The Free Fully-Hosted Open Journal Systems Platform

Scholarly Exchange has one objective - to foster sustainable low-cost communication among scholars and researchers worldwide. We help you start your e-journal - at no cost - and provide you with the tools to help it develop - at no cost.

First Steps

Start-up is easy with the free use of a fully hosted and ready-to-use installation of the open-source Open Journal Systems (developed by the Public Knowledge Project) for the first year. We provide scholarly journal editors the personalized advice they need to set up their journal, receive articles and begin the publishing process - all in as little as a day or less.

Scholarly Exchange uses your chosen domain name for the journal and performs secure daily backups to two separate sites.

The Platform

The platform is complete, offering web-based editorial management (manuscript collection, peer review, editorial decision-making) and online display. You can set the software up in an hour and be ready to accept submissions the same day. You can easily customize your journal's pages, from banners to background colors and even typefaces, as part of the setup process and with these documented methods. Most functions and all of the e-mail messages are easily configurable.

You can set your journal up in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, or Turkish at present, with Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Farsi, Hindi, Japanese, Norwegian, Thai, and Vietnamese to be added in the near future;

For complete, easy-to-read documentation of the comprehensive features, view and download the free Open Journal Systems documentation from the Public Knowledge Project site. Over a thousand journals are currently using OJS software.

Scholarly Exchange strongly encourages journals to archive their content in online repositories and archives and cooperates with the Open Archive Initiative data standards and the LOCKSS protocol - "lots of copies keep stuff safe."

Sustainability

Keeping costs to a minimum and generating revenue are the cornerstones to success for e-journals, especially those that want to be freely accessible. Scholarly Exchange has developed the tools, techniques, and strategies to achieve these goals and continues to explore new opportunities.

Journal clients always retain complete ownership of their own domain names, all content, and all metadata stored on the Scholarly Exchange-provided platform.

The Fine Print

Scholarly Exchange offsets its costs with contextually appropriate advertising and shares excess revenue with participating journals.

First Year: Scholarly Exchange provides the OJS software and use of the SE service at no cost for the first year in conjunction with relevant on-screen advertising (currently supplied by Google) and a reader-donation 'button'. SE retains the advertising revenues to defray costs. The journal may discontinue the service at any time within the first year without any obligation or cost.

Second and Subsequent Years: Scholarly Exchange continues the service for a US$ 750 annual fee, with all advertising revenue split 50/50 between the journal and SE.

The journal can choose to sell its own advertising banners instead of the SE-supplied advertising, with an SE upload fee of US$ 100 per advertising image. The journal retains all ad revenues beyond the upload fee.

Journal clients may opt out of the advertising program by paying a US $1000 annual fee for the platform, domain name hosting and backup. For example, their two-year cost (first free, second at US$ 1000) is US$ 500 per year.