A number of services for electronic scholarly journals are provided under the Florida Online Journals (FL OJ) program working directly with Florida higher education local librarians to publish and/or produce open access journals. Using the Open Journal Systems (OJS), an open source publishing software, as the underlying system, FL OJ services include the ability to:
Official journal requests need to be submitted through and with partnership of a member library. Members may submit requests for a new journal at any time using the Florida OJ Journal Request Form and On-boarding Packet. 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.
Florida OJ runs on the Open Journal Systems (OJS) software maintained by the Public Knowledge Project. As of June 2023, Florida OJ is running on OJS version 3.3.0.14. Information on how to use the software, including short training modules, can be found on the Public Knowledge Project’s website, http://pkpschool.sfu.ca/. Note: Public Knowledge Project Schools will require you to register and login, but there is no fee for the courses.
Recommended for all journals: The “Setting up a Journal in OJS 3.3” 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 3.3" 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.
Full manual, Learning OJS 3.3: A Visual Guide to Open Journal Systems.
Support forum: https://forum.pkp.sfu.ca/ A place where OJS users can post questions and answers with fellow OJS administrators or to search for information on doing something specific in OJS.
Florida OJ Quickstart Guide for OJS 3
Florida OJ is a service provided by the Florida Virtual Campus (FLVC) Library Services, Florida’s statewide academic 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 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 two business days.
You journal will not automatically 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.
Logging in to Florida OJ
Setting up your new Journal
FLVC 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 3.3”. 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 3.3". 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:
Visit PKP Schools and work through the online courses “Setting Up a Journal in OJS 3.3” and "Editorial Workflow in OJS 3.3". 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 3.3" 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 3.3" 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.
1. Log into your journal and hover over your name in the upper right corner of the screen. Select Dashboard.
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, 5 themes are available for OJS 3.3.0.14. 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". Click on "Setup" under "Theme" to access it. 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:
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".
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 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 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. Hover your mouse over your name and click on Dashboard.
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.
Uploading Articles: Uploading finalized PDFs (For this upgrade to OJS 3.3.0.14 we recommend using Firefox. It seems to work the best.)
1. Log in.
2. Hover your mouse over your name and click on Dashboard.
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.
5. Add the article.
6. In the left hand menu, click to "Tools" just above Administration near the bottom.
7. On the "Import/Export" tab, click on "QuickSubmit Plugin" at the bottom of the list.
8. Fill in the requested info on the form.
9. Choose a Section from the drop down menu. You must select one of the choices.
10. Fill out the information for the article.
11. If you want to add another article, click to "Return to QuickSubmit Plugin".
Publishing an Issue (For this upgrade to OJS 3.3.0.14 we recommend using Firefox. It seems to work the best.)
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.
The Open Journal Systems (OJS) software powering Florida OJ is designed around supporting publishing of journal articles from start to finish - prospective authors submit content, the content goes through editorial review and copyediting, and the finalized paper is published and made available online. One of the key problems that RightsStatements.org solves is how to indicate copyright status when the author cannot be located, and hence when the author cannot assign a Creative Commons license. Because direct submission by authors is a focus of the software, the software is oriented towards supporting Creative Commons licenses.
Florida OJ has a place to enter a license, and then that license can be applied to all existing content. It will be displayed with the label of "license". The built in licenses are Creative Commons 4.0 licenses. RightsStatements.org statements are not licenses. The entire standard was designed to indicate that material is believed to have a copyright status, but there are no promises. Displaying the RightsStatements.org value with a label reading "license" is contradictory.
Meanwhile, Florida OJ also supports uncontrolled (ie. full paragraph) statements describing the copyright policy for a journal. FLVC strongly encourages adding such a statement regardless of whether or not you will implement Creative Commons or RightsStatements.org .
How can I add a copyright statement to my journal?
1. Log into https://journals.flvc.org. Click on your journal.
2. Hover your mouse over your name and click on Dashboard.
3. In the left hand menu, click on "Workflow".
4. Under the "Submission" tab, Click on "Author Guidelines". Enter the notice in the "Copyright Notice". Save when you are finished.
