Newsletter
HOPE-Newsletter 01/2021
Dear editors and journal managers,
We are excited to present to you our first HOPE newsletter. We plan to publish about two newsletters a year, sharing news about HOPE. The HOPE plattform now provides a home for nine journals. In the inaugural newsletter, we will cover the following topics:
- Introducing the HOPE team - new additions to the staff and how to contact them
- Newly available plugins
- New journals from 2020 and journals in planning on HOPE
- Outlook for the upcoming OJS version 3.3
- Project submission to swissuniversities
The HOPE-Team
Since May 2021 the HOPE team has grown by two colleagues. We are pleased to have gained Samuel Nussbaum as a further member of the first level support team and Florian Steurer as support for IT issues. Samuel is employed at the Zentralbibliothek Zürich and joins us in the course of the reorganization of the university libraries. Florian has already been part of our team for several years in the area of Data Services. We would like to ask you to send future emails only to the address oa@ub.uzh.ch and no longer to the personal mail addresses. If needed, emails will be forwarded to our HOPE-IT colleagues.




Setting up contracts
OJS training
Testing on OJS updates
Processing emails/liaise with IT colleagues
Consulting on indexing issues
Update OJS
Programming for HOPE
Insert CSS designs
Install plugins
Fix database problems
New Plugins Available
Below you can find plugins that we have recently enabled for different journals on HOPE. If you are interested in activating some of the plugins for your own journal, you can either activate them yourself or contact us and we will help you with the integration.
This plugin is helpful if you use the OJS submission system. The authors, when submitting articles, can suggest recommended reviewers and reviewers to be excluded. The data will be sent to the editors along with the files. Path to self-activation: Settings - Website - Plugins - “Activate plugin for suggested reviewers”
By default, an email address must be entered when registering authors. With activation of this plugin, the obligation to enter an email address for authors in the quick submission plugin is omitted.
The Open Researcher and Contributor iD (ORCID) is an internationally recognized persistent identifier that allows publications to be unambiguously assigned to the respective authors. Authors can enter their own ORCID iD in their profile and the publication will be linked. The ORCID plugin enables the import of user information from ORCID. The usage is free of charge via Public API. If you are interested, please send an email to oai@hbz.uzh.ch and our IT colleagues Martin and Florian will set up this plugin for your journal.
New Journals on HOPE since 2020
- The journal Gesellschaft – Individuum – Sozialisation. Zeitschrift für Sozialisationsforschung (GISo) is an independent and interdisciplinary forum for the scientific discussion of the course, conditions and results of socialization processes. It serves the presentation and discussion of theoretical and conceptual positions, empirical results and methodological challenges in this field of research.
- DOCA – Database of Variables for Content Analysis is an open access database in which variables for content analysis and their operationalizations are presented and discussed. A book publication with Springer Publishing will be available soon and references the DOCA online database.
- The Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media is an open access newcomer with international editorial and advisory boards. The journal focuses on articles about digital media from the quantitative, descriptive social sciences. Not articles with causal statements are published, but findings that relate to trends and content-related questions about digital communication processes and media.
New Journals in the Pipeline for 2021
- The journal kids+media. Zeitschrift für Kinder- und Jugendmedienforschung was founded in 2011. As a publication of the research focus Children’s and Youth Media, kids+media is based at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies (ISEK) at the University of Zurich. kids+media is published semi-annually, each spring and fall, mostly with themed issues.
- The journal Hermeneutische Blätter is published by the Institute of Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Religion (IHR). It has been published twice a year or as a double issue since 1995 (from 1998-2001 under the title “TheoLogica”; from 2002 again as “Hermeneutische Blätter”).
Outlook on OJS 3.3
OJS 3.3 brings some useful improvements for editors and authors: Email notifications can be sent to groups (users with the same role), and account data of a journal can be exported for further use in mailing lists, newsletters, etc. Submissions can now be filtered by assigned issue or guest editor. When submitting, multiple files can be uploaded simultaneously via drag and drop. The administration interface comes with a streamlined look and feel. All details can be found at https://docs.pkp.sfu.ca/learning-ojs/en/introduction#whats-new-in-this-version-of-ojs. We will extensively test and customize OJS 3.3 on our test server starting in the fall of 2021 and eventually migrate the journals.
Project Submission to swissuniversities
Currently, one project with HBZ participation has been submitted to swissuniversities (status: under review).
Platinum Open Access Funding (PLATO) – This project aims on the one hand to gain more insights into the landscape of Platinum Open Access journals in Switzerland and on the other hand to develop innovative funding streams for a sustainable Platinum landscape in the country.
Another project with HBZ participation (lead UB Basel) was unfortunately rejected by swissuniversities.
Swiss Network for Open Access Publishing (SNOAP) – Through this project, a nationwide OJS network should have been established to coordinate and connect both editorial teams and publication platform providers.
The abstracts for PLATO (under Project proposals submitted by May 31, 2021) and for SNOAP (under Project proposals submitted by January 15, 2021) can be found on this website swissuniversities – Call for Open Access projects.
Here's to continued good cooperation,
your HOPE Team
Photo credits: © Frank Brüderli (MD, MB, FS) and Christiane Schmid (SN)