Own Your Platform — from

Overview

Every hosted platform comes with a quiet dependency. The journal’s site, its archive and its submission records live on somebody else’s servers under somebody else’s terms, and getting them out is harder than getting them in. Institutions that have been through a platform migration, or a platform provider’s closure, tend to want the next arrangement to be one they control.

Own Your Platform is built for that. It puts the journal on an Open Journal Systems installation that the institution owns outright: on your servers or your cloud account, under your domain, with your administrators holding the credentials. There are two routes, chosen by how much operating capacity you have today.

Route one: we build it, you own it. We install and configure OJS on infrastructure you control, migrate your journals onto it, document everything, train your administrators and hand over. From the day of handover your team runs it, with optional support from us.

Route two: we run it, then hand it over. A build-operate-transfer arrangement over one to three years. We build the platform on your infrastructure, operate it (updates, backups, security, plugin management, user support) while your staff shadow us and gradually take on tasks, and transfer full operation to you at an agreed date. You own the platform from day one; we simply run it until you are ready.

It is for universities, societies and research bodies that want their journals on infrastructure they control, whether they have a systems team today or are building one. It belongs to our journal website and platform (OJS) services and draws on the same build and operations practice.

What’s Included

• Infrastructure design — server or cloud specification sized for your journals, with security, backup and disaster-recovery arrangements defined and documented.
• OJS installation and configuration — a current, supported version installed on your infrastructure, configured for one or many journals, with your branding and a mobile-ready theme.
• Integrations — DOI registration, ORCID, similarity screening, indexing and discovery plugins, preservation network (PKP PN, CLOCKSS or Portico), statistics and email delivery, configured and tested.
• Migration — journals and their archives, users and in-progress submissions moved from the current platform with identifiers preserved and redirects in place.
• Documentation — architecture, configuration, administrator runbooks, upgrade procedure and recovery procedure, written for your team.
• Training — administrator training for your systems staff and editorial-platform training for journal managers.
• Route one handover — credentials, documentation and a verified backup transferred; a defined support period afterward.
• Route two operation and transfer — updates, security patching, backups, monitoring, plugin management and user support for the agreed term; a shadowing plan for your staff; quarterly readiness reviews; and a transfer milestone with a final handover pack.

How It Works

1. Assessment: current platform, journals, archive size, your infrastructure and your team’s capacity; route recommended.
2. Build: infrastructure provisioned under your control, OJS installed and configured, integrations tested.
3. Migration: journals moved with a parallel period, identifiers verified, cut-over.
4. Route one: training, documentation and handover, followed by the support period. Route two: operation begins, staff shadow, quarterly readiness reviews.
5. Route two transfer: at the agreed date (one to three years), full operation passes to your team with the final handover pack.

Route one is priced as a fixed build project scoped by the number of journals and archive size. Route two adds an annual operating fee for the term, with the transfer included.

What Stays With Your Editors

The platform is infrastructure. Your editors keep final authority over reviewer selection, editorial assessment and acceptance on it, exactly as before, and the platform’s workflow is configured to their process rather than the other way round. NeucitePress builds and, on route two, runs the infrastructure; the journals and their decisions are yours.

Important Limitations

• You own the infrastructure, so you carry its costs: hosting, domain and any commercial plugin or service subscriptions are billed to you directly. We specify a realistic budget in the assessment.
• Route one requires an administrator on your side who can take on the runbooks. If you do not have one, route two exists for that reason.
• Migration from a commercial platform depends on its export capability and your contract; we confirm feasibility in the assessment.
• Where the platform supports an indexing application, inclusion is decided solely by each database. NeucitePress prepares, remediates and submits but cannot sell inclusion. A platform you own does not by itself bring citations or ranking.

Common Questions

Why OJS?
It is open source, free to license, built specifically for scholarly journals, maintained by a public-interest organization, and used by thousands of journals worldwide. It can be hosted anywhere, which is the point of this package.

Can we switch from route two to route one early?
Yes. If your team is ready before the agreed date, the transfer is brought forward and the operating fee stops.

What if we want you to keep running it after the transfer?
You can retain us on a support or operations contract, but you will not need to. The purpose of the package is that you can run it without us.

Request a proposal, or begin with the Journal Health Check.