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Florida Online Journals (OJ): Onboarding and Training

Scholarly Journal Publishing: Florida Online Journals (Florida OJ) is a service for publishing journal content. The software allows for a variety of publishing workflows including prospective authors uploading material, anonymous reviews, and publishing

Table of Contents: OJS 3 FAQ and Training

Florida OJ Overview

SCHOLARLY JOURNALS

FLVC provides a number of services for electronic scholarly journals under our Florida Online Journals (Florida OJ) program. We can work through your library, or directly with your faculty, to publish and/or produce their open access journals.

Using the Open Journal Systems (OJS) open source publishing software as the underlying system, we can help you:

  • Publish electronic journals from scratch with Florida OJ & OJS. If you need a publishing system for your journal, Florida OJ can provide a free platform and technical support. Using OJS, editors can have authors submit manuscripts, can edit the manuscripts, and can publish to the web.
     
  • Host electronic journals in Florida OJ. If you are already publishing through another system, you can still host with Florida OJ. OJS provides not only basic search and browse features for hosted journals, but indexing with the Directory of Open Access Journals, RSS feeds, OAI-PMH repository functionality, automatic email notifications for users, and other features.
     
  • Provide access to licensed commercial journals no longer supported by the publisher.  If you have back issues of commercial journals for which you need to continue to provide access, you can host those journals with Florida OJ as well. We can support a variety of types of access restrictions for these journals if necessary. Hosting with Florida OJ gives your journal increased user access, well-developed and supported publishing software, and security of data. We encourage open access to all journals, but do support access restrictions if necessary. If your institution is interested in publishing or hosting a journal with Florida Online Journals, please feel free to contact us at: help@flvc.org.
     

Requesting a Journal in Florida OJ.

If you are ready to request a journal in Florida OJ, please work through the Florida OJ Journal Request Form and Onboarding Packet , and have your library liaison return a completed journal request form.

After we have created a journal for you, we request that  you also make a catalog record for the journal and include a link in the catalog record to the journal on the Florida OJ website.  This will allow researchers to more easily find your journal.

 

Where to Find More Information about Open Journal Systems (OJS)

Florida OJ runs on the Open Journal Systems (OJS) software maintained by the Public Knowledge Project.  As of July 2019, Florida OJ is running on OJS version 3, so please refer to guidance for OJS 3 rather than OJS 2.  Information on how to use the software can be found on the Public Knowledge Project’s website.  Two resources are particularly useful.

PKP Schools:  Training Modules for OJS

There is a page with short training modules at http://pkpschool.sfu.ca/ .  Note:  PKP Schools will require you to register and login.  There is no fee for the courses.

Recommended for all journals: The “Setting up a Journal in OJS 3” course takes about 3 hours to sit through and is a good starting point for new journal managers.  It covers setting up basic colors, and it goes over journal settings that can help you tie into existing programs for search and preservation.

Recommend for journals accepting submissions and completing reviews in Florida OJ:  The "Editorial Workflow in OJS 3" course takes about 2 hours to sit through.  It shows the range of workflows supported by the software, and is useful for knowing what is possible.  It also links out to guidance on how to implement your desired workflows.

Manuals and written documentation

Full manual:  https://docs.pkp.sfu.ca/learning-ojs/en/ :  Learning OJS 3.1: A Visual Guide to Open Journal Systems

Support forum:  There is a support forum at http://forum.pkp.sfu.ca/ where OJS users can post questions and answers.  This can help you to search for information on doing something specific in OJS.

FLVC/FALSC Quickstart Guide:  FLVC/FALSC also makes available a Florida OJ Quickstart Guide.

Report a Problem or Question to the Help Desk Please feel free to report any issues to help@flvc.org.

Go to Florida OJ

Florida OJ Quickstart Guide for OJS 3

Florida OJ Quickstart Guide for OJS 3

How to Request a Journal from FLVC

Florida OJ is a service provided by the Florida Virtual Campus (FLVC) and the Florida Academic Library Services Cooperative (FALSC), Florida’s statewide library consortium.  The service is available through any Florida public university or state college library.

To request a journal, have your library send a completed Florida OJ Journal Request Form and Onboarding Packet to help@flvc.org .

FLVC/FALSC will set up your journal on the test server https://ojs.test.flvc.org and on the production Florida OJ site https://journals.flvc.org .  Turn around time is usually within one business day.

You journal will not appear on the homepage of Florida OJ, and you should send a separate request to get listed on the homepage, after you have styled your public pages and are ready to launch.  It is necessary to have an incoming link from the homepage in order for any public content to display.

