Scholarly publishing is quietly leaving the page behind.

For centuries an article’s address was its page range: pp. 245–260. That made sense when a journal was a physical object — paper had to be bound, and binding meant every article started somewhere and ended somewhere. But the page range was never really about the article. It was about the paper.

The paper is going away. Journals increasingly publish each article the moment it clears review — sometimes while later revisions are still in flight — rather than holding it for a quarterly issue. “Continuous publishing” is becoming the norm; the volume/issue/year container, itself a relic of print scheduling, is loosening and in some venues disappearing. Output is shifting from PDF (a print imitation) to native HTML. An article, in other words, is starting to behave much more like a web page than a page in a book.

When there is no issue to sit inside, “starts on page 245” stops meaning anything. What identifies the article instead is an article number (also called an elocation-id): PLoS ONE 15(4): e0231470, Electron. J. Combin. 27 (2020) P2.16, J. Vac. Sci. Technol. … 051101. The death of the page number isn’t a fashion. It’s the unavoidable consequence of the medium changing (paper to screen) and the rhythm changing (batched issues to continuous flow).

That is the gap this plugin was built for.

The problem in OJS today

Open Journal Systems has no dedicated field for an article number. So editors do the only thing they can: they type it into the Pages field. That single workaround quietly corrupts metadata everywhere downstream.

• Google Scholar reads the value as both citation_firstpage and

citation_lastpage — a fake one-page range, and a broken bibliographic record.

• Crossref expects the value in a dedicated <item_number>, not in

<pages>; a page-field value is deposited in the wrong place.

• PMC / PubMed require either a first page or an <elocation-id>; a number

buried in page text can’t produce a valid one, and the deposit risks rejection.

• Citation styles format article numbers specially — “Article e298”,

“Art. no. e298” — which a page-field value can never trigger.

PKP has known about this since 2019 (issue #4695). The core defined an internal property for it but left the export, citation, and editorial pieces unfinished. This plugin completes the chain — and does so in a way designed to hand back to core cleanly if core ever finishes it.

What it does

A single generic plugin covers the article number end to end:

Where	What happens
Editor	An “Article Number” field on the publication form and in QuickSubmit. Uniqueness is enforced per journal; a published article’s number is locked so a deposited coordinate can’t change silently.
Reader	The number is shown on the article page, in any theme.
Google Scholar	The fake firstpage/lastpage pair is suppressed when a number is set.
Crossref	<item_number item_number_type="article_number"> is injected and <pages> dropped; the output validates against Crossref’s schema.
JATS (PMC/SciELO)	<fpage>/<lpage> is replaced with <elocation-id>, JATS4R-safe.
Citations	Style-aware mapping across the ten bundled CSL styles — e.g. APA “Article e0001”.

The standards, mapped honestly

An article number is carried differently by every downstream system, and getting that mapping right is the work:

System	Correct carrier
Crossref	<publisher_item><item_number item_number_type="article_number"> — mutually exclusive with <pages>
JATS (PMC, SciELO)	<elocation-id> — replaces <fpage>/<lpage>
PubMed / PMC	first page or elocation-id must exist
Google Scholar	(no tag) — so don’t emit a fake page range
CSL / citeproc	the number variable

An engineering stance, not just a feature

We treated this as structural infrastructure, and made a few promises we don’t break:

It never touches your data. The plugin only ever writes its own value. It never writes to the Pages field or any other core field — that’s a hard architectural guarantee, independently verified, not a convention.

It never forks anything. Crossref, JATS, Scholar and citation output are amended by attaching to existing extension points — no export plugin, and no CSL style file, is ever copied or edited.

It’s opt-in, per journal. Off by default. When off, OJS behaves exactly as before.

It’s built to hand off to core. The value is stored under PKP’s own internal property name, workNumber. If a future OJS core ships the field natively, the plugin detects it, steps aside, and your data is already in the right place under the right name — a zero-migration hand-off. The plugin is designed to be always usable, or cleanly transferable. Either way, the journal’s data is safe.

