Prefatory note (2016)

Please note that I receive several email requests per week from individuals asking for help or detailed guidance in how to setup an OA journal. With my deepest regrets, I am afraid my time is simply insufficient to provide such guidance beyond what is here on these pages.

Introduction

Scholarly publishing is totally broken. Not only, at present, can most of the people (taxpayers) who fund research not get access to it, but plans to fix this look set to screw over Early Career Researchers and anybody else who can't persuade their funders to give them the up-front fees required by publishers for Open Access journals.
There are other models. I have proposed that the university library could function as a re-invented university press. However, this guide is intended, over the course of as many parts as I need to be able to write this in manageable chunks, to signpost a third way. This guide is for academics who want to establish their own journals that are:

• Peer reviewed, in a traditional pre-review model
• Open Access and free in monetary terms for authors and readers
• Preserved, safe and archived in the event of catastrophe or fold
• Reputable: run by consensus of leaders in a field

Pre-requisites

My assumptions about you:

• You are a non-commercial publisher, individual or organisation with revenues under $25,000
• You are working in the humanities. If you are a scientist, this guide may still be of use, but there may be aspects of your field that I overlook; you'll have to fill in those gaps yourself

I'll explain each of these items as we go through, but the monetary costs, on a yearly basis are:

• Web hosting: $60/year (approx. For example: Bluehost) (NB. this is an affiliate link, for which I will receive commission. There are many other hosts out there if you want to search on your own.)
• DOI numbers/CrossRef membership: $275/year. Alternatively, you can join the OASPA and get CrossRef membership included in their fee of €75/year (including 50 DOI numbers)
• CLOCKSS archival service: $200/year

As you can see, the yearly financial cost is approximately $350/year, which is equivalent to £225/year. If there are several of you within an umbrella organization (again, it would have to be non-profit), you could share the DOI prefix, CLOCKSS membership and hosting, thus making an economy of scale possible.

Social vs. Technical

With enough persistence, I'd argue, anybody with a mild technical competence and enough persistence could install Open Journal Systems, the software that I'm going to be using in this guide. What takes the time, energy and willpower is to get the social, rather than technical aspects sorted. What do I mean by this?

• Editorial board
• Peer reviewers
• Copy editors
• Proofreaders

Editorial board
The board is absolutely crucial. Academic journals work on a system of academic capital; you need respected individuals who are willing to sit on your board, even if they are only lending their name and you end up doing most of the legwork. It should only be a matter of time before academics realise that journal brand isn't (or shouldn't be) affiliated to publishers, but rather to the academics who choose to endow a journal with their support. Get good people who are respected within your discipline(s) and you're on the right track. Here's an example email that I used to ask people to sit on the board for Orbit:

Dear X,
I don't know if you remember me or not, but we were both at the ___________ conference last year and it was in relation to this that your name came up. We were all very impressed by your paper and wondered if the following proposal might be of interest to you.
I have been working over the past few months to put together a new journal of _________ scholarship. I now have (finalising this week) the requisite funding. The website is done, complete with online submission and peer review systems. The editorial board thus far consists of myself, _______, ________ and ________. _________ has expressed tentative interest and we are also contacting _________, __________ and __________.
Anyway, I was wondering whether you'd be interested in being either on the editorial board itself or acting as a peer reviewer? If you had any work you'd be interested in contributing, we'd also be interested. We have five specific aims, one of which is to get all articles that are accepted published within 5 months. In fact, I've attached a statement of purpose to this email; it's confidential, so please don't circulate, but it might be of interest. The mockup title page harks back to before we had a better name...
If you wanted to take a look at the site:
http://www.myjournaladdress.com
Temporary username: a_username
Temporary password: a_password
You won't be able to see very much, as all the editorial functions require a proper username and password (obviously!) and there aren't any articles yet, but it will give you a feel.
The tentative name for the journal is: "_____________".
Let me know what you think and whether you're interested; I personally think this is incredibly exciting and am itching to go!
In the meantime, hope you're well and best wishes,
Martin

You may also want to incorporate some statistics on library spending and stress the open nature of the journal, but you get the idea.
Peer reviewers
When the first articles start flooding in, you'll need all the help you can get. These have to be people you can trust to understand the challenges you're facing. They need to set the bar high for the first issue while also appreciating the difficulties of attracting the big names to start-up journals. Contact people early so that you're ready to go.
Copy editors and proof readers
If you end up doing this job yourself, expect to spend about 16 hours per article, including typesetting (depending on how you do this -- covered later). Therefore, get some good people to help you. They should be sensitive to individual style (ie. light-touch editors) but who also will bring some sort of synthesis to the style.
Other decisions
You need to make some decisions and take action on the following issues, not all of which I can describe for you:

