Release notes: Journal platform
Notes on the live releases to the Ubiquity platform are listed below, including bug fixes, new features, and enhancements to existing functionality. Bug fixes specific to individual installations (e.g. a journal) are not listed. The dates given are for the end of the development sprint cycle, not the exact date that the release was completed.
See our Release notes: Book & Press platform for similar updates on our book and press platform.
9th September 2025
| ID | Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement | Title | Description |
| OJS-2269 | New feature | On-screen help widget | The editorial system and select frontend website pages now include a help 'widget' in the bottom right corner, allowing users to access help articles, ask an AI chatbot for answers, and log support tickets, all without leaving the journal webpage (editorial system function only available after 3.4 upgrade). View the Contact or Author Guidelines page of any journal to view the new widget. |
| OJS-2268 | Enhancement | Support platform links | The 'Help Centre' & 'Latest Updates' buttons in the journal editorial system have been updated to point to the new Knowledge Base (https://journals.support.ubiquity.pub/). |
| OJS-2240 | Bug fix | 'Betterpassword' Plugin | The plugin enforcing higher password requirements included bugs. The Ubiquity team has fed fixes back into the public plugin |
26th August
| ID | Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement | Title | Description |
| OJS-2226 | Bug fix | Carousel image not scrolling | Journals with multiple carousel images on the hompeage reported that they were not scrolling in the correct order. This has been fixed. |
| OJS-2245 | Bug fix | Re-publishing galley files | Galley PDFs were showing a permissions error is the original file was replaced. This has now been fixed |
12th August
| ID | Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement | Title | Description |
| OJS-2156 | New Feature (3.5) | 'Email All' button | The function allowing editors to email all contributors at any time (see OJS-1391, below) has been submitted to core OJS 3.5 |
| OJS-2193 | Bug fix | XML/HTML error during issue publication | A bug was fixed where the HTML didn't render for the full text of an article if previously scheduled within an issue. The HTML should now render regardless of the publication workflow. |
| OJS-2211 | Bug fix | Reviewer reminder email links | Some reviewers were receiving reminder emails with broken links to the review task. These links have now been fixed. |
15 July 2025
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1414 | New Feature | Reference display for PDF-only articles | The References setting in the article metadata within OJS is now supported on the frontend website. If a journal publishes an article without an XML/HTML galley then any content added to the Publication > References metadata tab will be displayed on the article’s publication page. |
| OJS-2183 | Enhancement | Reviewed security settings | Revised and implemented changes to security settings |
| OJS-2184 | Bug fix | Filter menu open as default | The filter menu on the submission list page was no longer open as default. This has now been fixed so that the filters will display when the page loads. |
1 July 2025
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-2113 | Enhancement | Allow multiple taxonomies | Multiple custom taxonomy flags can now be assigned to each submission, rather than being limited to one single flag. The taxonomy flags enable journals to categories the publications beyond the article type (available on 3.4 onwards). |
| OJS-1878 | Enhancement | Scheduled removal of 'incomplete' submissions | An automated process has been put in place that will remove submissions marked as 'incomplete' from the submission lists. Once a month all journals will be checked for any incomplete submissions that are older than 28 days old. If such submissions exist, they will be removed to help keep the submission lists as clean as possible. |
| OJS-2179 | Bug fix | Author name display on submission list | A bug was introduced that mean that author names were not displaying correctly on the editor's submission list. This has been fixed. |
| OJS-2185 | Bug fix | Batch publication file availability | A bug was discovered that was preventing some galley files from being unavailable to the journal readers if it were published under a specific batch publication workflow. This has now been fixed. |
Jun 17, 2025
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-2123 | Enhancement | Accessibility: Keyboard focus | The keyboard focus has been improved so that users should find it easier to navigate around the site. |
| OJS-2103 | Enhancement | Open Peer Review workflow | The backend production system has been updated to support the newly introduced open/published peer review option that journals now have from the Ubiquity production team. |
| OJS-2138 | Enhancement | ‘Email all’ authors function added to OJS 3.4 | Following OJS-1391 (below). The new function to contact all authors via the Contributor tab will now be available on the upcoming Ubiquity OJS 3.4 upgraded platform. |
