4Science

“4Science was established in 2015 to support universities, research and cultural institutes all around the world in managing and realizing digital projects.

We guarantee full compliance with methodological and scientific international standards and we strongly support open source, open standards and interoperability protocols.

The 4Science team of experts has gained decades of domain expertise and experience resulting from numerous collaborations with universities and research institutes.

Visit our pages through the links below to know more about our contributions to free software communities, our clients, our certifications and our partnerships with the major players of the Open Science world.”

JASPER: a cross-industry collaboration making a real difference! | DOAJ News Service

Two years ago, DOAJ announced it would take proactive steps to prevent open access journals from disappearing from the Internet. Two months later, Project JASPER was born. 

JASPER is a cross-industry collaboration with one main goal: to help open access journals be preserved long-term. It sounds simple, but there are challenges. Lack of resources and understanding around why preservation is needed means that many journals aren’t ever preserved. 

The JASPER partners—CLOCKSS, DOAJ, Internet Archive, The Keepers Registry, and Public Knowledge Project (PKP)—collaborated to build on existing trusted infrastructure and services. Journals indexed in DOAJ can apply to be included in a variety of long-term digital preservation services if they meet a range of selection criteria. Journals can choose one or more preservation routes: currently, Internet Archive, the PKP’s Preservation Network (PKP-PN), or CLOCKSS.

[…]

 

Invitation to join PKP’s Community Contributor Pathway | Public Knowledge Project

PKP invites you to become a Community Contributor through our pathway!

At PKP, we rely on the support of a diverse and enthusiastic community of contributors to strengthen and expand our projects. Our mission is to increase scholarly publishing access, quality, and diversity. 

Ways to Contribute

When you become a Community Contributor at PKP, you’ll have the opportunity to engage in a variety of exciting and meaningful ways:

Join an Interest Group or Committee: Become part of our dynamic committees, such as the Documentation Interest Group (DIG), Education Interest Group (EIG), Multilingualism Interest Group (MIG), Members Committee (MC), Technical Committee (TC), or Advisory Committee (AC). Each group plays a crucial role in shaping the future of PKP’s initiatives.
Share Your Expertise on the Community Forum: Respond to support inquiries and engage in lively discussions on our Community Forum. 
Contribute Code: Help enhance our projects by developing plugins and contributing to the ongoing development of PKP’s tools and platforms.

Benefits of becoming a Community Contributor

By taking the Community Contributor pathway, you gain access to exclusive membership benefits. One exciting perk is the chance to apply for our scholarship to collaborate with the PKP community during our in-person sprints.

 

Inclusion in the DOAJ panel recording from Coalition Publica – Public Knowledge Project

“The following panel discussion highlights:

Library publisher best practices for supporting journals in applying for DOAJ inclusion;
Development of strategies in supporting journals to meet the technical and policy requirements;
Insights of experienced OJS-using library publishers on structured support systems for journals seeking inclusion in the DOAJ, and more….”

An offer the journal couldn’t refuse | Nordic Perspectives on Open Science

The article describes a two-year project (running from 2021 to 2022) that worked on getting Danish Open Access journals indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The project was run in partnership by Copenhagen Business School (CBS Library), Royal Danish Library and Aalborg University Library, in close collaboration with DOAJ. All of the journals that participated are hosted on the libraries’ Open Journal Systems (OJS). In this article the authors demonstrate some of the challenges the journals and the project group faced in the inclusion process and in the assistance the project provided, as well as learning outcomes and perspectives.

EIFL support energizes Ethiopia OA journals sector | EIFL

“With support from EIFL, Addis Ababa University Libraries (AAUL) has increased access to and visibility of research from academic institutions across Ethiopia by upgrading the national open access publishing platform, Ethiopian Journals Online (EJOL), and adding 21 new journals from 10 institutions to the platform. 

As part of the ‘Enhancing Ethiopian Journals Online’ project, AAUL has improved the look and feel of EJOL, with customized pages for each journal, including updated journal profiles and useful information for authors and reviewers (editorial policies, author guidelines, reviewer guidelines). 

By configuring editorial workflows, the project has made the platform more efficient, and integration of DOIs has made journals and articles easier to locate. 

The project team also provided training for librarians, journal editors and editorial staff to familiarize them with the upgraded journals platform and its new functionalities. 

In addition, 20 journal editors took part in workshops on the use of the publishing software, Open Journal Systems (OJS), and  the eligibility standards and criteria required for indexing in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).  Journal editors also received journal policy templates.”

Perspectives on Medical Education transfers publishers to ]u[ Ubiquity Press | STM Publishing News

“International journal Perspectives on Medical Education (PME) has moved publisher, transferring from large, traditional publisher Springer Nature to the fully open access and open-source publisher ]u[ Ubiquity Press.  Since its initial launch 40 years ago, PME has sought to adapt itself to its ever-changing environment, including switching from Dutch-language to English and becoming open access in 2012. It has fast become a top journal in its field, receiving 941 submissions in 2021 alone, with a 2022 impact factor of 4.113 and a five year impact factor of 4.086.  Dr. Erik Driessen and Lauren Maggio, editor-in-chief and deputy editor-in-chief of PME, explain : “our editorial team decided in 2022 that moving the journal to a fully open access publisher was necessary in order to ensure the journal remained aligned with our core beliefs and values, including transparency and openness. Moving to ]u[ Ubiquity Press has not only ensured this, but has allowed PME to make space for more publications.” ”

Strengthening open access publishing in Kenya | EIFL

“A project supported by EIFL has strengthened understanding of open access publishing at 46 institutions in Kenya. It has led to increased open access journal publishing capacity and gained greater recognition for open access publishing at institutions across the country. The project raised the importance of meeting open access journal quality requirements developed by the Directory of Open Access Journals.

