any issues that arise. We have documentation and a community support forum to help you with this.
For publishers who don’t want to manage hosting themselves, PKP|PS offers reliable, paid hosting. Our team handles installation, hosting, daily backups, security updates, bug fixes, version upgrades, and priority email-based support.
See Journal Hosting, Press Hosting, and Preprint Hosting pages for the range of plans, prices, and a complete list of services included in each plan.
All of our hosting plans include access to OJS features, backups, upgrades, bug fixes, unlimited storage, unlimited articles and issues, and technical support. The main differences relate to support, training, hosting infrastructure, and additional services.
Support and training
The Basic plan includes email support and access to PKP’s extensive documentation and training videos, but does not include any training
The Professional, Enterprise, and Institutional Plans include tailored onboarding and training for your editorial team, along with more dedicated support. The Enterprise and Institutional Plans also include ongoing training as needed, such as when staff changes or major upgrades are introduced.
Training is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian.
Shared or own installation
The Basic Plan is hosted on a shared OJS installation. Your journal maintains its own website, users, and settings, but shares the same set of available plugins and themes as other journals on the installation.
The Professional, Enterprise, and Institutional Plans include a dedicated OJS installation, providing greater flexibility and control. A dedicated installation is required for custom plugins, custom themes, and migrations.
If you plan to host multiple journals, either now or in the future, a dedicated installation may be a better fit. These plans allow all of your journals to be managed from a single installation and displayed on a shared homepage. This supports features such as site-wide search, consistent branding across journals, and simplified administration.
For high-traffic OJS, OMP, or OPS sites, a dedicated server is also available for an additional fee.
Additional services
The Enterprise and Institutional Plans include access to additional services such as minor front-end customizations, single sign-on (SSO) integration, custom development, ongoing training, DOI and Crossref support for eligible journals, and assistance with DOAJ applications.
Institutional plan
The Institutional Plan is available exclusively to higher education institutions hosting 3 or more journals. Institutions hosting 5 or more journals also receive complimentary hosting for student journals.
We have no disk storage or bandwidth limits with our plans.
We have no publishing limits with our plans.
OJS includes built-in functionality to assign DOIs and deposit them in Crossref.
Our Enterprise Plan includes a Crossref Membership for eligible journals. This means your annual Crossref membership and DOI registration fees are covered under your hosting plan.
Our team will also help you configure the DOI and Crossref integrations, provide setup guidance, and assist with troubleshooting any issues related to Crossref deposits.
We can install and configure the iThenticate / Similarity Check Plugin for you. You will be responsible for the service fees.
Please note that our Crossref Sponsorship does not include access to Similarity Check. Sponsored Enterprise journals that wish to use this service must obtain their own Crossref membership and assume responsibility for all associated Crossref and Similarity Check fees.
PKP is a non-profit organization that develops and maintains free, open source publishing software and supports open scholarship. Revenue generated through PKP|PS helps fund the ongoing development of our software, infrastructure, documentation, and community resources.
We offer discounts to publishers that host 5+, 10+, and 20+ journals. We also offer Crossref membership sponsorship to journals in eligible low-income countries.
At this time, we are not able to offer discounts on hosting services based on a publisher’s financial resources. However, many universities, academic libraries, and library consortia provide free or low-cost journal hosting programs, which may be an option if your journal is affiliated with one of these organizations.
While we do not offer private trial instances, we provide several ways to explore and evaluate our software:
- OJS, OMP and OPS public demo sites. The login is “admin” and the password is “testdrive.” Please note that data on these sites is reset nightly and the environment is shared with other testers.
- OJS, OMP and OPS hosting. You can enter into a one-year short-term hosting agreement with PKP Publishing Services.
Information about OJS and other PKP software is available on the PKP website and in our user guides. Video tutorials are available at PKP School and on our YouTube channel.
OJS comes with several freely available themes that you can use for your journal. Each theme can be personalized with your journal’s branding, imagery and preferred navigation. You can make further styling changes by uploading a custom CSS file in the website settings. These instructions are included in our Designing Your Journal guide.
Our staff can make additional minor front-end customizations to an existing theme by request under the Enterprise plan.
If you are interested in major theme customizations, our team can either assist you via a custom development contract or provide a consultation to your developer.
Yes, you can use all of the backend submission workflow management tools without publishing your content with OJS or OMP. However, it will mean you miss out on some of the software’s key features, such as easy discoverability of your metadata by Google Scholar and other indexing services, integrations with external services such as Crossref, ORCID, and reference management tools, and tracking of OJS usage statistics.
More information on using OJS for the submission workflow only is available in our Journal Policies and Workflows guide.
Our hosting is provided on servers located in Canada. If you are interested in local hosting to meet data residency requirements, we can provide a standalone, dedicated cloud server in various global data centers. Contact us for details and pricing.
PKP releases its software under the General Public License V3, which allows others to distribute, use, host, and modify it. There may be service providers in your country or region that offer OJS hosting and development services.
At this time, PKP has no affiliate partners or regional distributors, and we are unable to refer you to local service providers.
OJS has single sign-on (SSO) integration that allows users to sign in on another site and be automatically signed in to OJS. It works for:
- User login – via Keycloak OpenID Connect, ORCID OpenID Connect, Google OpenID Connect, and Microsoft Azure Active Directory. This login option can work in parallel with OJS’s native login, or be the sole login method;
- Subscription – via a connection to an external subscription management system or an organization’s website.
