Image & Text has been published annually since 1992 by the School of the Arts at the University of Pretoria (UP) in South Africa and was accredited by the South African
Department of Higher Education and Training in 1997. Originally, the journal primarily focused on design, but since 2011 has been repositioned as a multi- and interdisciplinary journal for research in visual culture, attracting local and global authors. Image & Text has been a Diamond open access (OA) journal since 2018.
A 12-month grant (October 2024 - September 2025) awarded by EIFL through the ‘Collaboration for sustainable open access publishing in Africa project’, enabled the UP School of the Arts to improve journal workflows as a means to maintain the integrity of the journal; to secure its future sustainability, and to enhance its accessibility and visibility.
Prof Jenni Lauwrens, Editor of Image & Text, described challenges facing the journal: “The editors of the journal are full-time academics, which means they teach, serve on university committees, chair committees, supervise postgraduate students, and publish their research, among many other tasks, all of which come with their own administrative loads. In addition, the journal did not have the financial resources to employ an Editorial Assistant who could have managed administrative tasks and assisted with revising our Editorial Policy and Author Guidelines and creating Peer Reviewer Guidelines to align with scholarly best practices.
“We aimed to streamline the submission and publication processes by moving our operations to an e-workflow platform. The website needed updating to improve its functionality and accessibility.”
What has changed as a result of the project?
Journal policies and publishing processes have been revised and improved
Through training and participating in relevant forums, Image & Text’s Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Assistant were able to revise Image & Text’s editorial policies and guidelines to comply with international standards and best practices in scholarly open access publishing as set out by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), SciELO SA and Scopus. Importantly, information in the revised documents about plagiarism and the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) now aligns with ASSAf, ScieELO and Scopus requirements and standards.
The revised documents include a new Editorial Policy, a Publishing Agreement, Author Guidelines, a Terms of Reference for Guest Editors and Peer Review Guidelines.
“The most important improvement to the journal processes and workflows is that the publication process is accessible to the entire editorial team.” - Prof Jenni Lauwrens
Documents for the editorial team that map and explain editorial processes from submission of articles to publication have also been created. The Publication Process Manual lists who is responsible for which task, and contains email templates with possible variations for communication. It is accessible to anyone on the editorial team.
“Similarly, the Volume Processing documents (which we update on Google Drive) that I have drawn up for volumes from previous years make the workflow accessible to the team. Should I become unexpectedly unavailable, the publication of the volume will not be affected because the Co-editor and the Editorial Assistant Mentee also work on this document,” said Prof Lauwrens.
Improved operations through the use of Open Journal Systems (OJS)
Image & Text has moved all article submission and publication processes to an e-workflow platform. “Before, the authors submitted their articles, publishing agreements and image files to an email account managed by the Editor-in-Chief. From there, the Editor-in-Chief communicated directly with the author, the Editorial Board, the peer reviewers, the language-editor and the layout designer. We needed to reduce the workload,” explained Prof Lauwrens.
The journal has formed a partnership with UP Journals, which hosts all UP open access Journals on a platform using Open Journal’s Systems (OJS). UP Journals offered assistance with migrating Image & Text content to the platform and provided training on properly using all OJS functions.
“It has been wonderful to know that the UP Journals team is always on hand to assist with queries about the system, of which there have been many,” said Prof Lauwrens.
“Perhaps one of the most important changes with moving to the OJS website is that I can edit the content of the website. Previously, I had to work through a web master just to change a small aspect, like a grammatical error or the title of an Editorial Board member. This is no longer necessary.”
Image & Text has developed OJS training manuals to assist authors, peer reviewers, editors, guest-editors, copyeditors and layout designers.
Members of the editorial team are learning through practice, guided by OJS training videos and manuals, and noting down any obstacles they encounter and solutions that are applied. The 2025 edition of the journal was still produced manually, but articles for the 2026 edition are being processed on OJS.
