Welcome to our new OJSPlus-powered journal
2026-06-15
The Journal of Open Scholarly Publishing is now live as a demonstration of OJS enhanced by OJSPlus.
Read more about Welcome to our new OJSPlus-powered journal
About the Journal
The Journal of Open Scholarly Publishing (JOSP) is a fully open-access, peer-reviewed demonstration journal built on Open Journal Systems (OJS) and enhanced by OJSPlus. It publishes practical guides, tutorials, and commentary on scholarly publishing, peer review, and open science — and doubles as a live showcase of what a modern OJS journal can look like.
Announcements
Current Issue
Vol. 1 No. 1 (2026): Inaugural Issue
The inaugural issue of the Journal of Open Scholarly Publishing (JOSP) brings together practical guides to submitting, reviewing, and publishing research with Open Journal Systems (OJS) and OJSPlus, alongside commentary on open access and the future of scholarly communication.
JOSP is a fully open-access, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the craft of scholarly communication — how research is written, reviewed, published, and discovered. Every article is freely available to read and reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, with no article processing charges and no fees to read: a diamond open-access model supported by the OJSPlus demonstration programme and the volunteer effort of our editors and reviewers.
This issue is organised into three sections. Editorials introduce the journal and its mission; Tutorials & Guides walk authors and reviewers step by step through registering, preparing a manuscript, navigating double-anonymous peer review, and the full OJS editorial workflow; and Articles examine open-access models, copyright and licensing, indexing and persistent identifiers (DOIs and ORCID), and the path from submission to publication.
Whether you are an author preparing a first submission, a reviewer sharpening your reports, a librarian assessing platforms, or an editor evaluating OJS for a new or migrating title, this issue is designed to be a practical, self-contained starting point — and a live showcase of what a modern, well-configured OJS journal can look like when enhanced by OJSPlus.
We welcome contributions on every stage of the publishing lifecycle, from author guidance and reproducible-research practices to peer-review models, editorial workflows, publishing technology, and discoverability. Please see the Author Guidelines and submission checklist before submitting.
Please note: this is a demonstration journal. The articles, authors, and announcements shown here are illustrative sample content created to showcase OJSPlus, and do not describe real research.
Published:
2026-06-15
Editorials
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Welcome to the Journal of Open Scholarly Publishing
Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Open Scholarly Publishing, a demonstration journal created to show how a modern, fully configured Open Journal Systems installation can look and behave when enhanced by OJSPlus. In this editorial we set out the journal's purpose: to gather practical guidance on submitting, reviewing, and publishing research, and to serve as a living showcase for editors evaluating OJS for a new or migrating title. We explain our commitment to fee-free, diamond open access, our double-anonymous review process, and how the sample articles, policies, and announcements throughout this site illustrate the building blocks of a credible scholarly journal.
Tutorials & Guides
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What is OJSPlus? Extending OJS for Modern Journals
OJSPlus builds on Open Journal Systems with contemporary, magazine-quality themes, simplified hosting, and editorial tooling, while preserving the openness, metadata standards, and workflow rigour that make OJS trusted worldwide. This article explains what OJSPlus adds and, just as importantly, what it does not change: your content, data, and editorial process remain standard OJS, so there is no lock-in. We describe the richer reading experience OJSPlus themes provide, how they stay compatible with upstream releases, and how a journal can adopt a modern look without sacrificing accessibility or interoperability. Several live demonstration journals, including this one, showcase the range of designs… -
How to Submit an Article: A Step-by-Step Guide for Authors
Submitting a manuscript to an Open Journal Systems journal is straightforward once the workflow is clear. This step-by-step guide walks first-time authors through every stage: creating an account, starting a new submission, confirming the submission checklist, uploading the manuscript and any supplementary files, and entering the metadata that makes work discoverable. We explain how to choose the right section, how to prepare an anonymised file for double-anonymous review, and what happens after you click submit. We close with practical advice for tracking a submission from the author dashboard, responding to editorial requests, and ensuring a smooth path to a first decision. -
Preparing Your Manuscript: Formatting, References, and Metadata