Honest about the edges

Good tools are honest about what they don’t do. Two limits are worth stating plainly, because both come from the ecosystem, not from cutting corners.

Citation styles. Of the ten bundled styles, seven render the article number cleanly (ACM, ACS, APA, Chicago, Turabian, Vancouver — and MLA, after we fixed a double-printing bug). Three — ABNT, Harvard and IEEE — never expose the CSL number variable for journal articles and force a “p.” (page) label onto the value. The number is present and correct in those styles, but shown with a page label. Removing that would mean forking the bundled CSL files, which we don’t do.

RIS / BibTeX downloads. The article number is present and correct in both, but in a page field (RIS SP, BibTeX pages) rather than a canonical machine-readable one. Writing it to BibTeX’s eid would require forking a CSL file. For RIS we actually found a fork-free way to write the C7 (“article number”) tag — and chose not to ship it, because C7‘s round-trip isn’t guaranteed across reference managers, and an uncertain gain wasn’t worth a permanent maintenance burden. The canonical, standards-compliant path is already covered where it matters most: Crossref and JATS.

We’d rather tell you exactly where the line is than pretend there isn’t one.

Independently reviewed

Before release the plugin went through a full pre-release security and compatibility review: no Critical or High findings, clean on PHP 7.4 and 8.1, zero core-file changes, no export-plugin forks. The full test matrix ships with the plugin.

Moving your existing archive — safely

If your journal has been storing article numbers in the Pages field for years, there’s a migration tool — available both from the plugin’s settings panel (for one journal) and as a command-line tool (for large archives or every journal at once).

It’s a derivation, not a move. The tool reads the Pages value and copies it into the Article Number field; it never modifies Pages, in any mode. Genuine page ranges like 245–260 are never treated as candidates, ambiguous values are flagged for review, and an “undo” removes only what the tool itself created. Your source data is never at risk.

See it live

The same plugin, two very different themes — proof that display is theme-independent:

• OJS default theme: [an issue where every article is identified by an

article number](https://ojs-services.com/ojsdemo/index.php/pub/issue/view/24) · example article

• Atlas premium theme: [the same, in a premium

layout](https://themes.ojs-services.com/index.php/atlas/issue/view/83) · example article

Open the “How to Cite” box on any of them: the citation reads Article e0001, not a page range — and the article’s Crossref and JATS metadata carry it in the correct field.

Availability

The plugin is free and open source (GPL v3), targeting OJS 3.3 (PHP 7.4–8.1), with ports to 3.4 and 3.5 planned. It’s on GitHub at github.com/ojs-services/articleNumber.

↗ View the plugin on GitHub — github.com/ojs-services/articleNumber

If you’d like help deploying it — or migrating an existing archive of page-field article numbers — that’s what we do: OJS-Services.com.

Page numbers described where an article sat in a stack of paper. As that stack disappears, journals need a way to identify an article on its own terms. This plugin is a small, careful piece of that infrastructure — built read-only against core, mapped to the standards, honest about its edges, and ready to hand back to OJS core the day core is ready for it.

We didn’t want to follow where publishing is going. We wanted to build for it.

The post Article Numbers for OJS first appeared on OPEN JOURNAL SYSTEM SERVICES.

Most OJS 3.3 and 3.5 journals present their editorial board the same way they did a decade ago: a flat HTML list of names and titles, no photos, no profile links, no specialty tags. The editorial board page — one of a journal’s most visible credibility signals — gets none of the attention the rest of the site receives. Improving it traditionally meant editing theme templates and re-doing the work after every OJS upgrade.

Editorial Board Manager was built to fix this. It is a generic OJS 3.3 and 3.5 plugin that takes over the /about/editorialTeam route automatically and replaces the default page with a modern, photo-based board. You manage everything from a dedicated Manage Editorial Board panel inside the OJS admin sidebar: upload an editor’s portrait, set their title, affiliation, country, specialty tags, biography in multiple languages, and the academic profile links that matter. The published page updates immediately. No template edits, no theme forks, no developer required.