Improved information for readers and authors
Image & Text is now hosted by UP Journals, which is responsible for keeping the journal website up to date and providing support on the OJS system.
“Moving to OJS really did improve the accessibility of our website, the information that we share with our authors and readers, and our compliance with best practice in scholarly publishing,” said Prof Lauwrens.
“We now have only one website, whereas in the past, if one searched for Image & Text online, you were directed to one of two websites. Moreover, being hosted by UP Journals has increased our visibility as we are also listed on the UP Journals website,” she added.
The quality of the information for authors and readers has dramatically improved. The information is streamlined, concise and easily accessible with the most important information being provided on the Home page. “One author who has previously published with the journal commented that information about the submission requirements is much clearer and that the website looks sophisticated,” said Prof Lauwrens.
As part of preparing for an application for indexing with Scopus, the journal has revised the appearance of published articles. “We have refreshed the layout of our articles by reducing the large margin we had on the left, we have added the Dates received, accepted, and published to the PDFs and have made all URLs active links. We have added the correct copyright information to the PDF and the article landing page and have linked the licensing information,” said Prof Lauwrens.
A mentorship programme for future Editorial Assistant Mentees has been developed
During the project period, an Editorial Assistant was employed. Among her tasks was to train an Editorial Assistant Mentee to step into the role when her term of service ended. The Mentee’s training was successful, and has been used as the basis for development of a mentorship programme for future Editorial Assistant Mentees.
The mentorship programme draws on and is guided by the Publication Process document and an Associate Editorial Mentee Task Sheet, and is supplemented by the OJS training videos and guides. An important part of the mentorship programme for the Mentee is in-service training, including shadowing the outgoing Editorial Assistant and undertaking practical tasks such as communicating with authors.
Who sustains your ongoing journal expenses?
The School of the Arts at UP will continue to support Image & Text and has committed to increasing the journal’s funding by over 50% from 2026.
“In the South African system, the Department of Higher Education subsidises articles published by academics. In other words, South African universities receive funding for research published by their employees. Since Image & Text enables the publication of these articles, and therefore also the funding the university receives from them, it strengthens the journal’s case for arguing for increased institutional support,” said Prof Lauwrens.
Hosting of the journal’s website by UP Journals and the use of OJS, which is free, have saved costs. For example, there is no need to pay a web master to fix textual errors on the website or to make changes, as this can be done directly by the Editor or Editorial Assistant; the UP Journals team provides technical support and advice.
“The revised documents and the use of the OJS platform has strengthened Image & Text’s sustainability. The documents comply with best practice and, should updates be required, they can easily be amended. The Editorial Assistant Mentee has been trained on how to do this, and the OJS system allows me to do this myself without having to work through a web master. OJS keeps track of editorial activities, and reports can be drawn from the system. Because our processes are now accessible, a new editor can easily find articles and determine what still needs to be done. This is very different from how we previously operated,” said Prof Lauwrens.
Lessons learnt and recommendations to other journals and institutions supporting Diamond open access publishing
Think strategically about the needs of the journal and prepare very thoroughly before embarking on a project such as this. “In our project, all our activities were integrated and centred around improving workflows. However, some activities took far longer than I had imagined. And if an activity relies on the completion of another activity, one must factor in more time than seems necessary. This will help to ensure that targets are met on time.”
“While our project succeeded in thoroughly changing how Image & Text is managed, I think our project was ambitious. The human factor must be taken into account. Change is often difficult and sometimes takes longer than one expects. Having said that, I would not change any of those activities or targets as the journal is visibly far more sophisticated than it was before we embarked on the project.” - Prof Jenni Lauwrens.
The grant for ‘Optimizing Image & Text’ was awarded through the ‘Collaboration for sustainable open access publishing in Africa project’, a three-year project (November 2023 to October 2026) to strengthen no-fee open access publishing in Africa implemented by EIFL, AJOL (African Journals Online) and WACREN (the West and Central African Research and Education Network), with funding from Wellcome.
OA-AFRICA-GRANTEE