5. Under the heading for Copyright Notice, describe your journal's copyright policy.
Adding this statement will show up in the journal's "About" pages under "Submissions" and will allow someone looking through the site to find the information. It will not be readable to a computer, so won't support faceted search.
FLVC strongly encourages adding a copyright statement to your journal. Although it won't be used by search engines, it can be referenced in order to determine whether your content is appropriate for federated search projects such as the Directory of Open Access Journals.
How can I implement Creative Commons licenses for my journal?
Implementing Creative Commons licenses: Addressing the backlog:
First off, a Creative Commons license has to be applied by the author (ie. copyright owner). If you have a back log of content, you cannot necessarily apply a license to that content. When addressing a backlog of content, please carefully review your agreements with authors and the Creative Commons licenses to check whether or not you can apply a license. It is likely that you will not be able to apply these licenses to your backlog of journal issues and articles, and instead your focus will be on implementing them going forward by having authors of new content agree to the license as part of the publication process.
The key decision to make is whether or not a license can be applied by the journal. If the author did not apply a Creative Commons license at the time of publication, then the journal must look closely at the agreements made with authors to determine whether or not the journal can license the backlog of content.
Implementing Creative Commons licenses: Applying the license to the backlog:
Assuming your journal is able to apply a license to the backlog of content, and your journal has made the decision to do so, here is how to implement that in the software:
1. Log into https://journals.flvc.org and click on your journal.
2. Hover your mouse over your name and click on Dashboard.
3. In the left hand menu, click "Distribution".
4. Under the "License" tab, under "License" you will see the different CC License.
5. Select the Creative Commons license you will use. Click the "Save" button at bottom when done.
Implementing Creative Commons licenses: Addressing new and future articles:
Florida OJ supports adding a license to articles. When this setting is filled in, it will be applied to article metadata for any articles published in the future. So, if you indicate a Creative Commons license of CC-BY, and save that setting in the software, then it will add that statement to article metadata for any submissions uploaded to the software going forward, and the statement will appear on any articles published in the future.
How can I apply a RightsStatements.org value to my journal articles?
Please proceed with caution, because the RightsStatements.org value will be displayed with a label reading "license".
Adding RightsStatements.org to your journal's backlog of articles:
If you want to add the RightsStatements.org values to your material, here is how you do so:
1. Log into https://journals.flvc.org and click on your journal.
2. Hover your mouse over your name and click on Dashboard.
3. In the left hand menu, click "Distribution".
4. Click to the "License" tab.
5. Under the heading for "License", select "Other". In the blank for "URL to a webpage describing the license, if available." enter the RightsStatements.org URI.
6. Click "Save".
7. This will add the RightsStatements.org value to all existing journal articles. It will appear in meta tags (information in the web page header directed at search engines) for each article display, and depending on how you have configured your journal, it may appear to the public as part of the pages displaying article abstracts and author information.
Proceed with caution, because if you overwrite existing data (ie. Creative Commons licenses applied for recent articles), you cannot undo it. You can wipe out the values by removing the URL for the license, and clicking to "Reset Article Permissions". That will remove the RightsStatements.org value, but will not reapply.
For a batch change, always experiment on the test server first, look closely at the results, and feel free to request assistance from FLVC by contacting help@flvc.org .
Adding a RightsStatements.org value one article at a time:
1. Log into https://journals.flvc.org and Click on your journal.
2. Hover your mouse over your name and click on Dashboard.
3. In the left hand menu, click to "Issues", then "Back Issues".
4. Next to the issue your article is in, click the arrow. This opens menu options. Click to "Edit" the issue.
5. On the Table of Contents, click the arrow next to your article's name. This opens menu options. Click "Submission" to go to the submission.
6. Click to the "Production" tab.
7. Click on "Schedule for Publication". If the article has already been published, you will get a "This version has been published and can not be edited" message. Click the "Unpublish" button just above the message on the right.
8. Click on "Permissions & Disclosure" on the left hand menu, and add in the RightsStatements.org value as "License URL". Check that the "Copyright Holder" and "Copyright Year" are correct.
9. Click "Save" to save changes. Click the "Schedule For Publication" button near the upper right of window. The click "Publish" in the next window. Now your change has been saved.
