Collaborating for Successful

Open Access Journal Publishing:

Webinar Q&A
Following a successful discussion on TU Dublin’s publishing success,
the Digital Commons™ team have compiled an easy-to-digest
Q&A document, covering a breadth of tips and tricks of how to
make your institution’s journal publishing a global success.

What software specifically are you using,
and are there any costs involved?
Yvonne Desmond: We use Digital Commons software. It’s an
annual subscription that depends on the size of your institution.
With that comes unlimited storage, and we have the support of
the help-desk and tech support, which I would pay for just for
the support we’ve gotten.
We have the main repository for our material, and we have the
journal publishing module which comes free with the software.
When I was trying to persuade our senior leadership to provide
this money at the time, I was saying, think about it, it’s
worldwide publicity and really good value for the money.
When it came to the designation for university status, they were
really impressed that 85% of our research was available open
access, and that we were demonstrating this kind of publishing
activity. So while you might say it’s expensive, I think the rewards
and the value, both real and intangible, are well worth it. And
after the first year, I’ve never had to fight for the money for it.
Dr Kevin Griffin: As a journal editor, one of things that matters
to me is that this is a professionally managed archive. When we
upload a journal issue, we know it’s there and it’s safe and it’s
discoverable. If you Google ‘religious tourism’ the journal pops
up very quickly.
There are all sorts of flexible audio and video features as well.
I’m waiting on a video article, in which they’ve done a review.
We’re toying with the idea of having a streamed paper,
properly reviewed.
Digital Commons: Feel free to reach out to us or our sales team
at info@bepress.com to learn more!
What’s the timeline for publishing an
open access journal? How much
preparation is required?
Yvonne Desmond: To set up the journal itself doesn’t actually
take that long. If you have the idea, if you know the team that
are involved in it, it only takes a couple of weeks. To get the site
designed, we have to get a banner, pick colors and all that, and
then it goes to Digital Commons, comes back within less
than a week usually. We in the library would then look at it.
But the actual physical site can be ready quite quickly. The time
is actually for the editor to get their editorial board in place.
We demand that we have email addresses for the board and
so on, so the board is very obviously visible. We apply a DOI
to every article. It takes a little bit longer to get an ISSN, but,
start-to-finish for your first issue can be as quick or as long as
you want it to be.
Dr Kevin Griffin: The types of things you want to think about are
the aims and objectives of your journal, what types of articles are
you going to accept, what type of layout do you want, guidelines
for authors and that type of thing. And that is as specific or as
broad as the editors want.
If you’re going for Scopus or a high ranking, you have to think
about that carefully. I would spend weeks looking at other
journals online and hard copies, examining the procedures,
the expected standards. How do you maintain those?
We also have a reviewers’ template. If I tick a box to say I want
Kevin Griffin to review a paper, automatically in the email that’s
sent there’s a link to the downloadable review form.
Without that, you get a review that says, “Oh this is a lovely
paper, go ahead and publish it.” If you send a template with its
tick boxes, with categories such as “Is the literature good? Is the
method clear? What are the aim and objectives?” and so on, you
get much better reviews.
Yvonne Desmond: With our 13 journals, there’s no copy editing
because we can’t afford it. My feeling has always been that
presentation has to be good, but it’s the content that really
matters. I was a bit nervous about that at first, thinking the
journals would look awful, but they don’t.
Ideally we would like to provide copy editing, but we just can’t.
But the point is that the costs can be kept to almost zero for an
individual journal to partner with the library.
Dr Kevin Griffin: The current issue on the website is the
result of a conference, and the papers I was given by them
were absolutely beautifully edited, so it was just a case of
formatting. Some journals go for a very simple format. I use
two columns, and footnotes drive me crazy, so it’s a simple
process. Within a couple of days you could produce an issue,
if you have the materials.
Could you elaborate on your management
of the journal publishing process?
Dr Kevin Griffin: An author finds our website, they register on
the website and upload their paper. As the manager editor,
then, I see it coming in. I get an email saying a paper has been
uploaded. I then screen them and try to align them with
appropriate reviewers, either from a subject point of view, or
a methodological point of view: if it’s a very statistical paper, I
have certain reviewers who I know will relish that sort of thing.
Since we publish about religion and it’s a sensitive subject, I try
to find a reviewer who’ll be aware of the many intricacies of a
particular faith or a particular point of view. So I manage that
process, sending it out to reviewers.
Here’s where it can get tricky: When you send a paper out to
a reviewer, they wait before they accept the review, then they
wait again until they submit their review. If they don’t meet that
deadline, they get a reminder, then another reminder, and so
on. It might get two months into the review process, and you
