Most OJS 3.3 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 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 (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.