Journal Publishing Guide

Every journal starts at a different place, but below is an outline of the steps you'll take when launching a new journal with us.

1. Starting a new journal

The University of Alberta Library accepts proposals for new or already-publishing titles at set times throughout the year. To find out when our next intake is scheduled, you can check out the publishing website. Before submitting a journal proposal, we expect you to: 

• Familiarize yourself with our Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and read through our proposal form
• Email us to set up a meeting before the due date to discuss your proposal
• Email us the completed proposal before the deadline

If you're a student-led team, before starting a new journal consider joining or reviving a journal that already exists. Gaining traction for a brand-new title can take time and effort: encouraging submissions, recruiting reviewers, and finding volunteer editors can be difficult if the scope is oversaturated. Additionally, a continuous publication record can help with visibility and indexing, which will help your journals grow and find new audiences. Discovery tools, such as bibliographic indexes, prefer to boost journals that have a proven record of sustainability.

Once a journal proposal is submitted, you can expect a response within approximately 2-3 weeks. If your journal is successful, we will ask you to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and set up your OJS website in the next 2 to 3 weeks.

2. Setting up your OJS site 

When you first get your OJS site, it will be private to you and whomever you register to give you time to set it up. During this setup phase, editorial teams are expected to:

• Set up user accounts for your Editorial Team
• List your Editorial Team members on the website
• Add all of your editorial policies and journal-level texts to your site
• Learn how to use OJS software and set up your individual journal workflows
• Finalize the design of your website

When you are ready to make your site live, email us at library.publishing@ualberta.ca. At this stage, we'll review your site to make sure proper policies and copyright statements are in place. We can advise you in each step, help with policy development, make any recommendations as you set up.

3. Publishing an issue 

• Setting a publishing schedule with your team 
• Sending out a call for papers 
• Accepting submissions 
• Review, copyediting, layout, production stages
• Finalizing metadata (all the information like author name and article title that will appear on the reader-view)

4. Ongoing Journal management (coming soon!)