| OJS-2172 | Enhancement | Update to article XSL | The markup format and display of citations has been edited to support additional citation formats. |
Jun 3, 2025
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-2142 | New feature | Accessibility link in footer | A setting has been added into OJS allowing the journal manager to add a URL pointing to the journal’s Accessibility Statement. When entered, this link will appear automatically in the footer of the public journal webpages. As default, the link will point to Ubiquity’s accessibility statement, which includes the technical details as well as contact information regarding accessibility issues. This is a requirement of the European Accessibility Act. |
| OJS-2155 | Enhancement | Licence metadata | A refinement of how licence metadata is provided has been completed to ensure that it remains machine readable and fully indexable. |
| OJS-2149 | Enhancement | Security improvement | Security upgrade as part of regular review and improvement protocol. |
May 20, 2025
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1391 | New Feature | ‘Email all’ function | It is now possible to email all authors within a submission outside of decision emails. Rather than needing to be listed as a ‘participant’ in the editorial workflow (i.e. normally only the corresponding author), the editor is now able to send an email to all of the authors/contributors whenever they need to. Editors can access this function via the Publication > Contributors tab. The list of contributors now includes an ‘Email all authors’ button. (from version 3.3.0-20-33 onwards). |
| OJS-1267 & OJS-1950 | Enhancement | Security improvements | Various security upgrades as part of regular review and improvement protocol. |
| OJS-2124 | Enhancement | Accessibility improvement | A recent accessibility review revealed an error when a users zoomed the articles page to 200%, with some text overlapping so it was less readable. This has ben fixed so that the zoom does not compromise readability of the content. |
| OJS-2125 | Bug fix | Article filters | Filtering by multiple Collections or Taxonomies was no longer functional, with only the most recent selection being displayed. This has been fixed so that all selected filters now show. |
| OJS-2109 | Enhancement | Reviewer identifier in download file | An inconsistency was discovered between the identifiers given to a reviewer within OJS and the downloaded reviewer form when the article went through multiple rounds of review. This has been fixed so that the downloaded review form IDs match those within OJS. |
| OJS-1916 | Bug fix | PKP Preservation Network | A error was occurring that was preventing a minority of publications being sent into the PKP Preservation Network. This has now been resolved. |
| OJS-1709 | Bug fix | Participant assigment lists | Some journals we experiencing a display issue when assigning participants to a submission, whereby the assignment list did not display the full number of possible users. This has been corrected so that all users with the relevant roles will be listed. |
May 7, 2025
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-833 | New Feature | Anonymisation of submitted files | Users will often forget to remove identiying metadata from the files that they submit to the journal, meaning that anonymous review may be compromised. The Ubiquity system will now automatically strip out the name field in the file properties for files uploaded during the author submission, reviewer task and author revisions process, meaning that the editor no longer has to check and remove the data. [available from OJS 3.4] |
| OJS-1070 | Enhancement | Added instruction during production | A note has been added to the Publication tab regarding metadata updates during the production stage, reminding editors/journal managers that production teams will need to be informed of edits if the galley files are already being created. |
| OJS-2102 | Bug fix | Strip unwanted formatting from titles | Formatting was being retained if a title was copied and pasted from another location, causing display problems within OJS. This has been fixed so that unsupported formatting is now automatically removed. |
| OJS-2104 | Enhancement | Update to the Related Articles tab | TrendMD, the provider for the Related Articles list, changed how data is provided into the article page, resulting in a code change to accommodate the difference. |
Apr 22, 2025
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-2080 | Bug fix | Assignment privileges error | When moving between different user assignment roles, some of the permissions were being retained when changing the user group, leading to an error when the assignment was completed. This has been fixed via a core OJS pull request so that the correct role settings are assigned every time. |
| OJS-2081 | Enhancement | HTML option to Copyright Notice | Native OJS doesn’t have an HTML editor for the copyright field. This has now been added to add to the flexibility of the setting and aid journal managers. |
| OJS-2095 | Bug fix | Announcement links | Links to announcements from the homepage did not link to the correct part of the page if the title included diacritic characters. This has now been fixed, so that the link always points to the correct part of the announcement page. |
