OJS is the currently most popular platform for journal submission, publishing, and review management platform. One of the reasons for this popularity is that this platform provides features that journal managers or users need, such as google scholar features, Crossref, export-import, repositories in PKP PN, Web archives, and many indexing supports, various citations, and so on.
The use of OJS is also very profitable considering that investment on this platform tends to be cheaper compared to having to create an in-house platform or using other platforms. Besides the many official support from providers such as Google Scholar, Crossref, Scopus / Elvesier, and so on.
But unfortunately in the experience of our team that has handled many of our clients, OJS is not necessarily compatible with general hosting that is intended for multi-purpose hosting. For example, we found that certain hosting, not provided the right PHP version, unsupported PHP package applications, and so on. Unfortunately, the full download page provided by PKP does not entirely explain the most appropriate requirements for OJS.
In the OJS hosting that we provide, we have properly set up and optimized security, automatic daily backups by our servers that are placed on Google servers, and support from our professional team. Our cloud hosting is configured and specialized for OJS use purposes. Details on this can be seen on the following page.
Here are some Server Requirements that are right for your OJS 3.3.0-13 :
Minimum Server Requirement : #
- Operating System: Windows / Linux Based
- Minimal Disk Space: 500MB
- RAM: 500MB
- Apache > 2.46 version
- Curl installed and available
- Mysql 4.1 / MariaDB 10 / PostgreSQL 8.0
- PHP 7.3 with PHP package (PHP 8.1 is not recommended – there is some problem with the third-party plugin) :
- php-xml
- php-curl
- php-mbstring
- php-mysql (use mysqli as ojs database connection)
- php-pgsql (optional for Postgre db)
- php-intl
Recommended Server Requirement : #
- Operating System: Windows / Linux Based
- Disk Space: 2 GB (will need to expand as the journal grows)
- RAM: 1 GB
- Apache 2 with available module
- mod_rewrite
- mod_deflate
- mod_gzip
- mod_http2
- mod_ssl
- Curl installed and available
- Mysql 5.7 / MariaDB 10 / PostgreSQL 8.0 with UTF8 Unicode support
- PHP 7.3 with php package, or on OJS 3.3 can use PHP 7.4 version (For OJS version 3.3.0.13 onward, can use PHP 8.0) :
- php-xml
- php-curl
- php-mbstring
- php-JSON
- php-mysql (use mysqli as an ojs database connection)
- php-pgsql (optional for Postgre db)
- php-gettext
- php-
intl
- Tar/Zip command allowed (for installing the plugin)
Although the PKP informs that OJS 3.3 is compatible with PHP 8, we still do not recommend using PHP 8 for that version (except for OJS 3.4) since we have received many complaints from our customers that some of the plugins are not compatible with that PHP version. You can use PHP 7.4 as a safe choice for the OJS < 3.4.
Note that :
Using the Nginx (as we have used on our cloud OJS hosting) may increase the performance of your OJS but should be done with a complex configuration.
We also recommend that you set up this feature which will be very useful in daily OJS usage :
- Google Recaptcha
- Email notification integrated with OJS installation
- Orcid Integration to OJS
- DOI registration with DOI provider vendor by having it you can get the benefit to get a citations list
If you know of any other packages or applications that we have missed, please let others know by commenting on this post.
Read also: How to secure OJS
Contact us if you need professional and expert service to make your server ready to use OJS/OMP platform.