The project was implemented by our partner library consortium, the Kenya Library and Information Services Consortium (KLISC), which worked with institutions that wanted to publish their print journals online in open access. The project set up Open Journal Systems (OJS) publishing platforms at 17 institutions.

Some of the participating institutions have already published the current issues of their journals in open access using OJS, such as  the African Journal of Science, Technology and Social Sciences published by Meru University, and the International Research Journal of Rongo University (IJORU). Strathmore University has moved three journals online, and Kirinyaga university has moved two journals online.  The National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NACADA) has uploaded not only current, but also back issues of the African Journal of Alcohol and Drug Abuse (AJADA)  on their OJS platform….”

Strengthening open access publishing in Kenya | EIFL

“A project supported by EIFL has strengthened understanding of open access publishing at 46 institutions in Kenya. It has led to increased open access journal publishing capacity and gained greater recognition for open access publishing at institutions across the country. The project raised the importance of meeting open access journal quality requirements developed by the Directory of Open Access Journals.

The project was implemented by our partner library consortium, the Kenya Library and Information Services Consortium (KLISC), which worked with institutions that wanted to publish their print journals online in open access. The project set up Open Journal Systems (OJS) publishing platforms at 17 institutions.

Some of the participating institutions have already published the current issues of their journals in open access using OJS, such as  the African Journal of Science, Technology and Social Sciences published by Meru University, and the International Research Journal of Rongo University (IJORU). Strathmore University has moved three journals online, and Kirinyaga university has moved two journals online.  The National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NACADA) has uploaded not only current, but also back issues of the African Journal of Alcohol and Drug Abuse (AJADA)  on their OJS platform….”

Guest Post – Scholarly Publishing as a Global Endeavor: Leveraging Open Source Software for Bibliodiversity – The Scholarly Kitchen

“The scale of the adoption of PKP’s open source publishing software around the world may be surprising, but the numbers should be a cause of celebration, for they are a demonstrable improvement in global knowledge exchange. They reflect an increase in engagement, participation, and diversity of contribution to the global scholarly knowledgebase, in origin, language, purpose, and the generation of research and data to find solutions to local and global issues from a new perspective and through a different lens….”

Beyond Web of Science and Scopus there is already an open bibliodiverse world of research – We ignore it at our peril | Impact of Social Sciences

“This analysis of the geographic, linguistic, and disciplinary dimensions of these journals speaks to how recent calls for greater bibliodiversity in the research literature can be met through the existing literature. The challenge, however, is with the underrepresentation of this literature in leading indexes, such as the Web of Science, where less than 2% of these journals are indexed, and Scopus, where less than 8% are included. It is not that this literature is invisible, as 88% of it is found in Google Scholar due to its deliberate efforts to be globally inclusive. And it is not that this literature is, as many assume, “predatory,” as less than 2% of these journals are found on the prominent, if questionable, lists associated with Beall and Cabells. Rather, this robust body of work represents an example and an opportunity to realise the ambitious decolonizing agenda of knowledge redistribution called for by the philosopher Achille Mbembe.

All told, this body of journals demonstrate that research is far more of a global and diverse enterprise than is commonly credited or indexed. Studies, such as this one, can assist and encourage researchers to consult the full breadth of the literature that bears on their work. Our hope is, as well, that this work will also help us reflect on whose knowledge guides our understanding of the world.”

Recalibrating the scope of scholarly publishing: A modest step in a vast decolonization process | Quantitative Science Studies | MIT Press

Abstract:  By analyzing 25,671 journals largely absent from common journal counts, as well as Web of Science and Scopus, this study demonstrates that scholarly communication is more of a global endeavor than is commonly credited. These journals, employing the open-source publishing platform Open Journal Systems (OJS), have published 5.8 million items; they are in 136 countries, with 79.9% in the Global South and 84.2% following the OA diamond model (charging neither reader nor author). A substantial proportion of journals operate in more than one language (48.3%), with research published in 60 languages (led by English, Indonesian, Spanish, and Portuguese). The journals are distributed across the social sciences (45.9%), STEM (40.3%), and the humanities (13.8%). For all their geographic, linguistic, and disciplinary diversity, 1.2% are indexed in the Web of Science and 5.7% in Scopus. On the other hand, 1.0% are found in Cabell’s Predatory Reports, and 1.4% show up in Beall’s (2021) questionable list. This paper seeks to both contribute to and historically situate the expanded scale and diversity of scholarly publishing in the hope that this recognition may assist humankind in taking full advantage of what is increasingly a global research enterprise.

 

PKP’s free and open source software (FOSS) version 3.4 for OJS, OMP & OPS: A sneak-peek – Public Knowledge Project

“PKP released development updates in December. In advance of releasing the Open Journal Systems (OJS), Open Monograph Press (OMP), and Open Preprint Systems (OPS) software in version 3.4 this year, the PKP team offers a sneak-peek of what to expect, why they are most excited for the community, and some personal insights from their own work on the Project….”