| OJS-2098 | Bug fix | Sword library plugin | Contribution to the SWORD plugin to correct a bug that caused the editorial workflow to break if the plugin was configured in a certain way. |
Mar 25, 2025
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-2062 | New feature | Editor workload tracking | Completion of the core OJS contribution that will surface the editorial workload when assigning submissions to an editor. See
Track Editor Workload While Assigning Participants · Issue #9999 · pkp/pkp-lib for code contribution (OJS 3.5) |
| OJS-2066 | Enhancement | Update to article display | This XSL update adds a new method of changing the header. It also adds aria-label for notes. |
| OJS-2082 | Bug fix | Expandable quick links | The quick links on the journal pages should have allowed heading levels to expand up to heading level 3, but this had been unintentionally disabled. The function is now back so that the quick links will expand the hierarchy of level headings. |
Mar 11, 2025
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-2053 | Enhancement | Additional ‘share’ buttons | The article publication page has had additional ‘share’ options provided to the reader, helping to disseminate the content. The reader can now easily share via:
|
| OJS-1942 | Enhancement | Website update speed | The frontend websites previously had some cached information, meaning that updates sometimes took a short time to be reflected to the public. This delay has now been removed so that updates should be reflected quickly. |
| OJS-2060 | Bug fix | ‘null’ author names | When an author only has one name, the Issue page previously displayed their last name as ‘null’ rather than leave blank. This has now been fixed, so that the page displays the correct and full author name. |
| PLAT-1722 | Bug fix | Popular articles list | A bug was discovered where the ‘popular articles’ list on the homepage displayed incorrect articles. This has now been fixed. The criteria for how the list is created can be found in our Knowledge Base. |
Feb 25, 2025
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1854 | Enhancement | OJS submission list loading time | OJS submission lists now load around 100% quicker than prior to our latest update |
| OJS-1991 | Bug Fix | Default licence data | License URL or licence name are now required when ‘other' licence option is selected. This avoids data errors downstream - e.g. the Crossref export. If the 'Other’ licence is now selected, a name and URL are now mandatory. |
| OJS-2016 & OJS-2017 | New Feature | ‘Non-journal’ mode | A function has been added into the Journal Manager setting (Website > Appearance > Advanced ) that will remove journal-specific terminology on the public website. e.g. mentions of ‘article’, ‘issue’ and ‘volume’ will be removed, if enabled. This allows OJS users to publish output that is less in line with traditional journal formats. |
| OJS-2042 & OJS-2058 | Bug Fix / Enhancement | Review form download | Two updates were made to the ability to download the completed review form:
|
| OJS-2048 | Bug Fix | Submitting to collections | The ability to assign an article to a collection upon submission was temporarily unavailable. This has now been restored so that authors can make the assignment during the submission process. |
| OJS-2051 | Enhancement | Update to XSL (article display) | The article XSL has been updated to support:
|
Feb 12, 2025
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1970 | Enhancement | Accessibility review and implementation | A review was conducted of specific accessibility requirements for the journal sites, with minor improvements being made to aid screen readers. |
| OJS-2024 | Enhancement | Article text rendering update | An update to the article CSS was implemented to prevent line breaks after and before parentheses |
| OJS-2039 | Enhancement | 3.4 support for Bluesky and Mastodon | Following OJS-1995, support for Bluesky and Mastodon have also been added to the upcoming 3.4 journal platform. |
Jan 28, 2025
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-987 | New Feature | Add images to announcements | Pull requests have been made to core OJS 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5 that will allow journals to include images within their announcements. |
| OJS-2040 | Bug Fix | Typesetting comments | Typesetting comments were not saving prior to sending the article to the Ubiquity production team. This has now been fixed. |
| OJS-2045 | Bug Fix | OpenID plugin | A bug was discovered in the OpenID plugin. A pull request has been submitted to the plugin maintainer, so that the fix can be merged into the public plugin |
Jan 17, 2025
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1995 | New Feature | Bluesky and Mastodon | The Website > Appearance > Social settings now include Mastodon and Bluesky options. If a URL is added to either of these settings, the relevant button will appear on the journal homepage, linking out to the social media account. |
| OJS-1981 | Enhancement | (C)LOCKSS manifest page update | Two updates were made to the (C)LOCKSS manifest page to improve data collection from LOCKSS and CLOCKSS, to aid journal preservation. |