First Steps:  Logging in to Florida OJ

  • Go to https://journals.flvc.org 
  • In the top right corner, click "Login" and enter your login information.
  • This takes  you to your home screen.  In the top left hand corner, there is a label reading "Open Journal Systems".  Clicking this gets you a list of all journals you are on in any capacity, including journals where you have previously submitted an article for consideration.  Click the name of any journal to get to settings and content for that journal.

First steps:  Setting up your new Journal

FLVC/FALSC will issue you a journal on Florida OJ.  Anyone working with your journal as a Journal Manager will have the ability to configure the software for a variety of publishing workflows.  (Your library liaison is a Journal Manager on your journal and is able to assist.)

Here are some resources to get you started in configuring the software.

If you want a simple page to hold finalized PDF files:

Visit PKP Schools and work through the online course “Setting Up a Journal in OJS 3”.  To get to this course, visit PKP Schools at http://pkpschool.sfu.ca/ , then click to "Courses" in the menu along the top of the page and select "Setting up a Journal in OJS 3".  The course requires registration, but there is no fee.  The registration is to prevent spam comments on course material.  This course takes about 2 hours to complete and takes you through the journal settings that determine how the journal pages will look to the public (ie. colors, banner image, etc.) and through setting up the journal to better interact with search engines and better display for research (ie. entering an ISSN, setting up keywords for search, etc.).

Next, this Quickstart Guide has instructions on uploading PDFs (or other format) of back issues.

If you want to use publishing workflows in Florida OJ (ie. accept author submissions, perform anonymous reviews):

Think through the following questions:

  • How will you solicit content?
  • What are the terms for the journal's publication agreements with authors?  (Will the journal use Creative Commons licenses?  Florida OJ settings can be adjusted to get the license from authors and display a Creative Commons license to search engines.)
  • How will you recruit peer reviewers?
  • Who will do copy editing and proofreading?
  • What is the administrative structure of the journal?  Editorial board?  Advisory board?

Visit PKP Schools and work through the online courses “Setting Up a Journal in OJS 3” and "Editorial Workflow in OJS 3".  To get to these courses, visit PKP Schools at http://pkpschool.sfu.ca/ , then click to "Courses" in the menu along the top of the page and select the course.  Courses require registration, but there is no fee.  The registration is to prevent spam comments on course material.  "Setting up a Journal in OJS 3" covers basic set up of a journal's look and feel and settings that better share out material to search engines.  It brushes on the editorial review settings.  "Editorial Workflow in OJS 3" in particular covers in more detail how to implement a desired workflow in the software.  The best way to approach publishing is to clearly plan out the workflow you want (using the questions above), and then click through to implement it in the software.

First Steps:  Colors and Layout

1.  Log into the software, and go to the admin page for your journal.  This is https://journals.flvc.org/yourjournalurl/management .
2.  In the left hand column, click to "Settings", then "Website".  This takes you to the main page with your site's color and banner image.
3.  Look at the drop down menu for "Theme".  At this time, 4 themes are available for OJS 3.  All are anticipated to be available on the production site at the time of the upgrade.  Try out different themes, save the changes, then go to the journal's public view ( https://journals.flvc.org/yourjournalurl/ ) and press CTRL+F5 to refresh the page.
4.  Each theme will have a color picker area. This is labeled "Colour".  You can click on the colored box under the "Colour" heading, and then select a color that you would like to use with the theme.  Try saving a new color, then go to the journal's public view ( https://journals.flvc.org/yourjournalurl/ ) and press CTRL+F5 to refresh the page.
5.  Each theme has a banner image.  This is labeled "Logo".  Try out uploading a logo for the theme you'd like, then go to the journal's public view ( https://journals.flvc.org/yourjournalurl/ ) and press CTRL+F5 to refresh the page.
Here are recommended banner image sizes for each theme:

  • Default Theme:  Banner image should be 80 pixels high.  There is no recommended width, but 600 pixels seems to look good on most browsers.
  • Health Sciences Theme:  Banner image should be 80 pixels high.  There is no recommended width, but 600 pixels seems to look good on most browsers.
  • Immersion Theme:  Banner image should be 135 pixels high.  There is no recommended width, but 600 pixels seems to look good on most browsers.
  • Classic Theme:  Banner image should be 50 pixels high.  There is no recommended width, but 600 pixels seems to look good on most browsers.
  • Additionally, we recommend that you keep a larger version of your banner image handy in your records, in case you would like to change to a new theme and resize the image.

Tips on specific themes:

Customizing the "Default Theme"

Making the homepage image smaller:  Out-of-the-box, the Default Theme makes the homepage image very large.  In order to make the banner image smaller, follow instructions here https://github.com/FLVC/FloridaOJcss and upload the following template stylesheet to your journal as "Journal style sheet" https://github.com/FLVC/FloridaOJcss/blob/master/TemplateStyleSheet_DefaultTheme_JournalHomepageImageChanges.css .