• Journal name(!), scope and remit
• OA policy (I'd recommend Creative Commons Attribution) and copyright stance (let your authors keep their copyright)
• Publishing mode (issues or rolling? Do issues always make sense in an online environment, or should you just publish as submissions arrive?)
• Initial CFP
• Timing (don't time it so that all your first submissions arrive in the Christmas break, when nobody can review them, for example)

Anyway, that's all for Part 1 (I have to do some work!), but in part 2 I'll start to cover setting up the technical side of things and the timescales for applying to various organizations.
Part 2 >>

---

Following on from Part 1, let's begin to talk about the technological side of starting an OA journal.

There are several components to the system that all need to come together. The timescales for ensuring this happens are different, but here's some descriptions and estimates on the different components.
Open Journal Systems
OJS is a free, open source platform developed by the Public Knowledge Project that is designed to get you off the ground quickly. Pre-requistites are:

• A web server
• PHP support on said server
• MySQL database support (or another supported DB)
• Permission for web applications to write to the filesystem on the server

The document you need to read, and understand, to fully get OJS is their Userguide. For this specific part of the installation, you'll want to follow their installation instructions. I can get an OJS box up and running in 45 minutes or so. For a first time user with moderate technical competence, budget in a fair few hours.
ISSN number
To get an ISSN number, which is crucial for your journal (and is also free of charge!), you need to apply to the relevant ISSN provider for your country. In the UK, this is the British Library. The turnaround time on this varies, but is often quicker than the two months they stipulate.
DOI numbers
Right, this is where it can get a bit complicated. DOI (Document Object Identification/Identifier) numbers are part of a system that ensures that articles are permanently active. Let's take an example. The following is a DOI resolver URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.7766/orbit.v1.1.38
The number is composed of a prefix (10.7766), which is my publisher prefix, and a suffix (orbit.v1.1.38). Together these form a unique string that identify the article Eve, Martin, Samuel Thomas, Doug Haynes, & Simon de Bourcier. "Preface."Orbit: Writing Around Pynchon [Online], 1.1 (2012): n. pag. Web. 10 Jul. 2012.
So, when you visit the DOI resolver URL above, it points you over to https://www.pynchon.net/owap/article/view/38, which is the journal hosted on my server. Let us assume that something happens to me or my finances. For example, I can no longer pay for my server, or I get run over by a bus (I'm hoping to postpone both of these occurrences). The archival service for the journal will notice a "trigger event" that authorises them to release, forever, the material on the journal. The DOI number can then be updated to point to the archives copy and, tada, the material has then been preserved even in the case of catastrophe or fold. I hope it's clear, from this, the important role that DOI numbers play.
As a member of CrossRef, assigning DOIs, you have legal obligations in the contract. You must:

• Assign DOIs to all your articles
• Ensure you never assign the same DOI more than once
• Ensure that DOIs always resolve to the correct article
• Ensure that, if you move hosts/addresses, you update the metadata so that the DOI resolves
• Give the DOI link of any article that has a DOI number assigned in an article's citations
• Deposit metadata and DOI information in a timely fashion to CrossRef

This is all easily doable via OJS built-in mechanisms, but it is a legal contract, so not to be taken lightly or ignored.
CrossRef, the registration organisation for DOIs on scholarly or research material, have various levels of fees. The reason for this is, once again, that they need ways to force publishers to keep their links up-to-date and to deposit material. Financial sanctions have proved the most effective way of doing this.
However, for the journal that is attempting to evade the fee-paying structures of commercial OA enterprises, this is little consolation. Never fear. The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association has a deal with CrossRef for scholar-publisher members (that's you, as an individual) that means that the OASPA will allow you to get a DOI prefix and assign up to 50 DOIs inclusive of their membership fee, which is a much more reasonable 75 euros. In my case, because I hadn't started the journal at that point, I was signed up as a non-voting member of OASPA, but this certainly helped.
Timescale-wise, my application to OASPA took much longer than usual (I am told) because CrossRef were in the process of updating their member agreement. I signed up on the 16th April and was ready to go by the 7th July. So budget in three months.
CLOCKSS
CLOCKSS is the archival service that I have chosen to use for my journal. Based upon the LOCKSS system, CLOCKSS stands for Controlled Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe. The principle here is that your articles are stored on multiple servers, spread across the globe. In the event of a trigger, CLOCKSS will release the material. Again, there's a fee ($200/year). I am unable to comment on timescales as I have yet to be fully set up here, but as I only applied three days ago, this doesn't seem so surprising so far.
Again, I'm going to stop writing here so that I can get on with some other work, but in the next section I'll begin to detail some of the options available in OJS and how the process works.
Part 3 >>