| OJS-2002 | Enhancement | Update to article XSL | The article display XSL now includes the option to include Motion Film reference format and tables with custom column widths |
| OJS-2020 | Bug Fix | Unavailable PDF error | A bug was discovered whereby if articles were assigned to an unpublished issue, subsequently had Galley files uploaded, and then the issue was published, the PDF files would be unavailable to the general public. This has been fixed so that all Galley files are made public when the issue is published. |
| OJS-2023 | Bug Fix | Funder plugin | The funder plugin stopped working, so that authors were not able to assign a funder from the registry during the submission process. This has been fixed. |
Jan 3, 2025
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1979 | Enhancement | Upgrade to OJS 3.3.0-20 | Upgrade to all journals to a recent release of OJS, bringing additional security and stability. |
| OJS-1987 | Bug fix | Issue cover images for multilingual journals | A website bug was discovered where some journal cover images were not displaying on the issue archive page. This has been fixed. |
| OJS-1988 | Bug fix | Issue ordering error | The ordering of issues on the archive page was taking too long to update when changed. This has been updated so that updates to the order will be reflected more immediately. |
| OJS-2006 | Bug fix | Review form download | PDF exports of review forms were not working in some occasions. This has now been fixed. |
Dec 17, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1979 | Enhancement | Upgrade to OJS 3.3.0-17 | Upgrade to all journals to a recent release of OJS, bringing additional security and stability. |
| OJS-2008 | Bug fix | Site Usage (Plausible) dashboard | The Site Usage dashboard, powered by Plausible, stopped working due to the platform upgrade. The code has been updated so that the dashboard is no longer blocked and displays as normal. |
| OJS-2000 | Bug fix | ReCaptcha on registration | Some journals experienced problems with the registration form and the ReCaptcha function not working. This has been fixed so that the forms now work as intended. |
Dec 3, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1977 | Bug fix | (C)LOCKSS manifest page | A bug was found on the (C)LOCKSS manifest page, which is used as a preservation service to ensure permanency of the journal content. This has now been fixed. |
| OJS-1994 | Bug fix | OpenID plugin fix | During testing of the OpenID plugin some bugs were found relating to logging out functions and translations. Fixes for these have been fed back to the maintainer of the plugin so that all OJS users can benefit from the changes. The plugin can be viewed at
GitHub - pkp/openid: OpenId plugin for OJS, OMP, OPS. Should your journal wish to use this functionality, please contact your account manager. |
| OJS-1972 | Enhancement | Reviewer suggestion plugin | A code enhancement was released to this plugin after a member of the community received warnings during implementation around the call to certain email variables. |
| OJS-1955 | Bug fix | Download review form | The ability to download the completed review form in PDF format was temporarily not functional. This has now been reinstated. |
Nov 19, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Various | Enhancement | Core contribution refinements | The contributions for Downloading Review forms and Logging the response from a reviewer have now been merged into core OJS. |
| OJS-1949 & OJS-1951 | Enhancement | Security update | Continued journal security improvements |
Nov 5, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1937 | Enhancement | Download peer review forms (public plugin) | The ability for the editor to download completed peer reviw forms has now been made into a public plugin. The feature has also been enhanced, as it is now able to output XML as well as PDF copies of the review forms. |
| OJS-1919 | Bug fix | Diacritics in peer review download | The PDF download function for completed peer review forms was not displaying the diacritic/special characters correctly. This has now been fixed so that the output display matches the on screen display. |
| OJS-1917 | Enhancement | Security update | Continued journal security improvements |
Oct 22, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1909 | Bug fix | Related Articles display | The Related Articles tab on journal publication pages had stopped working due to a change in the Content Security Policy. This has been updated so that the TrendMD list of articles will now appear again. |
| OJS-1914 | Enhancement | CLOCKSS manifest page | An update to the CLOCKSS manifest page so that the preservation services can more easily find the journal location. |
| OJS-1923 | Enhancement | Update to Competing Interests author instructions | During submission, the author is asked to delcare competing interests. The instruction that accompanies the request has been updated so that it is clearer to the author on what kinds of CIs should be declared. |
| OJS-1929 | Enhancement | Caching reset when saving setting updates | The way in which settings are saved has been updated so that the frontend cache now resets at the same time, helping to ensure that the changes are reflected instantly to the user. |
