About Our Journal Program
Florida State Open Publishing supports a diamond open access journal publishing program for the Florida State University academic community, including faculty, students, and staff. Our journals are published on Florida Online Journals (Florida OJ). Florida OJ is the FLVC’s hosted version of the open-source digital publishing platform (Open Journal Systems) created by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). Florida OJ provides a platform for full journal editorial management from submission through final publication.
FSOP publishes faculty-led and student-led academic journals, ongoing conference proceedings, and literary journals. For one-time conference proceedings, organizers may submit a proposal for book publication or submit accessible PDFs for preservation to the FSU Research Repository. New journal projects are considered on a rolling basis. For all accepted projects, journal editors must agree to the requirements listed below.
Services
✓ Editorial workflow consultation
✓ Journal hosting platform through Florida OJ
✓ Assistance with site development and launch
✓ Assistance with metadata markers such as ISSNs and DOIs
✓ Guidance around copyright, editorial policies, publication process, and ethics
✓ Production guidance for PDF and HTML for first issue
✓ Basic technical support and troubleshooting
Request a Consult
If you are interested in starting a new journal, we encourage you to schedule a consult with the Digital Publishing Librarian, Landis Grenville, at lgrenville@fsu.edu.
When you are ready to request your journal, please fill out the journal request form. FSOP staff will review your proposal and contact you in 2-3 weeks to discuss the project. Before submitting the journal request form, please review the journal program requirements listed below.
You may preview the journal request form questions to guide the preparation of your journal proposal.
Journal Program Policies
Scope. FSOP hosts and supports both faculty-led scholarly journals and student journals. All journals are published open access through Florida OJ, under Creative Commons licenses determined by the editors, with no fees to authors or readers. While we require an FSU affiliated member, we are open to discussing collaboration with community members.
Editorial independence. Each journal’s editorial team is responsible for all editorial decisions and content. FSOP provides platform hosting, technical support, training, and guidance on best practices, but does not make editorial or policy decisions.
Peer review. Faculty-led scholarly journals are expected to conduct peer review and to post their peer review policies publicly on their journal site. Student journals must operate under the guidance of a faculty advisor who is responsible for helping to maintain the scholarly rigor of the journal and ensure best practices are followed. Student journals should indicate the type of review (i.e. editorial board review, mentored peer review, etc.) on the journal site.
Standards and ethics. Journals are expected to follow publishing-ethics principles (COPE) and to maintain clear and transparent policies. FSOP supports registration of ISSNs and assignment of DOIs to enhance discoverability, and supports journal long-term preservation efforts through PKP’s Preservation Network.
Archiving. On an annual basis, the FSOP team will review recent activity for each journal. If a journal appears to have been inactive for 18 months or more, a conversation will be initiated with the editor(s) regarding whether the journal should be archived.
Journal Program Requirements
By receiving support through FSOP to create a Florida OJ hosted journal, all journal editors agree to the following requirements:
- All journals are required to maintain a primary member who is affiliated with Florida State University.
- New journals must have at least one person with a current Florida State University affiliation who will serve on the journal’s editorial staff at the start of the project.
- Existing journals must maintain at least one person with a current Florida State University affiliation serving on the editorial staff. This contact is responsible for all communication with FSOP and FSU Libraries.
- Editors are responsible for maintaining FSU affiliation for the journal and communicating updated contacts to FSOP.
- Student (graduate and undergraduate) journals must have an FSU faculty member who will sponsor or be directly affiliated with the journal to ensure stability.
- Journals must be diamond open access, meaning they will not charge author processing charges (APCs) to publish articles.
- Journals will allow authors to retain copyright of their own work.
- FSOP recommends that journals use a Creative Commons license.
- The staff of the journal must check all bibliographic references appearing in accepted manuscripts and add DOIs for any that are missing them (learn more from Crossref).
- All members of the editorial team should take the PKP School’s Setting Up a Journal in OJS 3 and Editorial Workflow in OJS 3 online courses to familiarize themselves with the platform. While we can provide basic troubleshooting for technical problems with the platform, we cannot provide full tech support or production work for individual journals.
- FSOP strongly recommends that journals make full use of the OJS editorial workflow in order to ensure rigor, consistency, and preservation.
- FSOP reserves the right to act on behalf of our journals in the following matters:
- ISSN registration
- Submitting the journal to indices
- Marketing and press release for new publications
- Whenever resources allow, FSOP will share communication and resources with journal editors about best practices for open access journal publishing.
- Journal editorial teams are responsible for creating and implementing clear and transparent journal guidelines and policies that meet publishing and open access best practice guidelines and, in some cases, meet the requirements for inclusion in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). FSOP will provide guidance and support as capacity allows.
- Journal editorial teams are responsible for meeting accessibility standards for all published material, including journal websites and all article formats provided (PDF or HTML).
- FSOP encourages HTML in addition to PDF because HTML is more easily made accessible.
- Journals must publish individual article PDFs or HTML. They may also publish full issue PDFs, but each article must have an individual file to improve accessibility and discoverability.
- FSOP reserves the right to ensure that the design, branding, and content of the journal site comply with web and accessibility standards and Florida State University policies.
