HKBU Library : Digital Initiatives and Research Support

What is ejournals@HKBU?

ejournals@HKBU is a free hosting service provided by the University Library to assist faculty and research centers in publishing open-access journals. This service incorporates hosting support run on the open source Open Journal System (OJS), including training provision, design and layout services, publication workflow and user support. The Library also assists in assigning Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to published contents as well as Creative Commons Licensing consultation and support.

Want to know more?

This website provides an overview of the Library's ejournal service and the benefits of OJS and open access publishing. If you're interested in setting up a new open access ejournal or transferring an existing journal to HKBU's OJS platform? Contact Rebekah Wong, Head of Digital Initiatives and Research Cluster, at rebekahw@hkbu.edu.hk to discuss your needs.

What is OJS

Open Journal Systems (OJS) is an open source software application for managing and publishing scholarly journals. Originally developed and released by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) Team in 2001 to improve access to research, it is the most widely used open source journal publishing platform in existence, with over 10,000 journals using it worldwide.

According to the Library Publishing Coalition 2020 State of the Field survey, OJS was the most preferred publishing platform (45%), followed by Bepress (39%), DSpace (32%) and Pressbooks (21%). OJS was also rated very highly in the 2019 Publishing Analysis Report Mind the Gap by MIT Press.

OJS Features

OJS is a comprehensive tool for managing your entire submission and editorial workflow and publishing your articles and issues online. It offers the following features:

Responsive reader front-end with a selection of free themes or designs
Flexible and configurable editorial workflow
Online submission and management of all content
Integrated with scholarly publishing services such as Crossref, ORCiD, and DOAJ
Recommended by Google Scholar for ease of indexing and discoverability
Locally installed and controlled
Community-led and supported
Extensive user guides and training videos

Online Tutorials

Software Documentation

A visual, step-by-step guide to managing a journal with OJS

PKP School

Free, online, self-paced courses on using OJS and publishing scholarly journals. Includes videos, how-tos, and more...

Community Forum

Meet publishers, scholars, developers, editors, and librarians who use OJS. You can ask questions, answer questions, and share ideas. All skills and experiences welcome.

Some inspiring examples

Folk & Music

Food & Nutrition

Polar Research

Rilem

What is Open Access (OA)?

Open access is a publishing model for scholarly communication that aims to provide readers with free access to scholarly information. This is in contrast to the traditional subscription model where readers have to pay a subscription fee, usually via libraries.

One major advantage of open access is that it raises the visibility and prolongs the life span of academic research. The principles of open access are set out in the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) in 2012.

Confused with all the OA terminology? Educate yourself with this Open Access Glossary page from the University of Cambridge.

ANY EMBED CODE (IFRAME, EMBED, OBJECT from YOUTUBE, VIMEO ETC.)

Gain Visibility & Impact with Open Access

Watch this 3-min video to find out how to gain greater visibility and impact with open access

Publishing in Open Access (OA) journals

There are many ways to make one's work open access when publishing an article:

Publish in a regular journal, but choose an OA-friendly one that allows you to archive your work in an institutional or subject repository or on your own personal web page.
The Sherpa/Romeo site ranks journals according to their policy regarding self-archiving. Type the title of the journal in the search box to find out what the publisher's archiving conditions are.
This site discusses publishing in OA in several disciplines and offers suggestions to authors publishing in those disciplines.
Publish in a regular journal, but license your work to the publisher instead of transferring your copyright to the publisher. You can do this by adding an author addendum, such as the SPARC Author Addendum, to the standard publishing contract.

What is DOAJ?

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) provides access to high quality, peer reviewed, open access journals. You can locate open access journals published in your field by searching the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ, see below). DOAJ classifies OA journals by subject category and can be searched at the article level. DOAJ also provides information on Creative Commons licensing policies and copyright.

As of Feb 2021, DOAJ indexed 15,954 journals and 5,710,000 article records, covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences and the humanities.

Established in 2003 at Lund University, Sweden, DOAJ provides a service for reputable open access publishers to register their journals. All DOAJ journals have been approved as quality, peer reviewed open access journals. DOAJ is independent, mainly supported by academic organisations.

Recommended Blogs & Websites on Scholarly Publishing

Scholarly Kitchen - Moderated, independent blog by the Society for Scholarly Publishing, established since 2008

Library Publishing Coalition - Association of academic and research libraries engaged in scholarly publishing

SPARC - Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition

COPE - Committee on Publication Ethics

Mind the Gap - Landscape Analysis of open source publishing Tools & Platforms by MIT Press

Why care about Open Access (OA)?

Watch this movie to find out!

The Business of Scholarship is a documentary which focuses on the need for open access to research and science. The film questions the rationale behind the $25.2 billion a year that flows into for-profit academic publishers, examines the 35-40% profit margin associated with the top academic publisher, Elsevier, and looks at how that profit margin is often greater than some of the most profitable tech companies such as Apple, Facebook, and Google.

Source: paywallthemovie.com

Click here for a free download of Paywall: The Business of Scholarship