Oct 8, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1928 | Bug fix | Change to CSS so that non-breaking hyphens don't break | XML tags for non-breaking hyphenation were not being respected when the full text article was displayed. This has now been corrected so that non-breaking hyphens will display as intended. |
Sep 24, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1846 | Enhancement | OJS setting speed | Saving settings in OJS has become very slow due to data caching issues. The method of saving data has been updated so that saving OJS settings should now be very quick (version 17-50 onwards). |
| OJS-1922 | Bug fix | Journal logo not showing for multilingual journals | A bug was discovered whereby the journal logo was not displaying for multilingual journals if the logo was a specific file format. This has been fixed so that the file should always display. |
| OJS-1881 | Enhancement | Refinement to review download function (core contribution) | Continuation of OJS-1493 (below), where Ubiquity have submitted a core contribution so that editors are able to download submitted peer review forms. After code review, edits have been made to the enhance the code. |
Sep 10, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1874 | Enhancement | Issue page collection and taxonomy identifiers | The issue page now includes tags to show whether the published article is associated with a collection and/or has a taxonomy label assigned to it. Previously these tags were only displayed on the main articles list. |
Aug 27, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1877 | New feature | Author search from publication page | The article publication page now includes a search option for each listed author, allowing the reader to find more content published by that author either on the journal-only, or via Google Scholar. |
| OJS-1096 | New feature | Editor/Section Editor assignments display (OJS 3.5 core contribution) | When assigning an editor to a new submission, it is currently not possible to see the existing workload of the editorial team. New functionality has been put in place to display the existing assignments that each editor has, along with their key research interests and affiliation (pulled from the user profile). A label will also be displayed if the author and editor come from the same institution. This should help the assigning editor to find the most suitable editor for the submission (from 3.5 onwards, not currently live on the Ubiquity platform). |
| OJS-1834 | Enhancement | Removal of italics from <blockquote> as default | HTML <blockquote> previously defaulted to italics without the article necessarily wanting it to. This has been updated so that italics will only display on block quotes if instructed to in the HTML/XML. |
Aug 13, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1493 | Enhancement | Review form download function (OJS 3.5 core contribution) | Work to move the review form download function from a Ubiquity plugin into core OJS code (from 3.5 onwards, not currently live on the Ubiquity platform). |
| OJS-1860 | Bug fix | Remove non-corresponding author contact details | Article metadata included the email address for author who were not labelled as the corresponding author. These have now been removed so that only the corresponding author email is provided. |
| OJS-1869 | Bug fix | OpenID plugin fix | Fix submitted to the public plugin for OpenID functionality. |
Jul 30, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1853 | Bug fix | Custom pages not displaying | A new frontend website release included a bug where custom pages did not render unless they were part of the navigation. This has now been fixed so that custom pages display all of the time. |
| OJS-1855 | Enhancement | Author list to issue page | The full author list will now be displayed for each publication on the issue page. Previously only the first author was displayed on this page. |
| OJS-1864 | Bug fix | Archive pages permits no cover image | A bug was discovered where the Issue Archive page would break if an issue didn’t have a default or custom cover page uploaded. This has now been fixed so that the page will load even when an issue has no cover image available. |
Jul 16, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-985 | Enhancement | Security patch | Security patch added to backend OJS |
| OJS-1194 | Bug fix | Redirect away from native OJS announcements | It was discovered that some links within emails sent from OJS included the URL to the native OJS web pages and not the Ubiquity ones. These should now redirect so that only the Ubiquity platform pages are available. |
| OJS-1498 | Enhancement | Accessibility: underlined links | The journal frontend has been updated to now show linked text more prominently, to be in line with WCAG definitions. Links within body text are now permanently underlined rather than only when the user hovers over the text, and headings, titles and quick links are underlined when the user hovers over the text. |
