We are using OJS 3.3.0.2.1 hosted by Scholars Portal and are looking archive some of our inactive journals. Scholars Portal has been very accommodating, and we have moved the contents of one of our journals over to the Scholars Portal Journals archive.
We are looking at moving a second journal over, but realized that both journals are still receiving visits, according to the Article statistics. Although these visits could be bots, we’re not sure how to best redirect actual users to the archive.
We are left wondering if anyone else has tried archiving a journal, and how to accommodate ongoing use.
Can you provide a few more details, so we can provide some more appropriate direction:
Where are you hoping/anticipating the journal will “live” (e.g. on an existing OJS, or separate site? On a Scholar’s portal Archival platform?
Are the journals you’re looking to archive part of an existing install that will include other journals that are active and does the install need to continue to function as a normal active site?
When you say ongoing use - do you mean people visiting the site? Or will you need users
to login “behind the scenes” and carry out workflow functions, etc.?
Have you looked PKP|PN as a potential solution for your inactive journal?
Thank you for the questions @rcgillis, here’s a few more details:
Where are we hoping/anticipating the journal will “live” (e.g. on an existing OJS, or separate site? On a Scholar’s portal Archival platform?
Initially, we were anticipating the journal would “live” on a the Scholar’s Portal Archival Platform, but then we realized users were still visiting our OJS site to access it.
Are the journals you’re looking to archive part of an existing install that will include other journals that are active and does the install need to continue to function as a normal active site? Yes, the journals are part of an existing install, but we only want to archive inactive journals. The install would need to continue to function as a normal active site for the journals that continue to publish.
When you say ongoing use - do you mean people visiting the site? Or will you need users
to login “behind the scenes” and carry out workflow functions, etc.?
In terms of ongoing use, it is just accessing the journal materials moved over to the archive site. Ongoing use wouldn’t have anything to do with the OJS site.
Have you looked PKP|PN as a potential solution for your inactive journal?
No, but thank you for the suggestion. I suppose a “trigger event” might be a user trying to access the content of an archived journal, and would the journal then be reinstated on our Scholars Portal OJS site?
Where are we hoping/anticipating the journal will “live” (e.g. on an existing OJS, or separate site? On a Scholar’s portal Archival platform?
Initially, we were anticipating the journal would “live” on a the Scholar’s Portal Archival Platform, but then we realized users were still visiting our OJS site to access it.
I’m confused by this - are you not wanting these inactive journals to be viewed/visited by users? Usually, after journals cease publication, they still want the content to live on, and continue to be accessed as part of the scholarly record.
Hmmm… this could be tricky. The most simple solution would be just to keep the journalswithin your OJS instance, but prevent users from logging in. That said, I don’t know what arrangements you have with Scholar’s portal, so their hosting arrangement with you might prevent you from doing so (e.g. if they were charging you per journal, but you no longer wanted to pay for ?
Okay - thanks for clarifying. Is there a reason(s) why you wouldn’t just keep the journal up on your instance, but just cut off access from the editorial workflow. This might be the simplest way - but you may have reasons that I’m not seeing/understanding.
I’d highly recommend getting setup on the PKP PN, but, to clarify, if you hit a trigger event, it would result in the journal being hosted by PKP’s archival hosting infrastructure, whereby your journal would be made available, but on PKP’s hosting – not Scholar’s Portal.
Hi Roger, thank you for the feedback. I think you could be right, simply leaving the journal on the OJS site might be most straightforward solution, even if there is no further publishing activity.
We do want the inactive journals to continue being accessed as part of the scholarly record. That’s the challenging part, if we move them to a different location, we want users to still be able to find them.
I’ll discuss the PKP PN option with Scholars Portal, and if they have some ideas about redirecting traffic after migrating OJS content to their archival platform..