The Public Knowledge Project has released Open Journal Systems 2.1.2.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement listing new features:

• Complete CAPTCHA support in OCS 2.x
• Review forms ported from OJS
• Add a la carte items to registration
• Merge users at site level

African Journals Online has migrated all of its journals to Open Journal Systems.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

At 346 journals from 26 countries, AJOL is the world’s largest online collection of African journals, but until now, has included only tables of content, abstracts, and journal information on the website. As of the beginning of May, 60% of the 40,000 plus articles on AJOL will be available for immediate download. By the end of 2009, AJOL aims to have 100% of its growing collection fully full-text online.

The updated site and the new functionality are possible due to a close collaboration between AJOL and the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), developers of Open Journal Systems (OJS)—the open source software which powers the AJOL service. AJOL is also supported by its donor partners, INASP and the Ford Foundation.

AJOL receives an average of 60,000 visits per month, 30% of which are from the African continent and over 15% from other parts of the developing world. The global researcher community and the authors and institutions whose work is published in the portal benefit from this increased access and visibility of African knowledge provided by AJOL. The new portal helps AJOL achieve its greater goal of shifting global flows of scholarly information, so that the importance of research published from the global south is more equitably represented.

AJOL allows for both Subscription-based and Open Access journals to be hosted for free on the site, with article downloads to toll journals being processed by AJOL and income sent on to the originating journals, less AJOL cost-recovery. In the future, AJOL will begin providing access to journal management functions of OJS to its partner Open Access journals, as a way to improve editorial quality and lower production costs.

The Public Knowledge Project has released Open Journal Systems 2.2.3.

The Public Knowledge Project, home of Open Journals Systems and other innovative software, has put up a new Project Presentation and Coursework Material page "to collect original, staff-produced PowerPoint slides and course material."

The Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories has released a SWORD plugin for Open Journal Systems, which was developed by Scott Yeadon and Leo Monus. The plugin requires "a significant amount of patching to DSpace," and it is recommended that testing be done with Fedora. A new version will be released next year that may eliminate the need for DSpace patching.

At the ninth annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, Tony Hey, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s External Research Division, discussed a variety of digital tools for scholars.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Add-ins. The Article Authoring Add-in for Word 2007 enables metadata to be captured at the authoring stage to preserve document structure and semantic information throughout the publishing process, which is essential for enabling search, discovery and analysis in subsequent stages of the life cycle. The Creative Commons Add-in for Office 2007 allows authors to embed Creative Commons licenses directly into an Office document (Word, Excel or PowerPoint) by linking to the Creative Commons site via a Web service.

The Microsoft e-Journal Service. This offering provides a hosted, full-service solution that facilitates easy self-publishing of online-only journals to facilitate the availability of conference proceedings and small and medium-sized journals.

Research Output Repository Platform. This platform helps capture and leverage semantic relationships among academic objects—such as papers, lectures, presentations and video—to greatly facilitate access to these items in exciting new ways.

The Research Information Centre. In close partnership with the British Library, this collaborative workspace will be hosted via Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and will allow researchers to collaborate throughout the entire research project workflow, from seeking research funding to searching and collecting information, as well as managing data, papers and other research objects throughout the research process.

Here's a list that indicates availability.

• Article Authoring Add-in version 1.0 for Microsoft Office Word 2007 (download)
• Creative Commons Add-in version 1.0 for Microsoft Office (download)
• Microsoft Math Add-in for Microsoft Office Word 2007 (download)
• Microsoft eJournal Service (alpha preview)
• Research Output Repository Platform ("Currently in a limited alpha release, an open beta version will be available later in 2008.")
• Research Information Centre ("This service is currently in beta testing. Microsoft intends to share the code widely by the end of the year.")

The Digital Library Federation has released presentations from its Spring Forum 2008.

Here's a selection of the presentations:

• Building a Large-Scale Preservation Repository Based on aDORe
• The Challenges of Applying Traditional Cataloging Standards to Non-Traditional, User-Created Descriptive Metadata in Digital Library Projects
• DLF Environmental Scan: Issues and Solutions for Archives in a Digital World
• DSpace Foundation: Charting a Course to Support the DSpace Community and Advance the DSpace Open Source Software Platform
• Introducing BibApp 1.0
• The NEW IUScholarWorks at Indiana University: Repositories, Journals, and Scholarly Publishing
• An OAI-ORE Aggregation for the National Virtual Observatory

Sunny Yoon, Digital Resources Coordinator at the City University of New York, posted a query on the CODE4LIB list about the use of e-journal publishing software and its integration into institutional repositories.

She has now posted an interesting summary of responses to her query.

You can also read the replies that were posted to the list under the heading "e-journal publishing software."

The Association of Research Libraries has published Research Library Publishing Services: New Options for University Publishing by Karla L. Hahn.

Here's an excerpt from the "Executive Summary":

To foster a deeper understanding of an emerging research library role as publishing service provider, in late 2007 the Association of Research Libraries surveyed its membership to gather data on the publishing services they were providing. Following the survey, publishing program managers at ten institutions participated in semi-structured interviews to delve more deeply into several aspects of service development: the sources and motivations for service launch, the range of publishing services, and relationships with partners.

The survey verified that research libraries are rapidly developing publishing services. By late 2007, 44% of the 80 responding ARL member libraries reported they were delivering publishing services and another 21% were in the process of planning publishing service development. Only 36% of responding institutions were not active in this arena.

These libraries are publishing many kinds of works, but the main focus is journals; 88% of publishing libraries reported publishing journals compared to 79% who publish conference papers and proceedings, and 71% who publish monographs. Established journal titles dominate this emerging publishing sector and are the main drivers of service development, although new titles are also being produced. Although the numbers of titles reported represent a very thin slice of the scholarly publishing pie, the survey respondents work with 265 titles: 131 are established titles, 81 are new titles, and 53 were under development at the time of the survey. On average, these libraries work with 7 or 8 titles with 6 currently available. . . .

Peer reviewed works dominate library publishing programs and editors or acquisitions committees typically maintain their traditional roles in identifying quality content. Libraries often provide technical support for streamlined peer review workflows, but they are not providing peer review itself. The manuscript handling services provided by some publishing programs were a significant attraction to the editors of established publications.

Library publishing program managers report substantial demand for hosting services. Libraries increasingly are positioned to provide at least basic hosting services. Open source software such as the Public Knowledge Project’s Open Journal Systems and DPubs along with new commercial services such as those offered by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) through Digital Commons allows libraries to support basic journal hosting relatively easily.

Advice and consulting regarding a variety of publishing practices and decisions are perhaps even more popular services. There are pressing demands for information and advice about issues such as moving print publications into electronic publishing, discontinuing print in favor of electronic alternatives, publishing works with limited revenue-generating capability, revenue generation, standards of various sorts, markup and encoding, metadata generation, preservation, contracting with service providers, and copyright management.

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) has released Topaz 0.8.2.1, an open source digital publishing system that is used to support several PLoS publications.

Read more about it at "Topaz Release Candidate 0.8.2.1."