Can A Portable, Open Source Journal Management/Publishing System Improve the Scholarly and Public Quality of Research? A Workshop

As part of the University of British Columbia’s federally funded research initiative to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic publishing on a global basis, the Public Knowledge Project has released Open Journal Systems (OJS). This is open source software that can be freely downloaded. The intent is to help journals and scholarly societies seriously consider publishing in an open access or free-to-read basis, which has been shown to increase readership dramatically. This online journal management and publishing system enables editors to manage, publish and index peer-reviewed journals over the Internet an open access or free-to-read basis, The workshop, and this paper, will enable potential users to get inside the system to see how such management systems operate, and to judge whether they have the potential to improve the scholarly and public quality of scholarly publishing, as well as reduce costs sufficiently to make open access a viable option.