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Publishing with Open Journal Systems (OJS)

Bell Library is able to offer support for hosting open access journals through our partnership with the Texas Digital Library.

Roles and Responsibilities for Service Provision

The Journal Hosting service is a collaboration among (at least) three parties, each with important roles to maintaining a successful journal: 

  • Journal Team (including the Journal Manager(s), Editor(s), other journal staff and Editorial Board), which undertakes the work of policy setting, workflow decision-making, and editorial workflow management within the journal site. The Journal Team is also responsible for custom site design. 
  • The Library, which serves as a liaison between the TDL and the Journal Team and provides value-added services like consulting on scholarly communications issues. 
  • The Texas Digital Library, which provides hosting and technical support for the journal. 

OJS Hosting Policies

  • Eligibility: Bell Library provides free hosting and technical support for Open Access peer-reviewed journals to faculty, staff, and students at their institution.
    • Journal Managers must be affiliated with Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. If journal management transfers to individuals affiliated with another institution, Bell Library will allow the journal to remain hosted for one year, after such time, the journal must be migrated to another hosting service. 
    • Journal teams may apply for a TDL-hosted journal site via the TDL Helpdesk. More here.
    • Student-run journals must be sponsored by a faculty member of academic department.
  • Open Access: TDL-hosted journals must have a posted Open Access policy that provides free access to published articles.
  • Migration: TDL can provide support for migration of OJS journals hosted elsewhere. It does not currently provide system administration support for journals currently housed in other platforms (such as WordPress or BePress). That said, OJS does come with import tools and a Quick Submit plugin that can help Journal Teams move issue and article archives into a new TDL-hosted journal.
  • Theming: TDL journals come out of the box with several theme options. Journal teams may adapt and upload customized CSS for their journal site. TDL does not at this time provide theme customization services.
  • Code customization: TDL does not provide customization services that require changes to the php code.