Customizing the Classic Theme

Adding a search box:  While other themes have a "Search" link built into the theme, the Classic Theme does not.  In order to add a link to search, you have to add an item to the navigation menu across the top of the screen.  To add this:  Log in and go to your journal's logged in view, Click to "Settings" "Website", Click to the "Navigation Menus" tab, Click the arrow next to "Primary Navigation Menu" then click "Edit" in the menu that opens, Click and drag "Search" from the "Unassigned Menu Items" to "Assigned Menu Items", and click "Save".

First Steps: Planning for Journal Display on the Florida OJ Homepage

The homepage of Florida OJ shows a thumbnail image for each journal and a brief description of the journal.  You can see this at https://journals.flvc.org/ .

To set the thumbnail image:

1.  Log in.
2.  Click to the admin page for your journal.  (  https://journals.flvc.org/yourjournalurlhere/management )
3.  Click to "Settings" then "Website".
4.  Under the heading for "Journal thumbnail", click to upload an image.  Recommendations for format and size are: a .png or .jpg file that is 170 pixels wide and between 170 and 300 pixels tall.
5.  Click "Save".

To set the journal description that appears on the Florida OJ homepage:

1.  Log in.
2.  Click to the admin page for your journal.  (  https://journals.flvc.org/yourjournalurlhere/management )
3.  Click to "Settings" then "Journal".
4.  Under the heading for "Journal Summary", enter a short description of your journal.  FLVC/FALSC recommends staying under 250 words, and not changing the font size.
5.  Click "Save".

Making your journal appear on the Florida OJ homepage:

You are not able to make your journal appear on the homepage.  Only FLVC/FALSC can do that.  To have the link to your journal posted, email to help@flvc.org with "Florida OJ" in the subject line.

Creating a Journal Issue

You need to create an issue before you can load articles to it.

1.  Log in.
2.  Click to the admin page for your journal.  (  https://journals.flvc.org/yourjournalurlhere/management )
3.  In the left hand menu, click to "Issues", then click to "Future Issues".  (You will create the issue in Future Issues.  Later, after articles are added, you will publish the issue.)
4.  Create the issue so that the article has somewhere to go.

  • In the top right corner, click "Create Issue".
  • Fill out the requested information and click to "Save" the issue.

Uploading Articles:  Uploading finalized PDFs

1.  Log in.
2.  Click to the admin page for your journal.  (  https://journals.flvc.org/yourjournalurlhere/management )
3.  In the left hand menu, click to "Issues", then click to "Future Issues".
4.  Create the issue so that the article has somewhere to go.

  • In the top right corner, click "Create Issue".
  • Fill out the requested information and click to "Save" the issue.

5.  Add the article.
6.  In the lefthand menu, click to "Settings" then "Website".
7.  Click to the "Plugins" tab.
8.  Next to the "QuickSubmit Plugin", click the arrow to get to plugin options.
9.  Click to "Import/Export Data".
10.  Fill out the information for the article.  

  • Click "Add contributor" and add at least one author.
  • Toward the bottom of the form, click to "Add galley" and click through the wizard to add upload the article file and add basic information.  (Allowed filetypes are: zip; pdf; doc; docx; jpeg; gif; png; jpg; ppt; pptx; xls; xlsx; csv; txt; html; mp3 .  If you have an additional filetype that you need to add, you can change settings for the Allowed Uploads Plugin, or contact help@flvc.org to get set up to upload a new kind of file.)
  • Check the radio button for "Published".
    • A pop up menu will open for "Schedule for publication in".  Use the drop down menu to select the issue you will add the article to.
  • Click "Save" at the bottom of the form.

11. If you want to add another article, click to "Return to QuickSubmit Plugin".

Publishing an Issue

After you have added articles to an issue, it is time ot make that issue go live to the public.

To make an issue live for the public:

1.  Log in.
2.  Click to the admin page for your journal.
3.  On the lefthand menu, click to "Issues", then click to "Future Issues".
4.  Look for the name of the issue that you want to publish.  Click the arrow next to that issue's name.  This will open a menu of options.  Click the option to "Publish Issue".
5.  Sort the issue among existing back issues:  Now click to the "Back Issues" tab.  This will give a list of all back issues.  The issue you just published will be listed as most current.  If it needs to be sorted (ie. a different issue is most current), then click on the title of the issue and drag and drop it in the list of issues to sort it.
6.  Log out and check over the issue.  Log out.  Go to your journal's public page in Florida OJ, and click to "Archives".  Locate the issue you just published.  Click into it and check over the issue for any display issues and to make sure it is appropriately open to the public.