Open Journal System - OJSCloud - Open Journal System Hosting Provider

The Internet has disrupted our life, specifically in “How we access information?”. Open access journal is not immune to this groundbreaking innovation. Research is a field that is largely affected by the WWW. Documentation of the novel findings or alteration suggestions in existing findings is changed entirely. Open Journal System (OJS) has provided tremendous capabilities to its user for establishing the open access journal website in 2-3 weeks.

Entry of the OJS into the WWW makes the research digitization very efficient and manageable. As a result, many like to have these research articles at their fingertips, which means in the form of journal websites, specifically open-access journals. Access to research documentation in the form of a research article has become much easier than 10 years ago.

Therefore, we cannot overlook the open access journal’s website performance and features. In this blog, I would like to discuss the most important features provided by Open Journal System (OJS) to host open access journal websites.

Before moving into the discussion, I would like to spare some time for the elephant in the room, an “open access journal.” If you are new to the research world, you might not have heard about this group of words before. So, please read the below section to understand the background theory well so that advanced learnings become very easy.

What is an open access journal?

Anything which doesn’t require any prior permission, license, subscription, or fee payment is called open access. The same phenomenon is applied to put this into the perspective of open-access journals.

Open access journals are open to all research communities and normal human beings. To access the published research articles in such journals, you are not required to purchase a subscription or any special license. The most beautiful thing about these categories of journals is that they are “free.”

Note: Open-access journals are free for readers; however, they can charge some amount for publishing the articles.

Open access journals were not very popular as there were no dedicated online infrastructures. Journals were in print form only. However, after the entrance of the Internet, many publishers have developed open-access journal websites. In continuation, I would add that Open Journal System (OJS) is a robust open-sourced platform to establish such open access journals website quickly.

Open-access journals website can be accessed by anyone having a good internet connection. So, you might be clear now that this is a very generous arrangement to accelerate the research and development by subtracting the cost hurdles.

Top Features of the Open Journal System (OJS):

1. Efficient OJS Themes:

With the recent upgrade, OJS has ready-to-use themes with endless color options. These themes are not just about looks but also agile in performance. These themes will allow you to set up your journal website quickly. Drag and drop facility is there for you in case you need to be made aware of HTML and CSS. Earlier themes were not easy to change as they required many template files. A recent upgrade has solved this problem by making template files stand alone. Get exciting OJS Themes

Apart from the basic layout, the latest OJS allows customizing the theme per the individual test and requirements. Many OJS hosting service providers are available who can help you make your journal website more interactive and user-friendly with full customization.

2. Responsive Nature of OJS Theme

As mobile phone becomes the mode of internet access, the OJS website is no exception. Many researchers love accessing such websites via mobile phones, tablets, or handheld devices. These devices are of different screen sizes. So to put this variable display environment, OJS has provided responsive layout themes.

3. Fragmented and Bifurcated stepwise procedure

The entire workflow has been divided into small parts, making it easy to work with and manage. Primarily this division consists of Accommodation {where novel requirements are entertained by affirmation or negation}, Survey {where peers check the content and revert to the creators so that they can edit the content} and Copyediting{where foreseen contents are stored for the final revision and ready to enter into the production}.

The great thing about the above-discussed steps is that each step can be accessed individually and left to visit, which means jumping the sequence. This edition allows you to enroll the creator at any step for proper correction.

4. Dynamic User Swap

Generally, software systems are of a nature in which they do not allow the user role to change without reentering the credentials. OJS, on the other hand, allows you to change the user if you have logged in with the master credentials. This facility is very convenient for changing roles and doing tasks with rapid response. For example, you can become a reviewer and journal manager in one login. You do not require to log out from the system to change the role.

5. Interaction regarding publication

As you know, OJS has divided the entire journal management task into various stages: Accommodation, Survey, copyediting, and production. The different user roles can collaborate via a simple messaging system during this phase. Apart from this, robust email facilities are also there for logging activity status. Peers can review each other’s work and comment also. This facility ensures that each stakeholder can take an interest in all activities. This is possible only and only due to the OJS new theme advancement.

6. Simple Registration

Enrolling in a new user’suser’s biome is very easy with this upgrade. The new registration form includes very few and extremely important fields to be filled in by the user. The user with no extra information can fill out this form. It can be submitted with handy or memorized basic information. After the form submission, new clients are informed via well formatted prescribed email.

7. Easy Task Assignment Mechanism

Another significant benefit of OJS is that you can swap between two different users who are experts. Swapping is straightforward, and configuration options are available in the left sidebar. As a result, it has made the assignment of dual obligations easier.

Upgrade to the latest OJS 3.3.0-13 for New Features

You might be running a journal website on old OJS, so you might not have the new features. I request you upgrade your OJS to the latest OJS 3.3.0-13. Ensure you take enough care during the upgrade because an OJS upgrade is complex and demands expertise. One should take a full system backup before upgrading because sometimes the upgrade may go wrong, and data can be lost. If possible, then higher experts for OJS upgrade.

We at OJSCloud provide end to end hosting solutions for open access journal on OJS.

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Conclusion

To wind up the discussion, I would definitely rate the current OJS version along with the discussed features on the higher side of the weight scale, as it provides extraordinary functionalities for the user. All the discussed functionality make the journal management task very efficient. I recommend upgrading to this version to maximize the new features.

When we started to build our services, our primary goal was to revolutionize the online research paper publishing industry. To fulfill this, we choose an Open Journal System(OJS) as a platform.

The primary Reason for Choosing the Open Journal System(OJS) is due to its incredible popularity in the research fraternity, as far as open-access journals are concerned. However, we found that the default themes’ (provided by the Open Journal System(OJS)) layout and structure are not that sound in terms of user-friendliness and indexing.

