What is heiJOURNALS?

heiJOURNALS is a publication service for e-journals provided by Heidelberg University Library to encourage and support the publication of Open Access e-journals.

What is Open Journal Systems (OJS)?

The e-journal publication service heiJOURNALS is based on the software Open Journal Systems (OJS). OJS is a worldwide established open source software which enables an efficient management and organisation of e-journals. Both the layout as well as the editorial workflows can be individually adjusted. Open Journals Systems was developed and is managed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP).

Who can publish e-journals in heiJOURNALS?

The e-journal publication platform heiJOURNALS is a service intended for scholars of Heidelberg University. For international scholars we provide corresponding services in the following fields of studies: history of art via arthistoricum.net,classical studies via Propylaeum and South Asian studies via CrossAsia.

How are e-journals published in heiJOURNALS?

If you are interested in publishing an e-journal via heiJOURNALS, you will need a journal manager account. For this purpose please contact the OJS-team at Heidelberg University Library. Once you have your own account and your e-journal has been installed, you can set up your e-journal according to your own publication concept and create user accounts for your editors, reviewers and authors. Support and information material on using OJS can be found here.

Are the e-journals permanently available, secured and citable?

Yes, all e-journals published via heiJOURNALS are permanently available, secured and citable. The identifiers for every single issue, sections and articles are stable. The documents are stored by Heidelberg University Library and are integrated into the general backup workflows. heiJOURNALS offers the following stable identifiers for its articles: Uniform Resource Names (URN) as well as Digital Object Identifiers (DOI).

Where and how is the published data archived?

Heidelberg University Library has its own long term archiving system in which all fulltexts and the according metadata is stored multiple times in different places. Through a checksum procedure and the regular validation of the checksums the integrity and intactness of the data is controlled. The delivery of digital copies to the German National Library is envisioned and will be implemented as soon as the necessary functionalities have been implemented into the OJS-Software.

In which formats are e-journals published in Open Journal Systems (OJS)?

PDF (Portable Document Format), HTML, EPUB.

What is the legal situation at heiJOURNALS?

Heidelberg University Library hosts the software OJS and makes it available to its scholars. The editors of the e-journals are liable for the content published via their journal. Through so-called open content licenses (such as Creative Commons-Licences, further information on standard licences can be found on the website open-access.net) editors can apply more specific terms of use to their publications according to the Open Access idea.

What are the costs for hosting an e-journal?

Heidelberg University Library offers the service heiJOURNALS generally free of charge to scholars at Heidelberg University.

How visible are the e-journals?

E-journals published via heiJOURNALS have a high visibility. The team at Heidelberg University Library assures the journals’ indexing in the Zeitschriftendatenbank (ZDB) as well as the Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek (EZB); it applies for the ISSN-registration and proposes the e-journal for the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). All publications are, furthermore, catalogued at article level in the online library catalogue HEIDI as well as in the library network system. Thereby the titles are also visible through the meta search of the Karlsruher Virtuellen Katalogs (KVK) and the Open Access search engine BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine). In addition, the articles are visible via Google and Google Scholar.

Which aspects should be considered prior to founding an academic e-journal?

Two aspects are important: Is the content of your e-journal sustained? How can you guarantee for the quality of your e-journal (e.g. peer review, editorial review etc.)?

Does heiJOURNALS support a peer review process?

Yes, the software Open Journal Systems (OJS) supports the entire editorial workflow, including the submission of articles through authors and the complete review process, e.g. peer review.

How is the access statistics generated and how is it to be interpreted?

For generating the call statistics a method is used that is based on the web service Open-Access-Statistics The pre-aggregation of the figures is made on the basis of pseudonymous IP addresses at the head office of the German library network “Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund” (VZG/GBV). Subsequently, the numbers are processed at Heidelberg University Library. Access to multiple files linked to the same front page are summarized.
The counting method follows the internationally recognized COUNTER Code of Practice. Accordingly hits from popular search engines and their crawlers, as well as of systems with conventional search engine query behaviour will not be considered. Furthermore, repeated access to a document from the same IP address (to which multiple users can be connected via a proxy server) needs to be a specified minimum period of time apart, in order to be counted separately.

Why is an application for royalties for PDF-files not possible at the German collecting society for authors (VG Wort)?

The result of negotiations between the VG Wort and hosts of publication platforms is that for PDF-files the VG Wort prefers to count the access themselves, in contrast to HTML-sites where own counters can be integrated. The proposal to accept a counter provided by the hosts was not accepted due to the fear of manipulation. The host of publications platform, in turn, did not agree to the VG Wort’s suggestion to redirect all http-accesses to a VG-Wort counter prior to linking to the PDF-file. The reasons for this were that an access to a hosting platform should in no way be dependent on a third party.
The payment of royalties therefore depends on a minimum of accesses in Germany. The minimum for the payment of royalties (not counting the access of search engines) in last couple of years was 1,500 accesses per calendar year. For academic texts this number of accesses is in general not reached.

Can e-books also be published via heiJOURNALS?

heiJOURNALS is a service solely for publishing academic journals and series. The publication of e-books through heiJOURNALS is not possible. For this purpose Heidelberg University Library provides the Heidelberg document server heiDOK, the Heidelberg e-book platform heiBOOKS as well as the subject specific repositories for the fields of history of art, classical studies and South Asian studies.

Furthermore, Heidelberg University Publishing (heiUP), the University press which is also run by Heidelberg University Library, provides the possibility to publish outstanding research results as e-books or within publication series.

Can research data also be published via heiJOURNALS?

For publishing research data the Competence Centre for Research Data, a joint institution of the University Library and the Computing Centre, provides the data archive heiDATA. Research data can be archived via HeiDATA, where it will receive a citable DOI (Digital Object Identifier), which again can be linked to from any article in an e-journal. The Competence Centre for Research Data supports scientists at Heidelberg University with archiving and publishing their research data.

Can titles be directly integrated into personal reference management programmes?

All publications in OJS-journals hosted at Heidelberg University Library are catalogued at article level in Heidelberg’s library catalogue HEIDI. This, amongst others, has the advantage that single titles can easily be integrated into your personal reference management programmes.
The programme Zotero has direct access to HEIDI and can include both short and full entries of titles. Also the reference management programme Citavi can search directly in HEIDI and integrate the title’s data via XML. In order to import titles into other programmes you also have various other export and citation formats in HEIDI, e.g. BibTeX or RIS (Endnote) as well as citation formats such as AMA, APA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, MLA and DIN 1505.
Titles can also be integrated directly from Open Journal Systems (OJS) into your personal reference management programme. OJS provides various citation and export options.