Eligibility

Any new journal interested in our Open Journals program must meet the eligibility requirements:

• Journal must be affiliated with a BSU community, department, center, or office
• At least one member of the editorial team or editorial board must be a BSU faculty, staff, or student (an advisory board is different from an editorial team/board)
• For BSU student-led journals, a BSU faculty/staff sponsor is required
• For an Indiana-based nonprofit journal not housed at BSU, a BSU faculty/staff sponsor is required and a hosting fee may be required
• Journal must be open access (does not charge readers or authors for access or services)
• Journal must use Creative Commons licenses, author agreements, and have standard journal policies (guidance on policy development provided)
• Journal should fill a need in the scholarly landscape and be without conflicts of interest
• Journal must have a stable editorial presence and a regular publishing schedule with at least one issue per year
• Journal should follow the University Libraries journal publishing policies

The journal hosting program offers benefits and services that help to develop, launch, maintain, and preserve faculty, staff, and student‐led journals.

Journal hosting partnerships provide:

• A dedicated journal website space for publishing journal content
• OJS software that supports author submission, peer review, and file management
• Guidance on developing journal policies (e.g., copyright, AI, ethics, etc.) and author agreements that support broad dissemination of journal content
• Technical support for editors, authors, and readers
• Consulting and support for journal development and journal website setup
• Indexing in Google Scholar and assistance with other indexing services applications
• Registration of  International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSNs) and DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) to provide permanent links to journal content
• ORCID iD verification for authors
• Long‐term preservation of journal content

It is the responsibility of the journal’s editorial team to use the OJS software for the stated processes and to perform the following journal tasks:

• Quality control and review of submissions
• Adherence to copyright, author’s rights, plagiarism, AI, ethics, and other standard journal publishing policies, including the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.
• Getting permission from authors to use their materials (via author agreements) and those authors getting permission to use any third-party materials if not in the public domain.
• Conduct copyediting and layout design for the journal issue and articles
• Follow the guidance listed in the journal hosting agreement

University Libraries provides the server and technical support needed for the initial setup, introductory training on OJS, and online storage space for preservation purposes. Contact us for journal hosting partnership inquiries.