SSO integrations are available to PKP| PS-hosted clients under the Enterprise plan due to the additional system maintenance required to operate the plugins.
Yes, you can move from the Basic plan to the Professional or Enterprise plan, and from the Professional plan to the Enterprise plan.
However, it is not possible to move from a Professional or Enterprise Plan to the Basic Plan. Because the Basic Plan uses a shared OJS installation, journals hosted on dedicated installations cannot be migrated back to the shared environment.
Yes. We offer migration options for journals already using OJS, as well as content import for journals coming from other platforms or from print. Please refer to the Migrating Your Content page for more information.
If you cancel hosting with us, we will provide you with full backups of your hosted installation, including the database, system files, and submission files. These files could be used to migrate your content to a self-hosted installation or another service provider.
If your journal ceases operation, you could move to our Archived hosting plan, which allows you to continue making your journal available online and perhaps resume publishing in the future for $450 USD per year.
All OJS journals are also eligible for no-cost preservation through the PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN). The PKP PN is a permanent dark archive that preserves published content for long-term access and disaster recovery. This service does not provide an archive for your review or editorial history; you would not be able to recreate your journal immediately from this archive in the event that the journal becomes active again.
OJS also includes built-in integrations with CLOCKSS and Portico preservation service; journals are responsible for any associated fees.
Multi-journal publishers can choose between our Professional and Enterprise hosting plans, both of which ensure a dedicated OJS installation. We also have a dedicated Institutional hosting plan for higher education institutions with 3+ journals.
A dedicated installation allows you to manage all your journals from a single platform. Journals can be displayed on a shared homepage, hosted under the same domain, and benefit from features such as site-wide search, shared themes, and centrally managed plugins. You can also perform upgrades across all journals simultaneously and provide your support staff with a single point of access for administration and management.
We also offer custom hosting plans and bulk discounts for large publishers. Contact us for more information.
PKP|PS does not provide indexing services or submit applications to indexing databases on behalf of journals.
Some indexes require an application. While journals are responsible for submitting and managing their own applications, Enterprise plan clients can receive guidance when applying to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). We also provide Discoverability and Sustainability guidance in our Documentation Hub, covering application requirements and workflows for several popular indexes.
OJS includes tools that can help improve discoverability and support indexing efforts. For example, OJS supports automatic indexing by Google Scholar and provides an OAI-PMH endpoint that allows external systems and indexes to harvest your journal’s metadata.
In addition, OJS includes plugins that can export journal metadata in formats commonly requested by indexing services, such as OAI, METS, and MEDLINE, and supports exporting metadata to services such as DOAJ.
We accept most forms of payment, including PayPal, bank transfers, credit cards, and cheques. If you have special payment needs or requests, please let us know, and we will try to accommodate them
Once you have submitted your hosting support agreement and paid the invoice for your first annual hosting fee, it will take approximately 2-3 business days to set up your journal or press.
Yes, you can use your own domain (e.g., myjournal.org) or a subdomain (e.g., journal.organization.com) with any of our hosting plans. You will need to designate or purchase your domain, and we will provide you with configuration instructions. A domain is required for all hosting plans.
PKP|PS provides on-site backups for all hosted clients with daily, weekly, and monthly data restore points as well as off-site server duplication for disaster recovery. All of our journals are hosted in a commercial-level hosting environment by an internet service provider based in Canada, with 24×7 in-person monitoring. Additional server options may be available, including standalone servers.
OJS, OMP, and OPS can be configured to be GDPR-compliant as outlined in our guide on GDPR and PKP software. If we host your journal or press, we can help you put these recommendations into practice by request.
In addition to applying security patches to all hosted journals immediately upon release, PKP|PS works directly with Carbon60, a Vancouver-based hosting provider, to ensure our server environment remains secure. Carbon60 conducts regular SOC 2 Type 2 security audits, maintains 24×7 on-site server monitoring, and restricts access to all servers via biometric authentication.
These security measures are supplemented by secure workflows employed by both Carbon60 and PKP|PS staff. For example, PKP|PS only transports and stores backups in encrypted form (eg., SSH/SFTP for transfer; disc encryption for local storage, if ever required).
Compared to other popular web applications, OJS has a good security track record. The PKP development team conducts regular code reviews for security implications as part of the day-to-day development cycle. If required, PKP|PS can provide a completed HECVAT Lite document for your review.
PKP is committed to ensuring that its software and websites are accessible to all users, including people with disabilities. Our target conformance level is WCAG 2.1 AA, with active progress toward WCAG 2.2 AA.
Detailed information and VPAT for both the front-end Default theme and the back-end Editorial View are available on our General Accessibility Statement page.
We use a number of tools and best practices to identify, monitor, and prevent security risks for our hosted clients.
To protect journals against automated scripts, our team has enabled throttling of all web traffic to the OJS login page so scripts cannot easily test or brute-force username/password combinations. We also install the BetterPassword plugin for all hosted journals that locks accounts against brute-force login attempts and prevents the use of short, weak passwords. In addition, our team actively maintains lists of aggressive bots and IP addresses to ensure that these are blocked from reaching hosted installs.
Our servers include SentinelOne real-time monitoring for all hosted installs, using both the AI-based SentinelOne detection engines that will quarantine malicious files upon detection as well as 24/7/365 monitoring by the SentinelOne cybersecurity team, which investigates suspicious activity and intervenes to protect the server.
Clients can further supplement these measures by registering their journal domain with Cloudflare, which provides additional domain-based services that clients can enable/disable using their Cloudflare account.