Newsletter

 

Newsletter 03/2025
Newsletter 02/2022
Newsletter 01/2021





HOPE-Newsletter 03/2025

 

Dear Editors and Journal Managers,

We are pleased to share some information about HOPE with you in this newsletter:

  • New Diamond Open Access Journals on HOPE
  • What has happened since the last newsletter?
    • HOPE articles in swisscovery
    • Plugins for HOPE journals updated
    • Revised search function
    • Journals in UZH corporate design
    • Reinforcement in the HOPE team
  • Handling AI tools and authorship (COPE position paper)
  • Outlook
    • Transition to two-factor authorization during 2025
    • Lunch & Learn Open Science sessions
    • 2nd CRAFT-OA summer school for journal editors
    • Preview: New OJS version 3.5

New Diamond Open Access Journals on HOPE

Since the last newsletter in 2022, we have been able to publish the following ten journals on HOPE. We are currently hosting 21 Diamond Open Access Journals.

We are already working on additional journals and proceedings in the background and will make them available online during the course of 2025.

What has Happened Since the Last Newsletter?

HOPE articles in swisscovery

The more than 5,000 journal articles on HOPE are systematically indexed in the Swiss-wide library catalog swisscovery.

Plugins for HOPE journals updated

  • Funder plugin mit lookup: This plugin allows you to supplement a publication’s metadata with information about the research funder. It performs a search through the Crossref Funders Registry. The data is also included in the Crossref XML export.
  • ORCID-plugin: This plugin enables the import of user information from ORCID. The EJHC journal already uses this plugin, which displays the ORCID icon for authors (example). An ORCID iD is also required by the SNSF for project submissions. You can find more information about ORCID on the university library website.
  • Delete incomplete submissions: This plugin allows editors to delete incomplete submissions. Previously, this was only possible for HOPE administrators.
  • 404 error handling plugin (third party plugin): Inaccessible pages are now displayed in the journal’s layout. We have already activated this for all journals on HOPE.

If you are interested in using any of the above-mentioned plugins, please feel free to contact us.

Revised search function

The search function integrated in OJS was very rudimentary and has been extensively revised by us. The search now offers suggestions during input, search terms are highlighted in bold (hit highlighting), full-text search works in multiple languages, and facets are displayed for filtering.

Journals in UZH corporate design

Since 2024, it has been possible to publish journals on HOPE in the current UZH design. The journals conexus and Werkstücke are published in the UZH corporate design.

Reinforcement in the HOPE team

Since February 2025, Kristian Gavran has joined the HOPE team and, together with Martin Brändle, is taking on the technical tasks related to setting up and hosting the HOPE journals.

Kristian Gavran

Recommendations for Dealing with AI Tools and Authorship (COPE Position Paper)

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has published a position paper on the topic of authorship and AI tools. This text can potentially provide guidance for author guidelines on the journal website regarding the use of AI tools.

COPE Position: A COPE Council. COPE position – Authorship and AI – English: https://doi.org/10.24318/cCVRZBms © 2024 Committee on Publication Ethics (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) https://publicationethics.org

Outlook

Transition to Two-Factor Authentication on HOPE

For security reasons, the login process for all HOPE users (e.g., editors, reviewers, authors, etc.) must be switched to two-factor authentication.

To achieve this, future logins to HOPE will only be possible through the services Switch Edu-ID or ORCID iD. Therefore, all HOPE users are required to register with one of these services if they have not already done so.

The transition is currently planned for mid-2025. We will inform you in a timely manner about the transition date and further details regarding the implementation. (Guideline MFA-Login)

Lunch & Learn Open Science sessions

In 2025, a series of exciting Lunch & Learn sessions on the topic of Open Science will take place.

In June, Sarah Geber (EJHC) and Margit Dellatorre (OSS, HOPE-Team) will give a presentation on the HOPE platform and the challenges from the perspective of a Diamond OA journal.

For more information: t.uzh.ch/lunch

2nd CRAFT-OA summer school for journal editors

The EU project CRAFT-OA invites editors of Diamond Open Access journals to a summer school in Portugal in June 2025. You can find more information on the CRAFT-OA webseite.

Preview: New OJS version 3.5

Following our successful upgrade to OJS version 3.4 in 2024, an update to OJS version 3.5 is planned for 2025. The most important new features include the following functions:

  • A redesigned submission dashboard with an inline side panel workflow for fewer clicks and improved navigation
  • Role invitations and ORCID integration for optimized, privacy-friendly user management
  • Improved email management and institution affiliation via Research Organization Registry (ROR)
  • Enhanced search functionality within journals and improved search engine optimization (SEO)
  • New dashboard metrics
  • Recording of webinar from March 7, 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCBw2TciG3Y

As usual, we will inform you about the more detailed timeline and possible brief interruptions.

