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Open Access Switchboard Plugin

This plugin connects journals running OJS to the OA Switchboard, the shared infrastructure that exchanges scholarly communications metadata among publishers, institutions and funders. When an article is published, its publication metadata is extracted automatically and pushed to the relevant institutions and research funders as a standardised P1-PIO message.

Announcement: OA Switchboard OJS plug-in: Supporting diamond journals to increase the visibility of their OA output among research funders, libraries, and consortia.

How it works

Before publication, the plugin checks whether the article carries the metadata the OA Switchboard needs, and shows the result in an OA Switchboard tab in the submission's workflow. Articles that are missing something can be published as usual, simply without a message.

Getting started

What your OJS installation needs

Two standard OJS settings, normally already in place:

• Background jobs running, so messages are delivered right after publication (PKP Administrator's Guide).
• api_key_secret configured, so your credentials are stored encrypted (how to set one).

Both are one-time, installation-wide settings your system administrator can set up.

1. Join the OA Switchboard

Sign the Service Agreement on the OA Switchboard website to become a participant and receive the userID and password the plugin uses.

2. Install the plugin

Go to Settings → Website → Plugins → Plugin Gallery, find OA Switchboard Plugin, click Install, and enable it.

Tip

If the gallery has no release for your OJS version, download the .tar.gz from the Releases page and use Upload a new plugin instead.

3. Add your credentials

Open the plugin's Settings and enter your OA Switchboard userID and password. They are checked when you save, so you know right away if something is wrong.

Note

If a warning appears instead of the form, the api_key_secret is missing. How to set one.

4. Get your journal ready

A message is sent only when this metadata is in place:

• Journal: at least one ISSN, print or digital.
• Article: an assigned DOI.
• Every author: family name and affiliation.

Recommended: a ROR ID on at least one author's affiliation. It is what lets the OA Switchboard route the message to that institution.

Optional: with the Funding plugin installed, funders recorded for an article are included automatically. Without it, messages are still sent.

Day-to-day use

Everything happens in the OA Switchboard tab of a submission.

Before publishing, the tab tells you whether the article is ready, and lists anything missing so you can fix the metadata first. You can publish either way.

After publishing, it shows what happened:

Status	Meaning
Sent	The OA Switchboard received the message.
Queued	The message is on its way.
Failed	Something went wrong. The reason is shown, with a Try again button.
Not sent	The article did not meet the requirements when it was published.

What metadata is included?

Everything sent is metadata already in OJS; nothing new is collected.

Click here to see the full list

• About the Publication:
  • Title
  • Type
  • DOI
  • Submission ID
  • Submission date
  • Acceptance date
  • Publication date
  • Manuscript ID
  • VoR (Version of Record)
    • Type of journal publication
    • License
• About each Author:
  • Given name
  • Family name
  • ORCID
  • Position in listing order
  • Is corresponding author
  • Affiliated institution
    • Name
    • ROR ID
• About each Funder: (if available with Funding plugin)
  • Name
  • Identifier
• About the Journal:
  • Title
  • ID (can be ISSN or eISSN)
  • ISSN
  • eISSN
• Timing in the workflow that the message is sent.

Demonstration video

Recorded on OJS 3.3: the steps are the same, but the interface has changed and the workflow tab is newer than the video.

Troubleshooting

The send failed

Usually expired credentials or a temporary outage. Re-enter your credentials if needed, then use Try again. Further detail is recorded in your OJS server logs.

The tab says the plugin is not configured

The credentials have not been saved yet, or your journal has no ISSN.

A message stayed queued

Ask your system administrator to check that background jobs are running.

Getting help

• The plugin: open an issue in this repository.
• Your OA Switchboard account or messages: contact the OA Switchboard.
• OJS itself: ask on the PKP Community Forum.

Version support

Each OJS release line has its own branch of this repository. This one targets OJS 3.5.0.x.

Plugin version	OJS version	Branch
v3.x.x.x	3.5.0.x	main (this branch)
v2.x.x.x	3.4.0.x	stable-3_4_0
v1.x.x.x	3.3.0.x	stable-3_3_0

Credits

This plugin was developed as open source software for the OA Switchboard by Lepidus Tecnologia, with Openjournals.nl as testing partner. The development was made possible by funding from the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL).

Developed by Lepidus Tecnologia.

License

This plugin is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

Copyright (c) 2024 Lepidus Tecnologia. Copyright (c) 2024 Stichting OA Switchboard