▶ Live demo

Why this page deserves the attention

Two audiences read your editorial board page more carefully than any other page on your journal:

• Authors deciding where to submit. A scholar choosing a journal opens the editorial board. They scan for names they recognise, fields close to theirs, and signals that the board is genuinely active. The faster they can answer those questions, the more likely they are to send you their paper.
• Indexing committees. Scopus (CSAB), Web of Science (Master Journal List), DOAJ, ERIH PLUS and regional indexes all examine the editorial board page during journal evaluation. They look for full names, institutional affiliations, ORCID iDs, and links to verifiable academic profiles. They check geographic and institutional diversity. A names-only list with no photos, no profile links, and no specialty information reads as a “ghost editor” risk and weakens the application.

We built the plugin with both audiences in mind from day one. ORCID, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Scopus, and Web of Science are first-class fields on every editor record — not free-text afterthoughts. Country flags and specialty tags are surfaced on every card. Each editor is marked up as a schema.org/Person so search engines and indexers can parse the page programmatically.

Core features

Eight academic profile platforms per editor. Email, ORCID, LinkedIn, personal website, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Scopus author ID, and Web of Science ResearcherID. Each renders as a recognisable icon on the editor’s card — the identity an indexer wants to verify is one click away.

Six display templates, switchable with a single click:

• Sectioned Cards (default) — large, readable, photos prominent
• Hierarchical — grouped by role tier
• Compact — more editors per screen for large boards
• Magazine — richer per-editor layout
• Table — the spreadsheet view some legacy reviewers still ask for
• Atlas — map and flag led, for journals emphasising international reach

Bilingual content out of the box. Every text field — name, title, affiliation, specialty, biography — accepts Turkish and English values. Enable additional languages in OJS and the plugin picks them up automatically. No more duplicate editorial board pages for multilingual journals.

Built-in role categories. Editor-in-Chief, Deputy Editors, Section Editors, Advisory Board, Technical Editors, Language Editors, Former Editors, Guest Editors come pre-configured. Add your own categories when the standard set isn’t enough.

Country flags and specialty tags. The two visual cues that tell a reader — and an indexer — the geographic and disciplinary spread of your board.

Drag-and-drop ordering. Reorder editors inside a category with the mouse. No SQL, no manual position numbers.

CSV import. Onboard an existing board from a spreadsheet in one upload. A sample CSV is included.

Schema.org structured data. Every editor is marked up as a Person, so Google Scholar, search engines and indexers read the page correctly.

Sidebar integration. As soon as the plugin is enabled, a Manage Editorial Board entry appears in the OJS admin sidebar, right next to Submissions and Issues. No hidden settings page.

Theme-independent. The route override sits above the template layer, so the plugin works on the default OJS theme, on Health Sciences, on Manuscript, on Bootstrap3, on Immersion, on our own Nivo theme, and on any custom child theme. Migrate themes later and your editorial board page survives intact.

Technical requirements

• OJS 3.3.0.22 or newer — and OJS 3.5 (PHP 7.4 or 8.0+)
• MySQL/MariaDB or PostgreSQL — whichever your OJS already uses
• About 2 MB of disk space; the plugin creates its own database tables on first activation
• No external services, no API keys, no telemetry. Editor data never leaves your server.

Pricing

Buy now

One-time payment, lifetime updates for the major version, unlimited journals on a single OJS installation.

Free for our customers. If you have purchased one of our premium OJS themes or hold an active OJS hosting package, this plugin is included at no extra cost. Send us your order number and we’ll send the download link.

Source ships readable and unobfuscated under the GPL v2 licence. Installation, configuration and bug-report support by e-mail is included for the first ninety days after purchase.

