I have the following OJS scenario: 2 journals in 2.2.4.0 version, 2 journals in 2.3.7.0 version, 2 journals in 2.3.8.0 version, 1 journal in 2.4.2.0 version, 1 journal in 2.4.4.1 version, 1 journal in 2.4.7.0 version, and finally, 1 journal in 2.4.8.0 version. I would like to update them to new version ( > 3.0) and I would like to aggregate all in a single instalation. What is the better way to do this? Any advice?
Hi @wesin
Hmmm…
Integrating a separate journal into another multi-journal installation is not so easy: Because the IDs and relations in the database will change and be totally different, you can only use the native export-import tool. However, using the native export-import tool you will be only able to migrate users and issues. The other journal content (e.g. journal settings texts) and article workflows (e.g. reviews) cannot be migrated so. Journal settings you would need to manually copy&paste, but article workflows would be difficult to manually reproduce, thus they would probably get lost.
I see these possible ways:
- First aggregate all journals into the 2.4.x installation and then make the upgrade of that one multi-journal installation 2.4.x to OJS 3. I am not sure how well will the aggregation into 2.4.x go, because I cannot remember any more how compatible the native export-import tools for all those different older versions are.
This would have the advantage that you would eventually not need to do so many upgrades (if the export-import tools are compatible). - Upgrade all older installation first to 2.4.x and then to OJS 3. Then aggregate them into one installation.
This would have the disadvantage that you would need to upgrade all installation, even several times (first to 2.4.x and then to 3), but the advantage would be that a) the OJS 3 export-import tools consider more information (e.g. all existing files, from all stages, while OJS 2 export-import tools only consider the final published files), and b) that if something goes wrong and you do not want to aggregate them all into one installation, you can leave them as they are in OJS 3.
These are only rough thoughts of me – I’ve never done this before, so I do not know exactly what could everything be a problem…
Best,
Bozana
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