Technical service efficiency of Diamond OA journals

Nearly half (98; 49.2%) of the respondents rely solely on in-house infrastructure, almost one-third use outsourced services (62; 31.2%), while about 10.1% combine various in-house and outsourced resources. 

Pie chart: Maintaining and updating a journal’s technical infrastructure

Technical maintenance # journals % journals
In-house 98 49.2%
In-house and outsourced 20 10.1%
Outsourced 62 31.2%
No response 19 9.5%
Total 199 100.0%

 
Figure 10. Maintaining and updating a journal’s technical infrastructure

Most journals (138; 69.3%) use only one maintenance option and the survey data reveal a strong reliance on in-house IT services, which are used by almost half of the respondents (95; 47.7%).

Table 10. Provision of technical service maintenance

Technical service maintenance # journals using # journals using as the only option
In-house by an IT department/personnel 95 57
In-house by a dedicated publishing department 37 13
In-house across different departments 14 7
Partially outsourced 47 31
Mainly outsourced 16 11
Fully outsourced 23 19

 

Other responses include:

  • AJOL
  • Editor-in-chief
  • In-house by two volunteers
  • Mainly Personal computers are used. No specialized infrastructure is in place
  • The Publisher does it, but using OJS
  • The technical infrastructure is maintained & updated by volunteers of the journal
  • Volunteer personnel
  • We use OJS/PKP which we pay on a volunteer base; any other tech infrastructure is done on a volunteer base

For more than half of the respondents (112; 56.3%), the publishing infrastructure supports all publishing workflows online (e.g. a journal’s online platform is used to submit manuscripts, review them and make them openly available after approval for publication). 

Pie chart: Online publishing workflows in publishing infrastructure

Figure 11. Online publishing workflows in publishing infrastructure

Public Knowledge Project’s open-source software Open Journal Systems is by far the most popular publishing software used in the surveyed sample (136; 68.3%). 

Bar chart: Software used for the publishing system

Software # journals % journals
Open Journals System (OJS) and OJS-based 136 68.3%
WordPress 14 7.0%
DSpace 2 1.0%
Other 11 5.5%
None or unspecified 9 4.5%
Don't know 27 13.6%
Total 199 100.0%

 
Figure 12. Software used for the publishing system

Other responses include:

  • IMIST platform
  • Locally developed, customized software / Our online publishing system
  • Manuscript Central
  • None
  • Our journal is integrated in the Algerian Scientific Journal Platform which is our publishing infrastructure support online
  • PUBNiTO
  • ScholarOne
  • Skin-the-Cat Creative Lab

Almost three quarters (148; 74.4%) of the respondents assign unique persistent identifiers. The majority of journals use only one PID (188; 54.3%) and the most commonly used is Crossref DOI. More than half of the surveyed journals (113; 56.8%) use Crossref DOI, while for 40.2% it is the only PID used. ORCID is used by 25.6% (51 journals). Other PIDs are used only sporadically.

Table 11. Persistent identifiers used by the surveyed journals

PIDs # journals % journals
Crossref DOI 80 40.2%
Crossref DOI, ORCID 28 14.1%
Other DOI 14 7.0%
ORCID 10 5.0%
Other DOI, ORCID 7 3.5%
DataCite DOI 4 2.0%
Other combinations 7 3.5%
None 49 24.6%

 

Table 12. The use of persistent identifiers

PID # journals using # journals using only this PID
Crossref DOI 113 80
DataCiteDOI 7 4
Other DOI 22 14
ORCID 51 10
URN 1 0
ARK 2 0