Category Archives: BC eJournals

Medical Humanities Journal of Boston College

The Scholarly Communications team had a chance to ask some questions to the editors of the Medical Humanities Journal of Boston College! The undergraduate journal is sponsored by the Institute for Liberal Arts here on campus and has been in publication since its first volume in 2015. Recently, the journal has moved its online editions to Boston College Libraries’ Open Journal Systems platform iteration, which ensures that the journal will be preserved and search engine results optimized.

The Q&A below gets into some of the best practices for undergraduate journals and the history and future of the Medical Humanities Journal of Boston College.

What kinds of pieces are generally solicited? How do you approach your call for submissions?

A variety of pieces! We accept short stories, poems, works of art, photographs, research papers, narratives etc. We usually post on our Facebook page (@BostonCollegeMedicalHumanitiesJournal) when we are accepting submissions with instructions on how to submit!

From what disciplines do most of your submissions come from – where do most of your articles come from?

Our journal is very interdisciplinary so we receive submissions from a variety of disciplines! Although the journal is based on medicine and the humanities field, we receive and publish submissions ranging from Biology and sociology to majors in CSOM.

What was the main motivation for adding your journal to our digital collection on OJS?

With the difficulties of the pandemic and reduced physical interactions, we thought that adding the Journal to a digital collection such as OJS would be more convenient and easily accessible to the public. Additionally, now our journals can be read anywhere and at any time – even on the go!

Is there a reason that Medical Humanities Journal of Boston College has decided to publish Open Access – was it always an OA journal?

We liked the idea of a sort of repository where a bunch of BC Journals lived and wanted to be a part of it! MHJ has always been open access, but we think that this platform will make our Journal easier to find and on an editorial level, easier to manage.

Medical Humanities Journal of Boston College’s most recent issue. Click the cover to navigate to the journal’s home on our Open Journal Systems platform.

Open Journal Systems – Upgraded to Version 3.3; New Features Available for Faculty Journals

Early in the summer of 2023, Boston College Libraries upgraded our version of Open Journal Systems from 3.1.2 to version 3.3. Along with a much more intuitive dashboard and design options, the upgrade given faculty run journals to integrate with iThenticate’s “Turn-it-in” – an automated plagiarism checker. Our portfolio includes e-journals from a wide breadth of disciplines at Boston College and, indeed, the list continues to grow and grow.

In addition to providing an automated plagiarism checker, OJS:

provides automated indexation – to places like the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Google Scholar,
helps young researchers automatically connect their ORCID to their scholarly work,
automatically creates citations that are correctly formatted in a variety of different styles depending on the discipline,
preserves your journal in a private LOCKSS archive network,
and creates unique identifiers for every article – making them much more easy to find as scholars cite and visit your published issues.

Our journal collections can be found at ejournals.bc.edu – and we also have put together a series of data visualizations that demonstrate the international audience that many of our journals have reached with consistent outreach and accessibility best practices.

The snapshot above shows one of our Data Visualizations showing the readership of all of our OJS journals over the course of 2023. For the interactive graphic, be sure to visit our tableau visualizations!

Consecuencias Accepted into the Modern Language Association’s (MLA) International Bibliography

For the past four years, Consecuencias has been publishing issues and articles covering different aspects of Spain’s cultural production via Boston College Libraries’ Open Access Journal portfolio. Articles in English and Spanish come together to create an interdisciplinary study of Spanish cultural artifacts, historical movements, and thought leaders. In the past year, since the beginning of the 2022 fall academic term, the relatively new journal has been downloaded 2,581 times in 68 different countries across the world in over 300 cities.

Recently, Consecuencias is also celebrating indexation in the Modern Language Association’s International Bibliography – a renowned database for scholars in the humanities, which all but assures that more researchers, authors, and students will be able to access Consecuencias publications. Not only does indexation in MLA’s International Bibliography signify that it will be reachable by those who use that database to conduct searches, indexation is also an excellent way to increase a journal’s performance around search engine optimization, as well as providing prestige and implicit accreditation, as scholars considering submitting work to an (especially open access) journal will often check where it is indexed to get a sense of its legitimacy and reach in a given discipline.

For more insights on readership statistics, click on the image below to view a data visualization.

Dianoia Release Symposium

Dianoia recently published their 10th issue and on April 26th, held a release symposium. This event was a wonderful opportunity to hear directly from the contributing authors who came from all over the country to present on their articles. Topics included the value of greatness, the many possible interpretations of Heraclitus, and a teleological examination of Kant’s prejudices. The issue also includes an interview with Professor Gregory Field, here at Boston College.

Dianoia latest cover: painted figure with long brown curls looks off to the left.

The event was held in Stokes Auditorium and the contributing authors had a chance to present on their publications and take questions from the audience. Refreshments were also served, and there was a small reception after the event to ask more specific questions and chat with the editors and authors of the 10th issue. Dianoia has built up a global readership since its initial publication in 2012 and provides a pathway for undergraduate philosophy students to contribute to the scholarly record.

Events like these are tremendous ways to build the community around your publication. Events can help generate interest in scholars who may be future editorial boards members, reviewers, or contributing authors. For more information around everything from reserving rooms on campus to working through the editorial workflow on Open Journal Systems, the Scholarly Communications team is always here to assist with setting up and promoting a journal published through the Boston College libraries. For more information around our publishing program, reach out to ejournals@bc.edu. To find out more about Dianoia, please see their website.

Close up of presenter in Stokes Auditorium — Lauren Toensing discusses her paper, “Kant’s Racial and Moral Tendencies”

Scholars watch a presentation in Stokes Hall from back of room - roughly 25 people pictured. — Lauren Toensing discusses her paper, “Kant’s Racial and Moral Tendencies”

Congratulations to Dianoia on the publication of issue #10!