Journals frequently look for ways to make their content and websites more interactive, and the most common way to accomplish this is using Javascript to link the site with outside services. We’ve recently released a general-purpose plugin called the “Custom Header Plugin” to help accomplish this. It’ll replace a variety of single-purpose plugins and allow for rich, flexible integration without requiring any skill in coding.

PKP and the Heidelberg University Library are pleased to announce the next PKP Sprint will be taking place in Heidelberg, Germany on Sept 20 and 21, 2018. PKP sprints run “unconference” style, typically focusing on rapid code development for our open source publishing applications, with small, self-organized teams working together to solve common software issues or making enhancements that will benefit everyone.

In case you missed it, the Society for Scholarly Publishing has two upcoming programs that will be of interest: SSP Mentorship Program The SSP Mentorship program connects professionals at all career levels and provides both mentors and mentees opportunities to develop new relationships, share experiences, and learn from others outside their organizations.

Last summer, York University declared that it will appeal the July 12, 2017 ruling of the Federal Court of Canada that was made in favor of Access Copyright, whose tariff on course materials, approved by Copyright Board of Canada, the university refused to pay. Instead of paying a set fee per student, York had relied on its interpretation of fair dealing to guide its faculty’s use of course readings.

In case you didn’t know, PKP isn’t just about software. We originated as a research project, and continue to do original research. Here are a few recent publications from our team, including an OA copy of PKP Director John Willinsky’s latest book! Shu, F., Mongeon, P., Haustein, S., Siler, K., Alperin, J.P., Larivière, V. (2017) Is it such a big deal? On the cost of journal use in the digital era. College & Research Libraries.

The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is pleased to welcome the Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries (COPPUL) as our newest PKP Strategic Partner. PKP and COPPUL are both active in the field of digital preservation, and employ similar distributed, community-owned, and independently-administered preservation storage infrastructures using the LOCKSS platform and related tools like LOCKSS-O-Matic.

As part of our ongoing effort to enhance OJS, OMP, and our other free, open source software and services, PKP is again reaching out to the community to consider becoming financial supporters of our work. Through the contributions of our sustainers, we have made several important accomplishments over the past year.

The Open Access Publishing Cooperative Study was a two-year investigation, undertaken under the auspices of the Public Knowledge Project with the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The intent of this initiative was to examine whether scholarly publishing models, involving cooperation between the relevant stakeholder, might provide a means of moving subscription journals to a sustainable form of open access publishing.

We’ve just wrapped up another usability testing round that put some of the new OJS 3.1 features through their paces. We focused on the new way of listing in-progress journal submissions, including some filtering, colour coding, and iconography, as well as the new menu configuration tool. The submission list did very well, with the changes consistently helping testers find submissions in different scenarios quickly and easily.

We’re pleased to share our first new OJS 3 course on PKP School! Setting up a Journal in OJS 3 is a self-paced course that will walk you through all of the steps to configure your new journal using the new version of Open Journal Systems. The course is offered completely free of charge, but does require registration on the site. Our special thanks to Janna MacLaren for creating all of the videos used in this course!

The recent announcement of Elsevier’s acquisition of bepress has generated considerable discussion in the library community, especially from those responsible for providing institutional repository and scholarly publishing services at their institutions.