OJS-de.net – German OJS Network Workshop

During the past year, the Germany-based project OJS-de.net – a collaboration of three universities from Berlin, Heidelberg and Konstanz – has been working towards establishing a network for German-language universities and research institutions that use Open Journal Systems. OJS-de.net is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the first project phase runs 2014-2016. Our goal is to create synergies and sustainable ways of cooperation for German-speaking OJS users. The project’s first official network workshop may provide a very nice springboard for just that.

Who was there?

In early fall 2015, we invited all interested institutions to join us for a two-day workshop in December. We were mainly addressing members of research libraries or university IT departments that are either currently offering OJS as a service for their researchers or are planning to set up OJS – and they came!

Originally planning for about two dozen participants, in the end we welcomed almost 60 people from 36 institutions out of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria at our venue in Berlin on December 3^rd and 4th.

What did we do?

During the workshop, our main goal was to get people together and provide an opportunity to meet and exchange experiences and know-how. We prepared a series of talks that focused on getting OJS services started, including practice examples from our own institutions, input on data security, indexing, editor training and journal design (slides of all talks can be found here: http://www.ojs-de.net/veranstaltungen/netzwerk-workshop-2015/index.html).

But we also had time for discussions in smaller groups and plenary sessions. Our recurring topic in all of the panels was an exchange about how our network may benefit everybody, so that we are now able to draw an even clearer roadmap for a sustainable cooperation among German-speaking OJS users.

What did we learn?

One of the outcomes is: Most people directly involved in working with OJS from an IT perspective are quite happy with the English language resources that are already available. But for problems that are somewhat ‘softer’, including setting up institutional structures, discussing requirements in terms of finances and workload, there is actually quite a strong interest in German-language resources and, even more so, contact persons.

So establishing a network of not only institutions (which is important still), but of people, moved up quite a bit on our project’s agenda. Luckily the workshop provided ample opportunity to meet people, and we are looking very much forward to building on that foundation.

And more…

Of course we also discussed the more tangible facts of software requirements, developing skills and functionality needs for OJS. Within the project we are already tackling some software issues (not all of them specific to Germany; you may find a list here: http://www.ojs-de.net/projektbeschreibung/software/index.html) and now have an expanded set of issues that we might include in the next project phase. The workshop was also a good opportunity for us to discuss some of the findings that came out of the user survey that we conducted earlier in 2015 (the documentation can be found here: http://www.ojs-de.net/projektbeschreibung/bedarfsanalyse/Ergebnisse/index.html, an English translation is being prepared at the moment).

Get in touch!

If you would like to know more about our project, visit www.OJS-de.net or contact me at christina.riesenweber@cedis.fu-berlin.de. We would be especially interested to get in touch with similar projects around the globe that are looking to form (somewhat) local OJS networks – and to set up a network of networks, hopefully.