Links

• Live demo — twenty-one editors across eight role categories, all six templates available to preview
• User guide — installation walk-through, admin panel tour, template selection, CSV import format
• Product page — buy it, or claim it free if you already have one of our theme or hosting packages

The editorial board page is one of the easier pages to upgrade on a journal site, and one of the most rewarding. Set aside an afternoon: try the demo, read the guide, install the plugin. Your authors — and your next indexing review — will see the difference.

The post Photo-Based Editorial Board Plugin — for OJS first appeared on OPEN JOURNAL SYSTEM SERVICES.

Zenodo is a free, open-access repository developed by CERN that allows researchers and publishers to assign Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to their publications — completely free of charge. Unlike commercial DOI providers, Zenodo offers unlimited DOI registration with no annual fees, making it an ideal solution for academic journals operating on limited budgets.

With a Zenodo DOI, your articles gain permanent, citable identifiers that are indexed by major academic databases, ensuring long-term discoverability and accessibility for the global research community.

How Zenodo DOI Works — What to Expect

It’s important to understand how Zenodo DOIs differ from services like CrossRef or DataCite. When you assign a DOI through Zenodo:

• The DOI link (e.g., https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12345) resolves to the Zenodo record page, not directly to your journal website.
• Zenodo stores a copy of your article (PDF and metadata) as an open-access archive on its platform.
• Your journal URL is included in the Zenodo metadata, so readers can easily find and visit your journal from the Zenodo page.

This is different from CrossRef, where the DOI link points directly to the article on your journal website. With Zenodo, your article gains an additional presence on a trusted, CERN-hosted repository — providing extra visibility, long-term preservation, and credibility. Many journals use Zenodo DOIs as a cost-free alternative to commercial DOI services, and the Zenodo landing page serves as a secondary access point that complements your journal.

The Challenge: A Tedious Manual Process

While Zenodo provides an excellent free DOI service, the process of depositing articles is entirely manual. For each article, journal editors must:

1. Log in to Zenodo and create a new upload to reserve a DOI
2. Copy the DOI and add it to the article’s PDF and OJS metadata
3. After publishing the article in OJS, return to Zenodo
4. Manually enter all metadata — title, authors, affiliations, abstract, keywords
5. Fill in publishing information — journal name, ISSN, volume, issue, page numbers
6. Upload the PDF file
7. Review everything and publish the record

This process takes 10–15 minutes per article and is highly prone to errors — typos in author names, missing affiliations, incorrect page numbers, or forgotten keywords. For journals publishing 30–100+ articles per year, this becomes a significant burden on editorial staff.

Our Solution: Zenodo DOI Sync Plugin for OJS

Based on direct feedback and requests from our OJS clients and the academic publishing community, we developed the Zenodo DOI Sync Plugin — a comprehensive integration that automates the entire Zenodo deposit workflow directly from within OJS.

What previously took 10–15 minutes of manual data entry per article now takes a single click and a few seconds. All metadata is pulled directly from OJS, eliminating human error and ensuring consistency between your journal and Zenodo records.

We continue to actively develop this plugin and provide dedicated support based on user feedback and evolving Zenodo API requirements.

Key Features

🔑 Secure Token-Based Authentication

The plugin connects to Zenodo using your personal access token — no passwords stored, no complex OAuth flows. Simply generate a token from your Zenodo account and paste it into the plugin settings. Each journal can have its own Zenodo account and token.

🏷️ One-Click DOI Reservation

Reserve a DOI from Zenodo without leaving OJS. The DOI is automatically saved to the article’s identifier field. No need to switch between OJS and Zenodo.

📋 Automatic Metadata Synchronization

With a single click, the plugin transfers all article metadata to Zenodo:

• Title — in the article’s original language
• Authors — with full names, affiliations, and ORCID identifiers
• Abstract — with HTML formatting preserved (bold, italic, paragraphs)
• Keywords — all subject keywords from the article
• Journal Information — journal name, ISSN, volume, issue, page numbers
• Publication Date — from the OJS publishing date

📄 Automatic File Upload

The plugin automatically uploads all galley files (PDF and others) from OJS to Zenodo. It handles file cleanup — removing old files before uploading new ones — ensuring your Zenodo record always matches your OJS content.

