Journal Website & Author Experience Redesign

Overview

“Authors email us asking where the guidelines are. They are on the site, three clicks down, in a PDF from 2018.” A journal’s website is its primary point of contact with authors, readers and indexing reviewers. Generic sites lack structured article metadata, proper citation display and a clear route for authors; the result is fewer and worse submissions and weaker discoverability.

NeucitePress designs and builds a custom public frontend for the journal and rewrites the author-facing content so that the experience works: a brand-aligned, responsive design; article pages with structured metadata, abstracts and citation export; a volume and issue archive with search; editorial board, policies and ethics pages; and author guidelines rewritten in plain language with a clear submission path.

Who this is for: journals upgrading from a default OJS theme or an aging site, new journals that want a professional presence from launch, and publishers standardizing the look of a portfolio.

What’s Included

• Custom design — 2 concepts, 2 revision rounds, responsive layout, academic-appropriate color and typography aligned with your identity
• Article infrastructure — article pages with structured metadata (DOI, affiliations, keywords, dates), abstract display, PDF links, citation export (RIS, BibTeX, EndNote) and related-article suggestions
• Archive and navigation — volume and issue browser, search by author, title, keyword and date, browsing by section, most-read and most-cited lists
• Essential pages — homepage, about, editorial board with credentials, author guidelines, publication ethics, contact form
• Author experience rewrite — author guidelines and submission instructions rewritten for clarity, with a submission checklist and a direct path to the OJS submission form
• Technical foundation — HTTPS, Google Scholar-compatible meta tags and schema markup, performance optimization, analytics, Open Graph tags
• Content migration of up to 50 articles, a 1-hour training session, documentation, source files and 30 days of post-launch support

How It Works

What Stays With Your Editors

The journal’s editors keep final authority over reviewer selection, editorial assessment and acceptance, and approve all content and design decisions. NeucitePress runs the design, build and migration process.

Important Limitations

• This is a custom public frontend and author-experience redesign, not a basic OJS installation. The submission and peer-review system (OJS) is separate; see OJS on Your Own Servers or the Launch a Journal packages.
• Hosting and domain are not included; NeucitePress recommends providers.
• You supply the factual content (policies, board details, existing articles); NeucitePress designs, builds and rewrites the author-facing text.
• Migration covers up to 50 articles; additional articles at $2 each. Built as a custom theme on WordPress or as a custom OJS theme, agreed at discovery; other platforms quoted separately.
• 30 days of support included; extended support available at $99 per month.

Common Questions

Can the frontend sit on top of our OJS?
Yes. The design can be delivered as a custom OJS theme so that the public site and the submission system are one installation, or as a separate presentation site linked to OJS.

Will it help with Google Scholar?
Article pages are built with the meta tags Scholar reads. Scholar indexes on its own schedule and decides independently what it includes.

Can our team update content afterwards?
Yes. Training and documentation are included so the team can add articles and edit pages.

Every engagement can begin with the Journal Health Check.