OJS: Open Journal Systems is the most popular open source platforms for electronic journal publishing and managing. It was developed in 1998 for a peer reviewed journal publishing as part of the research program of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) directed by John Willinsky at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Currently, Dr. Willinsky continues lead the project in Stanford University and the Simon Fraser University Library serves as a organizational hub for PKP. Software is translated into 20 languages. Over 25,000 journals worldwide use OJS as their platform.
While OJS was designed for peer reviewed journals, it may be used for publishing newsletters, conference proceedings, bulletins and even books. The system provides a full set of publishing services including author, reviewer, editor, etc. profiles and management, peer review, submission and editorial workflows, metadata, customizable public interfaces for journals, articles and journals publishing in.pdf and html formats. Journals can be published under Open Access Creative Commons licenses or traditional copyright . Subscription and payment features are available for subscription-based and hybrid journals. Organizations can install and manage OJS themselves or use hosted solution. The system provides standard compliant statistics and reports. The PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN) allows publishers of OJS journals to preserve their content after the journal goes off-line.
OJS can be used for a student course journals -- the option Wichita State University instructors may want to explore in the future:
"Course instructors in any discipline may choose to publish a journal with their class to showcase student work and give students hands-on experience with the publishing process. <...> Course journals are an example of Open Pedagogy. They engage students as creators of information by involving them in contributing, editing, and publishing content." (see https://docs.pkp.sfu.ca/instructor-guide/en/)
Course journals may be open to the public, or are available only for a limited audience, e.g. classmates.
Learning OJS 3.3: A Visual Guide to Open Journal Systems