 

Here’s to continued good cooperation,
your HOPE Team






HOPE-Newsletter 02/2022

 

Dear editors and journal managers

We are pleased to present to you the second HOPE newsletter. The open publishing platform HOPE now provides a home for eleven journals. In the current newsletter we have compiled the following topics for you:

  • OJS 3.4: Outlook
  • Project PLATO
  • Status report on journals
  • Reference Linking
  • ClamAV virus scanner
  • New journals from 2021 and journals in the planning stage
  • “Lunch & Learn Open Science” event announcement of the University Library Zurich

OJS 3.4: Outlook

The developers at PKP are preparing the next major update. OJS 3.4 is expected to be released in the fall and will bring the following enhancements:

A new user interface for notification management will improve the handling of e-mail correspondence. The mail templates will also be revised. Furthermore, the management of DOIs will be simplified and serial processing will be enabled. These developments are being done in collaboration with Crossref. Finally, the submission wizard will become more user-friendly. It will offer more options to enable or disable fields as well as provide a preview function. More detailed information can be found here: https://pkp.sfu.ca/2021/04/28/here-we-go-whats-planned-for-3-4/

We will prepare HOPE for the update and inform again in due time.

Project Approval PLATO (Platinum Open Access Funding)

As announced in the last newsletter, the “Platinum Open Access Funding” (PLATO) project was submitted to swissuniversities and has now been approved with conditions. Platinum OA or Diamond OA means the publication of articles without costs for authors and readers.
This project aims on the one hand to gain more insight 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 Switzerland. The project is led by Dr. Daniela Hahn. More information can be found here: https://www.openscience.uzh.ch/en/openaccess/plato or in the UBlog.

Status report on journals

Crossref’s Participation Reports show how comprehensively your connectable metadata is covered. Search for your journal, select the article type and the observation period. This gives you a compact overview of what portion of your content has ORCID IDs deposited, abstracts provided in the metadata, or bibliographic references linkable. A total of ten categories are visualized.

Reference Linking

Since the last OJS update, HOPE allows the linking of bibliographic references. The “Crossref Reference Linking” plug-in introduces the additional metadata field “References”. If the bibliography of an article is added to this field, Crossref automatically enriches the bibliographic citations with DOIs and makes the data available for bibliometric evaluations and data networks. The enriched bibliography is visible on the article page.


Reference Linking: before – after
Source: DOI: 10.55245/energeia.2021.001

It is even more useful if the links to the reference works also appear directly in the article text. For this purpose, editors can make use of the SimpleTextQuery tool and integrate the enriched bibliography already during the editorial process.

ClamAV virus scanner

Our HOPE IT Team implemented ClamAV. The open source virus scanner increases the security of the HOPE OJS platform. Document uploads in the editorial workflow are now automatically checked for viruses and malware.

New journals on HOPE since 2021

  • Since October 2021, the journal Hermeneutische Blätter can be found on HOPE. It is published by the Institute of Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Religion (IHR). Interdisciplinary contributions are published on topics relevant to hermeneutics, philosophy of religion, and theology.
  • Energeia, the open access journal for linguistics and philosophy of language in Romance Studies is available in seven languages on the University Libraries’s journal platform HOPE since March 2022. More information is available on the UBlog.

Journals in the pipeline for 2022

“Lunch & Learn Open Science” Event announcement of the University Library Zurich

How do I start an OA journal?
In this Lunch & Learn session (in German) on December 8, 2022, you will learn what to think about when you want to launch an open access journal. What are the first steps? How do you manage the administration of the journal? How does quality assurance work? Under which license should the articles be published? What technical infrastructure is needed and where should it be hosted? How to finance the journal?

You can find the option to registrater and more information here.

 

Here’s to continued good cooperation,
your HOPE Team






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.

HOPE – First level support
HOPE-IT – Second level support
Margit Dellatorre
Samuel Nussbaum
Martin Brändle
Florian Steurer (until May 2024)
Acquiring new journals
Setting up contracts
OJS training
Testing on OJS updates
Processing emails/liaise with IT colleagues
Consulting on indexing issues
Set up and maintain OJS
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.

“Suggested reviewers plugin”
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”
“QuickSubmit Author settings”
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.
“ORCID Plugin”
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 oa@ub.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

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), Christiane Schmid (SN) and Kristian Gavran (KG)