Open Journal System (OJS) is free software that is used for the process and publishing of academic journals. The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) team at Simon Fraser University located in Canada created this software. OJS released in 2001 from version 2 until recently the version that is still maintained is OJS 3.
By using OJS as a journal platform you will get benefits from its ecosystems such as the appropriate plugin for journal purposes as compatibility with DOI, URN, Google Scholar indexing, and other indexing metadata compliance, and compatibility with LOCKSS digital preservation system. This software also has multiple language translations such as Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Vietnam, Indonesian, and 30 more languages. You can provide different versions of each of the language interfaces to help any visitor to your journal.
It is currently based on the report released by the PKP team and has been used by more than 10.000 journals around the world. It is in fact the most used free journal platform software by many academic and independent publishers. By using this software it now becomes easier for the publisher of the journal to release any scientific academic article to provide open access to any author around the world. The popularity of this platform also makes any author familiar with the interface and its workflow, so it will help them with ease for submission and make some discussion with this platform.
Advantages of using OJS #
There are some of the benefits of using this software :
- Provide general workflow for journal management from submission, review, discussion, and publishing of any article
- Multiple roles for specific tasks and adjustable capabilities such as author, reviewer, copyeditor, and journal manager
- Flexible and responsive public theme. Since OJS 3, the display of the journal can be configured easier with the feature that allows extending of the central theme
- Compatible with scholarly publishing services such as Crossref, Orcid, and DOAJ.
- Numerous additional plugin is available such as the URN, CLOCKSS, PKP PN, and other useful plugins with free download
- Recommended by Google Scholar for inclusion in their service
- Provide the payment feature for the commercial article result access
- Constructive community and PKP staffs support.
Where to Download OJS? #
It is very recommended to download OJS from the official source since as open source software, the code is disclosed to everyone and some may add malicious code and send their hijacked version that will be used for some journal.
To get the latest version of OJS please follow this official download page for OJS.
What OJS version to use? #
We recommend for any of the journals use OJS 3 with the latest version to be used for the journal. Although on their official download page, they provide two OJS version options (2 and 3) it is well known that OJS 2 is not getting any updates compared with OJS 3. It seems like the PKP is now more focused on improving the OJS 3 rather than making any bug fix for OJS 2 version.
You also need to pay attention to this article about the difference between OJS 2 and OJS 3.
Why you need to upgrade your OJS 2 to OJS 3
We also provide complete OJS tutorial series that can be used for reference for your OJS system. Click this link to access this tutorial.