🌐 Zenodo Community Integration

If your journal has a Zenodo community, the plugin can automatically associate new deposits with your community. Simply enter your community slug in the settings, and every new DOI reservation will be linked to your community page.

🚀 Publish to Zenodo from OJS

Once your article is published in OJS, you can publish it to Zenodo with one click. The plugin handles metadata sync, file upload, community review submission, and publication — all in a single operation.

📊 DOI Management Dashboard

A dedicated management page in the OJS sidebar gives you a complete overview of all articles and their Zenodo status:

• Filter by Zenodo status (Draft / Published), OJS status, or issue
• Search by title, DOI, or article ID
• Sort by any column
• Sync or publish individual articles directly from the dashboard
• Color-coded status badges for instant visual overview

🔄 Legacy DOI Scanner

Already have articles with Zenodo DOIs that were created manually? The built-in scanner finds all existing Zenodo DOIs in your journal, checks their current status on Zenodo (draft or published), and updates the local database — so you can manage everything from one place.

🌍 Multi-Language Support

The plugin interface is fully translated in English and Turkish, with support for additional languages. All labels, messages, and notifications adapt to your OJS language setting.

🔒 Role-Based Access Control

Only Site Administrators and Journal Managers can access Zenodo features. Authors, reviewers, and other users cannot see or interact with DOI management tools.

What’s Included

• ✅ Full plugin with all features described above
• ✅ Installation and configuration support
• ✅ Zenodo account and token setup assistance
• ✅ Community configuration help
• ✅ Free updates for compatibility and improvements
• ✅ Ongoing technical support

Continuous Updates & Important Notes

This plugin is actively maintained and regularly updated to keep pace with OJS releases and Zenodo API changes. All updates are provided free of charge.

A note about Zenodo: Zenodo is an independent service operated by CERN with its own policies and eligibility criteria. While Zenodo offers free DOI registration for most academic content, they may apply restrictions on certain types of publications or journals at their discretion. Such policies are determined solely by Zenodo and are outside the scope of this plugin. We recommend checking Zenodo’s policies to confirm eligibility for your journal.

Compatibility

• OJS Version: 3.3.x
• PHP: 7.4, 8.0, 8.1
• Zenodo API: InvenioRDM REST API

Get the Plugin →

The post Why Zenodo DOI for Academic Journals? first appeared on OPEN JOURNAL SYSTEM SERVICES.

If you’re running an academic journal in economics, finance, business, or any related social science field, there’s one platform you simply can’t afford to ignore: RePEc — Research Papers in Economics.

But here’s the thing most editors and publishers don’t realize: RePEc isn’t just another database. It’s a massive, volunteer-driven ecosystem that can dramatically boost your journal’s visibility, your authors’ profiles, and your publication’s credibility. And the best part? It’s completely free.

Let’s break down what RePEc is, why it matters for your journal, and how you can get started — especially if you’re running your journal on Open Journal Systems (OJS).

So, What Exactly Is RePEc?

RePEc is a decentralized, open initiative that enhances the dissemination of research in economics and related disciplines. Founded in 1997, it has grown into one of the largest open bibliographic databases in the social sciences.

The numbers speak for themselves: over 2,350 archives from 104 countries have contributed roughly 5 million research items from more than 4,200 journals and 5,600 working paper series. Over 70,000 authors have registered, and 75,000 email subscriptions are served every week.

Unlike traditional indexing services, RePEc works on a beautifully simple model. Publishers place structured metadata files on their own servers, following a standardized format called ReDIF (Research Documents Information Format). RePEc’s system then mirrors and distributes this data across its network of services.

Why Should You Care as a Journal Editor or Publisher?

Here’s where it gets interesting. Being listed on RePEc doesn’t just mean your articles sit in yet another database. It means your content flows into an entire ecosystem of services, each one amplifying your journal’s reach.

