Over the past few sprints, UI/UX (user interface and user experience) has become an increasingly important and popular topic. Our SFU Sprint in May 2019 was no different. At this event, a team was formed to look at UI/UX issues, specifically, the manuscript submission workflow in the yet-to-be-released OJS 3.2. To learn more, we chatted with PKP staffer and UI/UX expert, Israel Cefrin.

At the SFU Sprint in Vancouver last month, a small group of Crossref staff, PKP staff, and some library community members met to review the latest OJS (3.1.2) Crossref plugin. Just ten days prior, PKP and Crossref had a meeting to discuss the formation of a working group that would help address some of the issues OJS users have engaging with their Crossref membership.

Open Journal Systems (OJS 3) has been translated into 28 languages. Used by more than 90 countries around the world, it truly is an international system. Translation has – and continues to be – of utmost importance. Here we rely heavily on our community for support. At our SFU Sprint in May 2019, one team offered just that. Specifically, they looked at how to better serve journal editors working in multiple languages.

Are you a software developer using OJS and/or OMP? Need help building themes, writing plugins, or developing new features? If so, help has arrived. PKP is excited to announce the launch of our Developer Documentation (aka Developer Docs). This new site is part of the PKP Docs Hub, our home for all PKP user guides. Technical users can now find all our developer guides compiled together in a hub of their own.

Motivated by upcoming legislation in the Canadian province of Ontario, our second SFU Sprint report comes from our accessibility group. Sprinters set the bar high and completed two very important projects: (1) a roadmap to achieve Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA accessibility of the OJS platform; and (2) a draft module for a PKP School course to help content creators ensure that their scholarly outputs are accessible.

Our first report from the SFU Sprint May 6-7, 2019 covers three topics, all related to OJS documentation: email templates, plugins, and upgrading. As an affiliated event with the Library Publishing Forum, we welcomed a large number of library professionals to the table, many seeking to work on non-technical projects. Documentation was by far one of the most popular.

The OPERAS Core Group has unanimously accepted PKP’s application to join OPERAS as an international partner. Coordinated by OpenEdition and Huma-Num, OPERAS (Open Access in the European research area through scholarly communication) supports research infrastructure in the social sciences and humanities.

There’s a new theme in town – and it isn’t shy. PKP is pleased to present “Immersion,” a bold, artistic design for journals using OJS 3.1.1+. If you want to stand out, this theme’s for you. Immersion has an ambitious visual profile that uses colour and font to emphasize the reading experience. Arts and culture journals, in particular, may find this theme appealing given its striking aesthetic and strong artistic personality.

Sunshine. Waterfront views. And great ideas. Our first sprint of 2019 has come and gone, with more than 10 projects completed over the course of two days. Of these projects, about two thirds were non-technical, proving you don’t need to know how to code to sprint with PKP. The best part, as always: sprints make Open Journal Systems (OJS) better, together.

One common interpretation of intellectual property law is that it is not so much about protecting a creator’s natural law property rights (as is the case with bicycles and beachfront properties). Rather, intellectual property law is about motivating individuals to create and invent for the benefit of all.

PKP is pleased to announce the release of the Paperbuzz Plugin for Open Journal System (OJS) versions 3.1.2 and above, built in cooperation with the Paperbuzz team at Impactstory. This new plugin will bring free altmetrics (an alternative to traditional citation-based metrics) based on open data to thousands of OJS journals.