Boston College’s portfolio of journals spans across disciplines – some are produced quarterly or semesterly by undergraduate students, others may publish once a year with editorial staff comprising of BC faculty and other experts. Overall, there are a number of publications with different purposes, audiences, and editorial processes.
Followers of this newsletter likely know about the portfolio of work that exists on Open Journal Systems, the libraries primary platform for ejournal publication. Recently, however, International Higher Education moved their ejournal to a site called PubPub. While this platform is relatively new, it offers a tremendous amount of flexibility during the editorial process – with consistent version control that allows multiple editors to look over a document at the same time. PubPub, developed by Knowledge Futures, is an open source publishing platform. International Higher Education is currently using PubPub to publish their ejournal online and mint DOIs for their articles.
Unlike many other journal publishers, PubPub aims to be a platform for a wide variety of needs. Additionally, as they move toward rolling out a new open source product called “PubPub Platform” it is clear their intention is to provide space for a wide variety of formats:
While Boston College Libraries does not have an explicit relationship with PubPub, we have had tremendous success in working with them to ensure that International Higher Education has a stable and readily accessible home that also preserves the journal’s modern look and feel. IHE has recently published their 122nd issue! While users interact with the journal on the PubPub site, another copy of the journal is also uploaded to Open Journal Systems, which maintains industry standard LOCKKS preservation. By utilizing both publishing platforms, IHE is able to meet the needs of their users while also ensuring the safety and sustainability that comes along with preserving the journal properly.
If you have any questions about using PubPub for a collection or publication, reach out to Scholarly Platforms & Discovery Services.