Visibility Across Multiple Platforms

When your journal is indexed in RePEc, your articles automatically become discoverable through a wide range of services and platforms. This isn’t just one website — it’s an entire network:

Core RePEc Services:

• IDEAS — The largest open bibliographic database in economics. Your articles become fully searchable and browsable here, complete with author profiles, citations, and download statistics.
• EconPapers — Another major gateway to the full RePEc database, offering search and browsing with a different interface and user base.
• CitEc — Citation analysis for all items in the RePEc database. Your articles get tracked for citations, building a measurable impact trail.
• NEP (New Economics Papers) — A free email, RSS, and Twitter/X notification service covering over 90 specific fields. When you publish a new working paper, researchers in relevant fields get notified automatically.
• LogEc — Detailed download and access statistics for your items and authors. You get real data on how your content is being consumed.
• CollEc — Co-authorship centrality rankings for registered authors.
• RePEc Biblio — A hand-selected bibliography of important articles and papers in economics.
• EDIRC — A directory of economics institutions, linking members to their publications on RePEc.
• RePEc Genealogy — An academic family tree for economics.
• EconAcademics.org — A blog aggregator for discussion about economics research.
• RePEc Author Service — Where authors register and maintain their profiles, linking their work across the entire system.
• MPRA (Munich Personal RePEc Archive) — Authors at institutions without a participating RePEc archive can submit papers here.

Third-Party Platforms Using RePEc Data:

But the reach doesn’t stop at RePEc’s own services. Because RePEc bibliographic data is in the public domain, your content also feeds into:

• Google Scholar — The go-to search engine for academics worldwide.
• EconLit — The American Economic Association’s premier database.
• EconStor — A digital publication server for open-access economics literature.
• OpenAIRE — The European open science infrastructure.
• ResearchGate — A massive social networking site for researchers.
• EBSCO — A leading research database provider.
• OpenAlex — An open catalog of the world’s scholarly works.
• OAISter/WORLDCAT — OCLC’s union catalog of digital resources.
• Microsoft Academic Search and Sciverse — Additional academic search platforms.

That’s a lot of exposure from a single indexing effort.

Author Engagement and Retention

Authors care about where their work is visible. When your journal is on RePEc, your authors can link their publications to their RePEc Author Service profiles, track citations through CitEc, monitor download statistics via LogEc, and receive notifications about new citations. This kind of author engagement is gold for journal editors trying to attract and retain quality submissions.

Rankings and Impact Metrics

RePEc maintains its own ranking system based on various criteria — citations, downloads, and more. Being part of this system gives your journal and its authors measurable, transparent impact metrics that complement traditional measures like Impact Factor.

It’s Free — Seriously

Unlike many indexing services that charge hefty fees, RePEc is entirely volunteer-driven and free for all parties. No submission fees, no listing fees, no annual charges. It’s sustained by a global community of volunteers who believe in open access to research.

Is It Only for Economics?

This is a common misconception. While RePEc started with — and is strongest in — economics, it welcomes related disciplines as well. If your journal publishes research in:

• Finance and banking
• Business and management
• Public policy
• Agricultural economics
• Environmental economics
• Health economics
• Political economy
• Econometrics and statistics
• Development studies
• International trade
• Urban and regional economics
• Law and economics

…then you absolutely belong on RePEc. The key criterion is that your content should be relevant to the economics research community in some way. Many interdisciplinary journals are already on RePEc, and the platform actively encourages related fields to participate.

If you’re unsure whether your journal qualifies, the best approach is to review the existing archives and see if journals similar to yours are already listed — chances are, they are.

How to Get Your Journal on RePEc

The process of joining RePEc involves creating a “RePEc archive” on your server. Here’s the general workflow:

1. Register as a provider — You’ll need to set up an archive with a unique identifier.
2. Create metadata files — These are structured text files (using ReDIF syntax) that describe your journal, its issues, and individual articles.
3. Host them on your server — The files need to be accessible via HTTP, HTTPS, or FTP.
4. RePEc mirrors your data — Once everything is set up, RePEc’s system automatically picks up and distributes your metadata.

