I am currently managing around 20 journals and need expert advice on the best approach for setting them up in Open Journal Systems (OJS). I am considering two options:
Single OJS Installation with Multiple Journals: Creating one OJS instance and managing all 20 journals within it.
Separate OJS Installations for Each Journal: Setting up a dedicated OJS instance for each journal separately.
I would appreciate your expert guidance on which approach would be more efficient in terms of management, performance, security, scalability, and maintenance. Could you also provide a comparison of the pros and cons of each option?
Your insights will help me make an informed decision. Looking forward to your recommendations.
It depends very much on your needs as to whether or not you would choose to host your journals within a single instance or within multiple instances.
Single Instance:
Having one instance of OJS can be more manageable. It can be easier to install, maintain, and update. Depending on your user needs, another advantage could be that users can access multiple journals with one account.
Some potential single Instance disadvantages are that it can be difficult to customize individual journal designs and themes: And, also, instances can run into performance issues if they are not optimized appropriately. This is especially the case with traffic-heavy single journal instances.
Multiple instances:
One advantage, depending on your situation, is that some journals prefer to have separate instances if they are enabling a lot of plugins and want to limit certain configurations to particular journals. Having multiple instances can afford an additional layer of greater control, where each journal could have its own version, administrative panel, and customization(s) depending on individual journal needs. Another advantage is that it can be simpler to assign unique domains to each journal.
The obvious disadvantage of having multiple instances is that it requires more attention to upgrading and maintenance—administrators will have to manage multiple instances.
Here are some forum posts that explore this topic in more detail:
And, if you haven’t seen it already, the admin guide provides detailed advice for how to co about deploying OJS securely and appropriately: https://docs.pkp.sfu.ca/admin-guide/en/