can keep politely reminding them or you can start from scratch
with a different reviewer. So I have a few reviewers and an
editorial board, who if that happens, will step in to the rescue.
Once the review process is done, we give feedback, so it’s either
fully accepted, accepted with minor changes requested, or has to
be improved before we can consider it. The article is rereviewed
again, ideally by the same reviewers, before it’s finally accepted
or rejected. The author then gets the chance to clean it up,
then we format, proofread, and publish it.
One recommendation, having seen a broad range of academic
output: I speak native English, and I’m a good language editor.
I would recommend anyone who’s thinking of beginning
a journal to have a native speaker in the language you’re
publishing in, or have access to someone who is. One of the
things I’m most nervous about is handing things over to
other people because I’m quite particular.
With Digital Commons, one interesting thing is you have the
option of publishing as you go – so when a paper is ready, you
publish it – or publishing in issues. We’ve published entire
issues at one time because I don’t want to spend my time
publishing single articles every couple of days. I’m inclined
to it as a body of work, do the whole lot in one go.
Another good thing about digital publishing: if I were doing a
print journal with a paid subscription, I’d have to produce 10
papers per issue three times a year. You don’t do more or less
than that, because that’s what the subscription is for. We’ve
produced issues with six papers, we’ve produced issues with 14
or 18 papers. Because we’re online, we don’t have to limit the
length, don’t have to use the metrics of a standard journal.
Yvonne Desmond: You can set up standardized letters at the
start, so your review letter will automatically be written for
you, as will the acceptance letters. And you can set up a list of
reviewers, so it’s just a matter of picking a name off a list. So the
system is really automated in that regard, which is useful when
you’re time-poor.
Dr Kevin Griffin: If you’re dealing with a more broad
spectrum of academics, you can also put in keywords that
describe reviewers’ specialisms, such as specific qualitative
or quantitative analysis, discourse analysis, and so on.
If you have an established journal and
website, do you recommend having it
hosting on Digital Commons as well,
in order to expand reach – or would
that require a move away from the
existing website?
Digital Commons: Best practices for discoverability on the open
web suggest having only one website, to avoid confusing search
engines regarding which website is your ‘real’ website. However,
some journals don’t have an archiving solution
on their current website, and can still benefit greatly by
partnering with the library to provide a permanent home
for those documents.
Has it been a challenge getting
submissions or is it relatively easy? How do
commercial publishers affect your success?
Dr Kevin Griffin: Personally, because we proof-tested the idea
previously, we already knew there was going to be a core set of
papers available, and a conference is where we get 40-50% of
our authors. They may not submit the paper they presented at
the conference, but they’ll contribute.
The other half of authors are unknown to us or they come to us
by contributing to special issues of the journal. We have two of
those promised for later this year.
Yvonne Desmond: Not everyone has such a firm foundation,
but our journals do tend to be very niche, so it goes back to that
academic network you have of people who are interested in your
topic. We’ve seen that having such a network is really important.
With regard to competing with commercial publishers, there
has been a huge emphasis on the impact factor for journals
over time that never actually goes away, but with the shift
to open access overall, it has been more about impact and
altmetrics, which lets open access journals stand out. You’re
always up against that competition, but if you make sure the
journal is niche enough and has a big enough network, it can
be sustainable.
It’s good to have a first issue, but do you have enough for
three issues? If so, that’s probably a journal more likely to
have success.
If you can get your institution to recognize this kind of work,
these new metrics will certainly contribute and it becomes much
easier. We had a mandate for open access from 2008, which
hasn’t really been enforced. We’ve now come out with a new
mandate for data and publications which will be enforced.
Does the system support exporting
published articles according to the
indexing database XML format – for
example, DOAJ XML and PubMed XML?
Digital Commons: Digital Commons repositories conform
to OAI-PMH and can be harvested accordingly, such as by a
research portal.
What are the procedures for subscribing to
the journals?
Digital Commons: Most journals hosted on Digital Commons
are completely open access. The institution pays for the software,
but the journal editors, authors, and readers do not need to pay
to use the service. Some journals – such as those published as
part of a society – do choose to charge a subscription for access
to their journals. Those subscriptions are managed separately
from the Digital Commons software.
How did you track your readership?
Digital Commons: Digital Commons includes a Readership
Dashboard that tracks downloads for the whole site, or per
collection – such as an individual journals. You can read more
here: bepress.com/impact-analytics/
For more information, visit:
elsevier.com/solutions/digital-commons
Digital Commons is a service mark of Elsevier Inc.
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. May 2019