The technical requirements follow the Guildford Protocol and use the ReDIF (Research Documents Information Format) specification. While the format is straightforward, it does require attention to detail — correct template types, proper field formatting, and a specific directory structure.

OJS Users: There’s an Easier Way

If you’re running your journal on Open Journal Systems (OJS), you know that managing technical integrations can be a headache. Setting up RePEc metadata manually — creating ReDIF templates, maintaining directory structures, generating index files — is doable, but it’s tedious and error-prone.

That’s exactly why we built the RePEc Pro Export Plugin for OJS.

Our plugin automates the entire RePEc integration for OJS-based journals. Instead of manually creating and maintaining ReDIF files, the plugin handles everything:

• Automatic ReDIF template generation for your journal articles
• Proper directory structure creation and management
• Index files that are HTTP-accessible for RePEc’s crawler
• Metadata mapping from your OJS article data to RePEc’s required fields
• Ongoing synchronization — when you publish new issues, the metadata is automatically updated

No need to learn ReDIF syntax, no manual file management, no worrying about whether your templates are properly formatted. Install the plugin, configure your RePEc archive details, and you’re ready to go.

Get the RePEc Pro Export Plugin →

The Bottom Line

In academic publishing, visibility is everything. RePEc offers a proven, trusted, and completely free pathway to get your journal’s content in front of the researchers who need it most. With automatic distribution across platforms like IDEAS, EconPapers, Google Scholar, and many more, a single integration effort yields returns across the entire academic discovery ecosystem.

For OJS users, our RePEc Pro Export Plugin makes the technical side effortless, so you can focus on what matters: publishing great research.

Your authors are already looking for their work on RePEc. Make sure they can find your journal there too.

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This post is brought to you by OJS Services, helping academic journals thrive with professional OJS solutions.

The post Why Your Journal Should Be on RePEc (And How to Get There) first appeared on OPEN JOURNAL SYSTEM SERVICES.

If you manage an academic journal on OJS, you already know the problem: a new author registers, submits a manuscript — and then you realize their ORCID iD and phone number are missing from their profile. You send an email asking them to update their profile, wait for a response, and sometimes follow up again. This small gap in the registration workflow costs time for everyone involved.

Registration Fields is an open-source OJS plugin that closes this gap by adding ORCID iD and Phone Number fields directly to the user registration form.

The Problem

OJS stores both ORCID iD and phone number in user profiles. These fields exist in the system and are used by DOI registration, Crossref deposits, and editorial communication. However, OJS only allows users to fill in these fields after registration, through the profile editor. There is no built-in way to ask for this information during signup.

For journals that require ORCID iDs — an increasingly common policy — this creates an unnecessary extra step. Authors register, then must be reminded to go back and add their ORCID. For editorial offices that need phone numbers for communication, the same problem applies.

What the Plugin Does

The Registration Fields plugin adds two optional fields to the OJS registration form, positioned between the profile section and the login credentials section:

ORCID iD and Phone Number fields appear on the registration form, above the Login section.

Each field can be independently enabled or disabled, and each can be set as required or optional. The configuration is done through a simple settings panel accessible from the plugin management page:

The settings panel lets you enable, require, or disable each field independently. A debug mode is available for troubleshooting.

Values entered during registration are saved directly to the corresponding OJS profile fields — the same fields used by ORCID integrations, Crossref, and the editorial contact system. No new database tables are created; the plugin simply writes to what is already there.

Key Features

ORCID iD validation accepts three common input formats — bare identifier (0000-0000-0000-0000), full HTTPS URL, or HTTP URL — and normalizes all of them to the standard https://orcid.org/ format on save.

Phone number validation accepts international formats with country codes, supporting digits, spaces, plus signs, dashes, and parentheses.

