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To provide an insider's review of the journal management and publishing software, Open Journal Systems (OJS), from the Public Knowledge Project, which the author directs at the University of British Columbia.

The paper outlines the history, development, and features of OJS, including some of the experimental aspects, as well as early research results and work underway, on which it is based.

OJS (http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs) is an open source solution to managing and publishing scholarly journals online, which can reduce publishing costs compared to print and other traditional publishing processes. It is a highly flexible editor‐operated journal management and publishing system that can be downloaded for free and installed on a local web server.

OJS has been designed to reduce the time and energy devoted to the clerical and managerial tasks associated with editing a journal, while improving the record keeping and efficiency of editorial processes. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of journal publishing through a number of innovations, from making journal policies more transparent to improving indexing.

This paper presents a review of the state of the art on the application of blockchain and smart contracts to the peer-review process of scientific papers. The paper seeks to analyse how the main characteristics of the existing blockchain solutions in this field to detect opportunities for the improvement of future applications.

A systematic review of the literature on the subject was carried out in three databases recognized by the research community (IEEE Xplore, Scopus and Web of Science) and the Frontiers in Blockchain journal. A total of 1,967 articles were initially found, and after the exclusion process, the 26 remaining articles were classified according to the following dimensions: System Type, Open Access, Review Type, Reviewer Incentive, Token Economy, Blockchain Access, Blockchain Identification, Blockchain Used, Paper Storage, Anonymity and Maturity of the solution.

Results show that the solutions are normally concerned on offering incentives to the reviewers' work (often monetary). Other common general preferences among the solutions are the adoption of open reviews, the use of Ethereum, the implementation of publishing ecosystems and the use of InterPlanetary File System to the storage of the papers.

There are currently no studies covering the main aspects of blockchain solutions in the field of scientific peer review. The present study provides an overall review of the topic, summarizing important information on the current research and helping new adopters to develop solutions grounded on the existing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine open access practices using an anthropological view of emics and etics.

An emic‐etic distinction has been theorized in anthropological research for decades. Its insider and outsider views are adopted here to provide greater understanding of open access development. The visions of various groups of academics, particularly faculty scholars and librarians, are explored to identify their different positions on open access involvement as well as the impact of those positions on open access practices.

This analysis reveals that new models of scholarly communication need to cope with existing systems and become sustainable only when the thoughts and behaviors of insiders have been fully understood by outsiders and appropriate strategies have been taken on in practice.

A theoretical framework was introduced to understand the practices of open access repositories and journal publishing.

The paper aims to present a wide range of useful freely available internet resources (e.g. directories, e‐journals, FAQs, mailing lists, and weblogs) that allow the reader to investigate the major aspects of the important open access (OA) movement.

The internet resources included in this webliography were identified during the course of one of the authors writing the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E‐prints and Open Access Journals. The authors evaluated, selected, categorized, and annotated these resources to construct this webliography, which complements the bibliography.

The most useful resources have been annotated and organized into webliography sections. For example, the “Starting Points”, “Debates”, and “General Information” sections list resources that orient the reader to OA and the issues involved. The different “Directories (and Guides)” sections alert the reader to useful finding aids on relevant subjects.

This webliography provides easy access to the most relevant internet resources for understanding and practicing OA. It affirms the significance of OA in scholarly communication, and it identifies the key parties involved in and/or contributing to the OA movement.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a set of reader‐oriented tools developed as part of an open source journal production and access system.

The paper outlines key elements of the reading tools component of Open Journal Systems (OJS). A design rationale is provided, and related to the key elements of the system. The philosophy behind the development of the reading tools is described, and relevant published research in support of the design is presented.

OJS (http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs) is a web‐based, open source editing, management, and production application designed for publication of scholarly journals online. The reading tools developed for OJS are a useful addition to the feature set of OJS, providing journal readers with a richer reading environment, promote active reading, and increase the level of critical engagement with journal article content.

Readers may find that the tools described, as well as the larger system of which they are a part, could be usefully adopted in their own institutional context.

This paper provides an introduction to the design philosophy behind a reader‐oriented set of tools that will be of interest to those engaged in online reading research, and information interaction design. It will also be of value to those interested in open access, as well as those interested in open source software development.

This article aims to explore the geographic distribution of open access practices in the world from a diffusionist perspective.

The article applies a tempo‐spatial analysis to examine the diffusion movement of open access practices from the West to the entire world during the past several decades. Both maps and tables are used to support the analysis. The diffusionist theory is reviewed and applied to the understanding of open access.

The paper discovers that technology is not the only factor determining the diffusion pattern of information systems as discussed in the literature. Cultural dissimilarities across countries have played a significant role in open access development. Open access can only be effectively established after it meets local standards.

The findings help understanding of why open access has a disproportionate growth among developing countries, and even among developed countries, where the ICT infrastructure has been in place.

Few studies have taken a transnational view to analyze open access geography at the global level, and few have been able to synthesize models to interpret diverse discoveries. Furthermore, a chronological evaluation tracing the history of open access spatial expansion is absent in the literature.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2020.

The paper provides a brief description of all 440 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested in a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

This study aims to examine Public Knowledge Project (PKP) Open Journal Systems (OJS) for its overall web accessibility and compliance with the Federal Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility and Compliance Act, also known as Section 508.

Twenty-one individual web pages in the CSUN test instance of PKP’s OJS version 2.4.0 used in three back-end journal development user roles were examined using three web-accessibility tools (WAVE, Fangs, Functional Accessibility Evaluator). Errors in accessibility were then logged and mapped to specific Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) criteria.

In all, 202 accessibility errors were reported across the 21 OJS pages selected for testing. Because of this, the OJS cannot be efficiently utilized by assistive technologies and therefore does not pass the minimal level of acceptability as described in the WCAG 2.0. However, the authors found that the types of errors reported in this study could be simply and effectively remedied.

Further studies will need to corroborate, on a larger scale, the problems of accessibility found in the specific pages. Only three user roles were examined; other roles will need to be analyzed for their own problems with accessibility. Finally, although specific errors were noted, most can be easily fixed.

There is an important need for accessible software design. In the case of CSUN, one of the campus partners will be better served by improving the web accessibility of the authors’ online open access journals.

Although many studies and analyses of Section 508 compliance of front-facing web resources have been conducted, very few appear to address the back-end of such tools. This is the first to examine what problems in accessibility journal users with disabilities might encounter as OJS system administrators, journal managers or journal editors.

The purpose of this paper is to presents the very recent development of e-journal publishing services at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Charlotte. In 2011, the J. Murrey Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte created a new unit in the library, the Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL), which partners with faculty and graduate students in the use of digital and networked research tools to create, disseminate and store new knowledge. E-journal publishing and hosting are among the suite of services offered by the DSL, and we currently publish three journals (https://journals.uncc.edu/).

This report provides an overview of the context of our library’s decision to begin publishing journals, including a discussion of our university’s becoming more research-intensive, our university system mandating increased efficiencies and sharing research with the state citizens, and the library’s own goals of raising awareness of and supporting open access. Also outlined are the technical and procedural choices made, important activities undertaken to develop, define and publicize the new services, campus response to the service and next steps.

This report provides detailed accounting of how a large academic library implemented an electronic publishing service to support open access scholarship. Important activities such as marketing communication, policies development and technical/procedural activities are defined and results described. The report provides observation and lessons learned for academic libraries in development and support of electronic journals.

Library as the publisher is a new concept. This report will be of interest to many libraries who are considering offering publishing services and to libraries that currently offer publishing services.

This paper aims to provide an introductory overview and selected annotated bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy across all library types.

It introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2014.

It provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.