#ojstheme

In today's digital-driven world, keeping in contact with the people, share your stories, articles, and scientific information with the web tech is common. Besides, many academic and research-oriented bodies are pretty interested in having their own platforms and resources to publish freely. So how to start your own journal is probably their first query.

Well! There are plenty of resources that an individual can leverage and find the way around. However, what matters is that you invest your efforts, time, and fortune in the right place and get your desired achievements. If you really want to own a journal without spending extra, we can assist you.

Let's get started!

How to start your own journal? 

Decide on the Niche 

To begin with, your task is to decide which aspect you are going to target with your journal. For example, do you have a niche you are passionate about, or is it just that you want to start a journal following a competitive niche?

If it is the antecedent, you can proceed to the second step. However, if you belong to the latter bracket, we will recommend choosing a field that is new and hasn't been targeted yet in the online journals. For example, be it health, education, business, finance, tourism, or any other field.

It is because starting a journal in in-play nuances will only enhance the competition. Besides, you have to struggle a lot to keep up the pace and top the charts. Also, it will not produce any financial benefits in the long run.

What type of content do you want to show window?

In addition to the niche, it's time to decide on the content for the journal. You certainly have the content type you are interested in publishing via your journal. If you are yet to decide, we have listed a few names here. Your content can be research articles, e-books, traditional books and e-books reviews, editorials, interviews, and more.

Your choice here will drive your content strategies and the generation later in the steps.

In addition, journals have two major types – Open Access and Paid (membership). So again, you can choose your preferred method.

Editorial committee to Craft the Content 

In the wake of the above steps, advance to the editorial board formation, a committee of adept journal people. While enlisting, the staff keep in mind that they will be driving your journal online success. So it would be better if you recruit the specialists and niche experts fueled with dedication, motivation, and strategic approaches.

Besides, your editorial board will be the one regulating your content advice, content generation, reviews, and handling the existing authors, new authors recruitment, and submissions.

The above steps are the grounds that you must build to start your own journal. From here on, you will be focusing on the development part.

Create an Online Presence for your Journal 

Online presence, aka, the website is the front door every digital entity needs to cross to come alive. It means you need a website to start your own journal officially, and for a website:

First, you need to decide and register a domain name that will be your journal's digital address or with what people will remember it.

Secondly, you are going to deal with an online entity; you must need hosting services that will provide accommodation for your website. More specifically, to store the website files. Depending on the scale of the journal, you can opt for Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, and Cloud Hosting. To do so, you have to find and sign up with a web hosting company.   

After working on the Web Hosting & Domain features, next comes the designing and development of the website. You might already be familiar with and have worked with some of the CMS systems like WordPress and website builders.  

We know a better choice for this work!

Are you interested to know?

The ideal platform for Journal Development 

OJS, abbreviated for Open Journal System, is a popular software application to streamline publishing. So you can make initiating the journal far easier by opting for OJS Theme Development.

OJS 3 (developed by Public Knowledge Project – PKP) is in fashion in the journal sector. This innovative techno-driven OJS is a complete solution in itself. This software has a galore of features for journals.

Journal Web design and OJS theme

The first feature is the design. It has a sea of themes, categorized as Custom, Classic, and Modern themes to set as your journal front end. All these So you are free to decide on your favorite OJS Theme. Whichever texture from the mentioned names or aesthetics you fancy on your website look, you are the boss.

Theme Customization 

The highlight is that you can also opt for OJS Theme Customization if you want to build a unique identity. For instance, you can adjust the colors, theme, styles, and much more. Also, the opportunity stays wide open for journal customization even later in the future.

Development

Like the design, development also becomes relatively easy with all the features OJS has got. A noticeable name is the OJS plugins. It's just that the developer should be seasoned enough to handle the OJS Development. Then, you can decide on either one or both of your journals' Open Access and Paid access modules.

OJS Hosting – All-in-one Solution  

On top of all, tech-savvy companies like Navicosoft even provide OJS hosting. This hosting service is more of a jump start that launches your journal smoothly more than anything. You can sign up for this solution and relieve the stress with managed hosting and your desired customizations, depending on your resources. 

Here comes the time when you are just one step behind to realize your dream to start your own journal. What we mean is:

Journal Indexing – ISSN and DOI 

Finally, you have to apply and get the ISSN number and DOI for your journal.

ISSN – International Standard Serial Number – An eight-digit serial number to assign a unique identification to a serial publication; journal.

DOI – Digital Object Identifier – A string of numbers, letters, and symbols used to identify the online content piece uniquely; article/ document. It serves as a permanent web address (URL). The DOI code will make it easy to locate a document from the citation.

Following this procedure, you have registered your journal and have accomplished a giant footstep.

Welcome the Talent to Adjoin with you 

If you have followed all the above steps, then Congratulations! By now, you are absolutely done with your journal establishment. Now spread the word by leveraging digital marketing and exclusive content marketing and seize the people's attention.