A well-prepared manuscript moves through peer review faster and reads better in print. This article covers the essentials of manuscript preparation: logical structure and appropriate length, clear section headings, and consistent formatting that assists both reviewers and copyeditors. We discuss preparing figures and tables, choosing a citation style and including DOIs, and writing an informative abstract. Particular attention is paid to metadata—titles, keywords, author names, and ORCID identifiers—because accurate, complete metadata is one of the highest-leverage things an author can get right for long-term discoverability. We also cover anonymising files for double-anonymous review and declaring… -
Understanding the Peer Review Process
Peer review remains the foundation of scholarly trust, yet its mechanics are often opaque to new authors and reviewers. This tutorial compares single-anonymous, double-anonymous, and open review, then follows a manuscript through every stage: editor screening, reviewer invitation, assessment, and the decision letter. Authors learn how to read reviewer reports constructively and how to prepare a strong revision-and-response that addresses each point. New reviewers receive a practical checklist for writing fair, specific, and humane reports, declaring competing interests, and respecting confidentiality. We also discuss reviewer recognition and the editor's role in weighing conflicting recommendations to… -
Getting Started with Open Journal Systems (OJS)
Open Journal Systems is the most widely used open-source journal platform in the world, powering tens of thousands of titles. This primer introduces the OJS editorial workflow and the roles of editors, reviewers, authors, and journal managers, then walks through the core settings that turn a fresh installation into a working journal: contexts, sections, user roles, submission settings, and the masthead. It is aimed at editors evaluating OJS for a new or migrating title, with pointers to the documentation and community maintained by the Public Knowledge Project. We close with guidance on hosting choices, backups, and keeping an installation secure and current.
Articles
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Open Access Publishing: Principles, Models, and Benefits
Open access removes price and permission barriers to research, allowing anyone to read, reuse, and build upon scholarship. This article reviews the foundational declarations that defined the movement and distinguishes the main routes to open access: gold, green, and diamond. We weigh the evidence on readership, citation advantage, and global equity, and consider the economics of article processing charges versus community-funded models. We argue that fee-free, diamond open access—supported by efficient open-source infrastructure such as OJS—is an increasingly practical route for scholarly societies, libraries, and institutions that wish to publish high-quality, peer-reviewed work without charging either… -
Copyright, Licensing, and Author Rights in Open Access
Who owns a published article, and what may readers do with it? This article explains how author-retained copyright combines with Creative Commons licensing to enable broad reuse while protecting attribution. We compare the most common licences, clarify what CC BY means for text and data mining, translation, and redistribution, and discuss the implications for authors who wish to deposit their work in repositories. We also offer practical guidance for journals drafting a clear, author-friendly copyright notice, and explain the difference between copyright, licensing, and the version of record. The goal is a transparent policy that benefits authors, readers, and the scholarly record alike. -
Indexing, DOIs, and Making Your Research Discoverable
Publication is only the beginning of a paper's life; discoverability determines whether it is read and cited. This article covers the infrastructure that makes research findable: persistent identifiers such as DOIs and ORCID, structured metadata for indexing services, and the OAI-PMH interface that lets aggregators harvest a journal's content. We explain how to register DOIs through a registration agency, why clean and complete metadata matters for services like Crossref, DOAJ, and Google Scholar, and how indexing decisions are made. Editors will find concrete, prioritised steps to improve a journal's visibility, from enabling identifiers to auditing the metadata of every published item. -
The Editorial Workflow: From Submission to Publication
Behind every published article is a sequence of editorial decisions and handoffs. This article maps the full Open Journal Systems workflow—submission, review, copyediting, and production—and explains how editors assign participants, manage discussions, request revisions, schedule issues, and publish galleys. We highlight the small process choices that reduce time-to-decision and improve the experience for authors and reviewers: clear communication, realistic deadlines, and good use of editorial templates. We also discuss managing an editorial team, recording decisions for accountability, and preparing a clean issue for publication. Understanding the workflow end to end helps editors run a journal that…