To solve the problem discussed in the above section, we went back to the drawing board and had so many brainstorming sessions for building a new Open Journal System theme. As a result of those sessions, we finally landed to the conclusion that we need to have a customized open journal system theme and a search engine-friendly user interface that can improve the hosted journals’ page ranking and reachability.

Consequently, we started to build our own customized themes for the publishers’ open-access journals hosted on the open journal system, which can help their journals to rank high on popular search engines. These open journal system themes are readily available and require lesser time to implement. In case the client wants more customization from scratch, we also provide customized open journal system theme development.

How does Journal’s website affect the page ranking?

Popular search engines like Google and Microsoft Bing have published, the factors they look for, in the public domain for developers. These search engines keep on updating the list of elements they always consider while allowing any webpage or website visible on their platforms.

The website’s looks and feels play a very important role in reducing the bounce rate. Ultimately good user experience helps to hold the website visitor for a longer period of time and eventually enhances the webpage’s reputation according to search engine optimization guidelines. As the open source platform, the open journal system provides little attention to the themes. So, when a journal is hosted on an open journal system and wants to rank high, it requires changing the website themes.

Role of presentation for open journal system themes:

To build new themes we have used our decade of experience and learnings acquired while developing products for world-renowned content management systems. We specifically kept in mind the “power of powerful presentation” which can hold the visitors of websites and convert them into prospective clients.

One common understanding will be much more impactful over here, to explain, why presentation is important for online journals: We would like to put it like this, which kind of store will you choose to buy your groceries from? One which is unorganized and filthy or another which has organized sections of classified and relevant stuff!!!!!!!!

Obviously, everyone chooses a store that has well organized, clean, easy to access, and an effortless way to find the stuff. Customers will come back again and again to buy something and from a service provider’s point of view, he/she can build a long-term relationship with the client.

How do Open Journal System Themes Affect SEO? 1

In continuation with the above-cited analogy, We can confidently say that, when it comes to online resources or websites, the same things are applicable. Well-laid-out, organized, and interactive online open-access journal websites can generate huge visitor traffic. Consequently, this can increase the subscription ratio and benefit our publishers.

How do Open Journal System Themes Affect SEO? 2

On the contrary, some would say that an Open Journal System(OJS) is not a normal website for purchasing something. I would show positive agreement on this, however, I would definitely like to cite our personal findings about the factors affecting the impact factor of the journal, one of them is the “presentation quality”.

What are the factors that affect the page ranking of a website?

Mobile phone friendly

Other than website layout and user interface, in the modern era, your website must be responsive in nature. In other words, the website must be mobile phone friendly. Nowadays people are spending much time on the internet via mobile phones rather than laptops or desktops. Google also emphasizes ranking websites high, that have responsive architecture. To make the website responsive for each type of mobile screen, the developer has to go through rigorous brainstorming while the development phase.

Page Speed

The speed of the webpage is also considered a major factor for higher ranking by the leading search engines. The reason for this is very obvious no one wants to wait for a long time. Everyone wants quick loading of webpages, if your website failed to load very quickly, the user bounce rate will going to increase for sure, so the developer must take care of the optimized coding pattern.

The more images are on a webpage, the longer it takes to load, so images must be compressed and minimal. Developers should choose the technic like lazy loading (Images load as the user scroll down rather than loading at once).

Apart from the above-cited parameters, our developing team constantly keeps eye on guidelines and key factors to optimize the hosted websites via the OJSCloud platform. During this routine exercise, our team found that Google put a lot of emphasis on factors, which are in our control.

How does Journal Indexing increase the page ranking in search engines?

How do Open Journal System Themes Affect SEO? 3

indexing is a much-needed and unavoidable attribute of any online resources because this backend hard work makes them very easy to access on the world wide web. The indexing of a journal is considered a reflection of its quality. Indexed journals are considered to be of higher scientific quality as compared to non-indexed journals. In addition, it works as a search engine for showing concerned journal articles with higher page ranks. To simply summarize, we can say that to make your journal popular enough you need to have indexing from reputed and well-recognized agencies.

You can choose many indexing service providers such as Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, Google Scholar, BASE, Academia, and Copernicus. It is advisable to have multiple indexing to grab the attention of the wider research community. Indexing is not only the mechanism to generate more traffic but also the parameter of quality work followed by journal articles.

Many quality-oriented crowds always search for better indexing from well-recognized agencies, and as soon as they do not find it, they might leave the website. As a result, this thing hampers our goal of incrementing the visitors-to-client conversion ratio. Any journal which needs better indexing is required to focus on the term “citation”, because when anyone cites an article from one journal to another article, it automatically creates the impression of some good work. When some potential user types some keyword that is related to the articles on some search engine, the journal that has many backlinks will be ranked on the first page of their site.

The process of indexing will help the articles to get cited and increase their discoverability. We should not forget over here about the timeline, as you may not find the results immediately, but over a period of time, you will end up getting good results for the indexing. Search engines do not contain the understanding power as humans, instead, they rely on citation and indexing which ultimately apply rigorous assessment criteria to judge any new journal article.

The indexing of the journal is the most important point to be taken into account for many well-established and qualified authors because research funding agencies always look for higher impact and easy discoverability of published work. Ultimately, these two parameters for funding agencies totally depend upon the indexing. I think there are enough words to explain the importance of indexing in the world of research publication.

We have readily available SEO frindly themes. Please click below to see our OJS themes.

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Conclusion

All in all online resources created for any motive can achieve it when they will be visible to someone who is the intended audience. This information-hungry crowd always starts to feed their knowledge hunger from search engines like Google or Microsoft Bling. So as a developer, it is unavoidable fact that they should design a particular website in such a way that they will be ranked higher and must be visible among the top 3 positions of the search result.