Advertise and appreciate the content globally, city, or country-based talent from institutions, departments, and universities to synchronize your submissions.

Wrapping Up! 

To start your own journal, you should be patient, motivated, and have adequate resources. If you need any help or feel it is time-consuming, hiring an expert to develop a journal publishing platform, specifically OJS Development, for you. 

OJS has tremendously gained the attention of the education and literary industry in recent years. Therefore, there is a surge in OJS Development too. However, in the online market, being distinct matters a lot to establish your unique brand identity. It goes without saying that customization and personalization pave the way to stand apart from the rest. So we decided to spotlight the probe, how to customize an OJS Theme.

For individuals not knowing the OJS, let us jot down a bit on it.

OJS

OJS, abbreviated for Open Journal Systems, is a free software application (open-source) for managing and publishing scholarly journals.

In simple words, OJS assists the authors and publishers in submitting, editing, publishing, archiving the journals online, and more.

Many sectors like health sciences, industrial sciences, agriculture, research sector, etc., have to publish the journals. Thus, OJS has been worldwide popular owing to its benefits for improving scholarly publishing quality and expanding research work's reach. For instance, around 10,000+ journals are using it globally.

At present, OJS 3x is quite famous. However, if you use OJS 2, you can upgrade to OJS 3 and enjoy modern features.

OJS themes

OJS has an extensive theme collection. You can expect all:

·       Custom themes

·       Classic themes

·       Modern themes

Having a theme matching with your work theme is necessary. So you can select an OJS theme or template with modern features from the gallery and get started with your journal. OJS 3 have a lot of free themes that you can use for your journal. All themes have responsive and clear designs to streamline the convenience of readers of an online journal. In addition, many companies are providing unique themes or templates with a fresh look and feel. So it would not be wrong if we say that you take a step towards having your own journal. Every facility is here to help you out. 

All journal startups and small to medium-sized publishers fancy being more recognized and facilitating the authors and readers. Therefore, they opt for customization and integrate various essential and must-have features. You can also choose any of the free themes and customize them according to your needs. Furthermore, if you are developing or do not like any theme, you can develop your own OJS 3 theme from scratch.

OJS Theme Customization

Establishing an open-access journal was no doubt pretty challenging a few years back, let alone the OJS Theme Customization. Thankfully, it isn't like that anymore. Advanced OJS Development has made it far easier.

However, unless you are an expert, don't start editing the theme(s) on your own. Also, never do it directly. Instead, let an expert providing the OJS services do the customization.

How to customize an OJS Theme?

Your theme will regulate the overall design and layout of the site. As already mentioned, you can try the different available theme options without affecting the site's content or configuration. Moreover, many themes allow the users to select colors, upload logos and other images and change fonts. So you can customize the color, typography, and images for your OJS themes easily.  

Changing the theme 

Start by enabling all the themes available. If you don't have access, use the following method.

·       Go to Website Settings > Plugins > Theme Plugins.

·       Check-mark all the boxes to enable all plugins.

Now you can test each theme.

·       In the Theme tab, check the drop-down menu, and pick one that you want to try.

·       Now scroll down to the page end, you will see the Save option; press it.

·       You can also refresh the browser page in order to make all the sub-themes and configuration options visible.

·       In case you made new changes from the configuration or sub-themes options, save the changes again.

·       You have successfully changed the theme.

·       Now to test if it works fine or heck the feel and look of the site, opens the home page in a separate tab/ window.

·       If it is okay, you ar5e good to go. However, the changes are visible on the site; clear the cache under the Administration menu.

Another Method

Changing the theme of the newly-created Journal

Edit the registry/journalSettings.xml and change the themePluginPath setting. Then, select the theme in the site setup tab or what you want to specify.

Changing the theme of the already-existing Journal,

You need to edit the journal setting in the database. However, to start this, first, have a backup in case if anything goes wrong; you have the files safe with you. To go to current settings:

SELECT * FROM journal_settings WHERE setting_name='themePluginPath';

After editing the settings, make sure to clear the cache files; run the following command.

rm -f cache/*.php

How to change the theme color?

For instance, the default themes in OJS allow one or two colors. So if you fancy editing them, go to Website, click on Appearance and then Theme. Then, from the slider, pick your desired color. Or you can also enter the HEX code for that color.

This method is easily accessible for beginners to OJS. Nonetheless, additional customization can be done using CSS, only feasible via developers.

P.S.: Hex: A 6-symbol code made of up to three 2-symbol elements; each 2-symbol element indicates a color value from 0 to 255.

Get help from an Expert!

The default themes typically receive updates, so updating them will always be easier if you don't customize them. However, doing it on your own might leave some loopholes, eventually making updating them in the future complex.

To customize an OJS Theme, that is why we suggest handing over the OJS Theme Customization to a skilled person. In return, you don’t have to face any updates issues later. A professional company providing the OJS Development can help you with all installation, theme, upgrading, and fixing the bugs, and so forth.