---

Following on from part 1 and part 2, this is the third in a series of posts designed to get a new journal off the ground.
Launching the Journal
The key to launching a good journal is getting to the right people. Targeting field leaders (who may also be in your wider editorial board) and asking for specific contributions may be a way to ensure a solid start. Alternatively, draft an open CFP and post it to the places most relevant for your discipline. In my case (English Literature), this was the UPENN list and H-NET.
The problems that you'll face in an opening call are many. You will likely not receive a huge volume of submissions. They will likely not be from established names (not that this should matter as you should have a form of blind review policy). There will also probably be some articles that are weaker than you would like.
Being candid: you have to strike a balance. Do not publish material that is out-of-the-question weak. On the other hand, be charitable enough (as one should in all forms of editorial judgement) to work with authors to improve material where there is potential, or where a subset of the field may find use for it. In short: you need a good quantity of material, but this must not be at the expense of quality.
Make sure your CFP has enough time budgeted in for people to submit. Give a good five months. See also the note in part 1 where I mentioned timings: there's no point having your call close at a time when nobody is around to review them, so plan out your cycle.
Editorial Procedure
Here's a little bit of a guide on how to setup peer review in OJS. I'm not going to replicate their userguide word-for-word, but hopefully it will give a bit of an idea on how to manage submissions and delegate between editors.
Step 1: New submission
Upon receiving a new submission, an email will be sent to the designated contact in OJS. This editors should alert the appropriate member of the team so that this has happened.
One editor will take charge of a specific submission.
Once this has been decided, the submission can be accessed through the following procedure:
a.) Login to the site
b.) From your home screen, go to Editor -> Unassigned
c.) Click on the new submission
Step 2: Blinding
Once on the submission page, it is necessary to check the document before assigning a reader/peer reviewer.
Click on the “Review” tab under the bold text: “#9 Summary” (where #9 is an example representing the submission number)
Click on the link beside the text “Review version”. This will be of the form 9-18-1-RV.DOC. This indicating Submission_Number-Internal_Identifier-Revision_Number-RV(Review).DOC.
Open the file in Microsoft Word. If the file is in Open Document format (ending in .ODT), you'll need to download LibreOffice or OpenOffice for blinding if you are unable to open the file.
In Word, go to Document Properties:
and remove the author's name and any identifying features:

Also go to “Document Properties -> Advanced Properties:
and ensure that there's no incriminating evidence there:
Next, scan the text to make sure the author hasn't identified him- or herself. Common phrases “my recent book”, “copyright ” etc.
Save the document.
Step 3: Re-upload the blinded version
Upload the document, on the “review” pane as above, into the “Upload a revised Review Version” box.
Step 4: Assign yourself as the editor for the piece
On the summary tab, click “Add Self” under “Editors”
Step 5: Select the reviewer
Click the “Select Reviewer” option on the “Review” pane:

On the next page, select the desired reviewer (if the account doesn't exist, create an account for the reviewer) and click “Assign”:

Note when this is done that the “due” date is set to 10 weeks. If needs be, this can be altered by clicking on the date.
Request the review! This is important and the only part that's easy to miss:
Underneath the reviewer's name it says “REQUEST”. There's a small envelope beneath that. Click it!
This will take you to an email box. Click “Send” and the reviewer will be sent an email.
This reviewer is good to go.
To add a second reviewer, simply repeat Step 5 and the second reviewer will be added as “Reviewer B”.
Step 6:
Wait for reviewer to complete their review! You'll get an email when it's done.
As you can see, there's quite a bit too it and OJS has a steep learning curve. That said, once you understand it, you'll feel right at home. Now you have to play the waiting game, though. In the next part, we'll begin to talk about copyediting, proofing and typesetting.
Part 4 >>

---