Theme compatibility is handled through flexible pattern matching with a built-in fallback mechanism. The plugin works across OJS themes including Default, Manuscript, Bootstrap3, Health Sciences, JournalPlus, NIVO, and AXIS. If a theme uses an unusual HTML structure, the fields are still rendered before the form’s closing tag.

Debug mode can be enabled from the settings panel to write diagnostic information to the PHP error log. This helps identify exactly how the plugin is interacting with a particular theme, making it easy to troubleshoot without modifying any code.

Who Is This For?

• Journals requiring ORCID iDs at submission — Collect them upfront instead of chasing authors after registration.
• Editorial offices that communicate by phone — Have the number from day one.
• Journal managers who want cleaner author profiles — Reduce incomplete registrations without adding manual follow-up steps.

Technical Details

The plugin integrates with OJS through its hook system — no core files are modified. It uses output filtering to inject fields into the registration form, server-side validation for all inputs, and a deferred save mechanism to ensure data is written after the user record is created. All input is sanitized and escaped, and the plugin includes CSRF protection for its settings form.

It is compatible with OJS 3.3.0.0 through 3.3.0.22 and PHP 7.4 through 8.2.

Installation

1. Download the latest release from GitHub.
2. In OJS, go to Settings → Website → Plugins → Upload a New Plugin.
3. Upload the .tar.gz file and enable the plugin.
4. Click Settings to configure which fields appear on the registration form.

The plugin is free, open-source (GPL v3), and available in English and Turkish.

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Developed by OJS Services.

The post ORCID iD and Phone Number at Registration: Plugin for OJS 3.3 first appeared on OPEN JOURNAL SYSTEM SERVICES.

We frequently hear this complaint from journal managers using OJS: “Our users keep requesting password resets, but they haven’t actually forgotten their passwords!”

The root cause is simple: OJS requires a username to login. However, almost every website today allows login with an email address. Users naturally enter their email address in OJS and receive the “Invalid username or password” error.

This results in:

• 📧 Unnecessary password reset requests
• 😤 User frustration
• ⏰ Wasted time for journal managers

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The Solution: Email Login Plugin

We developed the Email Login Plugin to solve this problem. With this plugin, users can now login using either their username or email address.

How It Works

1. User enters their email address in the login field
2. The plugin automatically finds the username associated with that email
3. Login proceeds normally

The user doesn’t notice any difference – they can simply login with their email address now!

Features

✅ Email login – Users can now login with their email address
✅ Username support – Existing behavior unchanged, username login still works
✅ Automatic form update – Login form label changes to “Username or Email”
✅ Secure – SQL injection protection and input validation
✅ No core modifications – No issues with OJS updates
✅ Bilingual support – English and Turkish

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Installation

Installation takes just a few minutes:

1. Download the .tar.gz file from GitHub releases
2. Go to Settings → Website → Plugins in OJS admin panel
3. Click Upload A New Plugin
4. Select the downloaded file
5. Enable “Email Login” under Generic Plugins

That’s it! Your users can now login with their email addresses.

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Compatibility

Requirement	Version
OJS	3.3.0 – 3.3.0.22+
PHP	7.3 or higher

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Security

Security was a priority during development:

• Prepared Statements protect against SQL injection attacks
• Email addresses are validated and sanitized before database queries
• Disabled accounts cannot login via email
• Error messages don’t reveal whether an email exists in the system

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Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Will existing username login continue to work?
A: Yes, nothing changes. Users can login with either username or email.

Q: Will the plugin break when I update OJS?
A: No, the plugin doesn’t modify core files. It’s unaffected by OJS updates.

Q: What happens if the same email is used for multiple accounts?
A: OJS already prevents the same email from being used for multiple accounts.

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Download

📥 Download Email Login Plugin v1.1.0

📖 GitHub Repository

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Support

For questions or issues with the plugin:

• Open an issue on GitHub

The post Login with Email Address in OJS: Email Login Plugin first appeared on OPEN JOURNAL SYSTEM SERVICES.