We’ve recently been asked for advice on how to best plan for upgrading to OJS 3. OJS 3 is a significant upgrade from the old OJS 2.x line, which means you will need to do some careful planning with your editors to ensure a smooth process. In many ways, the changes are more human resources related (i.e., training and visual design) than technical, so you’ll want to build in time for that, as well as clear communications at each stage.

The PKP 2018 Annual General Meeting will be held on Wednesday, August 8 from 9am – 11am Pacific Time . It is a free, open, online meeting, so everyone is welcome to attend. The meeting will include some refections on PKP at 20, an update on the latest OJS developments, as well as a question and answer session. PKP 2017 Annual Report is available here.

PKP is pleased to announce an OJS 3.x/OMP plugin supporting iThenticate for plagiarism detection in submission files. Remember that you will first need to register for an account with iThenticate, which is a separate service from PKP. Once you have that, you can follow the steps below to get it working in OJS or OMP.

OJS and OMP users: a reflected XSS vulnerability was reported to us affecting OJS 3.0.0 to 3.1.1-1 (inclusive) and OMP 1.2.0 to 3.1.1-2 (inclusive). The risk is not huge, but it is worth patching/upgrading. Latest releases are OK. Instructions at: https://forum.pkp.sfu.ca/t/xss-vulnerability-alert/ Please post any questions to the linked forum entry and someone will get back to you.

Gracias al trabajo de la traductora María Elena Sánchez Salazar, con el apoyo del equipo editorial del Instituto de Geografía, UNAM, tenemos nuestro primer curso de PKP School en español — Configuración de una revista en OJS 3. Gracias también a Raúl Marcó del Pont Lalli y Claudio Amescua de UNAM por apoyar la traducción. Con más de 1700 revistas en países de habla hispana, este curso les ayudará a hacer el mejor uso de OJS.

We’re very excited to announce the release of the “Health Science” theme for OJS 3.1.1, freely available to anyone to use or modify for their journal. Created by graphic designer Sophy O and built by developers Vitalii Bezsheiko and Nate Wright, this new theme was conceptualized with the Health Sciences in mind, but can, of course, be used for journals in any discipline.

PKP is pleased to announce the establishment of a new strategic partnership with the National Documentation Centre (EKT) of Greece.  EKT has been a major adopter and advocate for PKP’s Open Journal Systems (OJS) and Open Monograph Press (OMP) both in Greece and throughout Europe. EKT has provided code contributions and Greek language translations for OJS over the past several years.

Last year, we published a blog post announcing our decision to cease development on Open Conference Systems for a year while we dedicated our limited resources to Open Journal Systems and Open Monograph Press development. As that year comes to an end, we have made the decision to continue the freeze for another year.

PKP is happy to release a new guide, GDPR Guidebook for PKP Users . This guide provides advice for users of PKP applications on how to approach the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which goes into effect on May 25, 2018. It provides guidance on how to best configure OJS to be GDPR-compliant, and includes information on some of the policies that those using OJS with EU clients will want to consider. It is available here.

Congratulations to Juan Pablo Alperin, PKP Associate Faculty Director of Research, in receiving the Open Scholarship Award from the Canadian Social Knowledge Institute. Award recipients demonstrate exemplary open scholarship via research, projects, or initiatives. These awards are intended to acknowledge and celebrate exemplary open scholarship, nominated via an open process.

The jump from OJS 2 to OJS 3 is a big one, with implications both in terms of technology (planning and executing an upgrade) and training (helping editors learn the new system). Many journals have now made the switch, however, and we wanted to share some examples of the results of their efforts. Congratulations to all of them! If you’d like us to highlight your OJS 3 journal, please drop us a line.