| OJS-1746 | Bug fix | Galley ordering | The journal frontend was not reflecting the order in which Galley files were being listed in OJS. This has been corrected so that the frontend will now always reflect the same order as the backend. |
| OJS-1825 | Bug fix | Display error in notification setting | A display error was identified in the notification settings, where the wrong text was being displayed and formatting was incorrect. This has been corrected. |
| OJS-1838 | Bug fix | Users being logged out | A small number of journals began reporting that users were occasionally being logged out of the system whilst they were working within OJS. An investigation has been completed and a fix implemented onto the affected journals. |
Jul 2, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1435 | Enhancement | Author names into review invitation workflow | A core contribution was made to OJS 3.4 so that the author names and affiliations will be displayed to the editor when assigning peer reviewers. There will also be a warning tag if any peer reviewers have the same affiliation as someone on the author list so that competing interests can be avoided. This is a core contribution after the Ubiquity platform gained this function as part of OJS-1426 (below). |
| OJS-1764 | Enhancement | Metadata logging for co-authors | The metadata logs have been updated so that there is now more visibility in the Activity Log when contributors who are not the primary author have their metadata edits. Previously, although the metadata changed, the Activity Log was not acknowledging this, making an audit of the submission only partially available. This has also been contributed back to core OJS. |
| PLAT-1298 | New feature | Metrics: Display of usage maps | The journal and books platform now displays a map to show where users of the book/article are based. Geolocation is obtained via the IP address of the person reading the content. Once the country has been logged, the IP address is then deleted, meaning that the platform can display the map whilst remaining fully GDPR compliant as no personal data is being collected and stored. |
| OJS-1771 | Enhancement | Infrastructure upgrade for the ‘JOLs’ | Platform maintenance and upgrades for the Journal Online platforms (JOLs). |
| OJS-1806 | Enhancement | Rollout of new journal frontend | A new an improved journal frontend infrastructure is being rolled out in batches across the platform. Journals on the new frontend will have the version number v.1.5.2 or higher. The new infrastructure provides a faster loading time, better SEO and accessibility. |
| OJS-1813 | Enhancement | Security review and backup assessment | Scheduled review and actioning of backup and restoration protocol for journal data. |
Jun 18, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1175 | Enhancement | Page redirects | Additional URL redirects have been put in place to ensure that the reader will be redirected to the current/correct page if they use an old/unsupported URL |
| OJS-1711 | Enhancement | Remove ‘incomplete submissions’ from submission list | A script has been run so that all ‘incomplete submissions’ older than 30 days will no longer display in the submission list (note: this is only released on journals on the very latest version of the platform. A few remaining journals are being updated in the coming week). |
| OJS-1775 | Enhancement | Speed improvement | Efficiencies were found in API endpoint, making the loading time for the frontend quicker. |
| OJS-1780 | Enhancement | PKP Preservation Network | Journals have been integrated with the PKP Preservation Network, a service to enhance digital preservation of academic publications (note: this is only released on journals on the very latest version of the platform. A few remaining journals are being updated in the coming week). |
| OJS-1786 | Bug fix | Ordering of issues | The issue page displayed a bug where in come cases the order of the published issues was not correct. This has been fixed. |
| OJS-1801 & OJS-1801 | Enhancement | Additional meta tags to enhance indexing | Additional meta tags were added to the article publication pages to help indexes such as Google Scholar collect expanded metadata. |
Jun 4, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1805 | Enhancement | Website loading speed | The journal (frontend) website speed has been greatly increased for all journals using version 1.5.2 or above. This will be rolled out across the whole platform in the coming weeks. |
| OJS-1475 | Enhancement | Editor records reviewer response (OJS 3.5 core contribution) | A contribution into the next major release of OJS (3.5) has been made so that the plugin created by Ubiquity that allows an editor to log a reviewers response will be in the core OJS code. |
| OJS-1767 | Bug fix | Correction to email template | A notification that can be sent to alert readers of a new issue was not pulling from the correct template. This has been fixed. |
| OJS-1795 | Enhancement | Email configurations | Continued release of updated email configurations to enhance deliverability and high compliance standards (see OJS-1561, below). |
| OJS-1796 | Enhancement | Translations | Additional translations were added to the OJS plugins created by Ubiquity so that all languages currently supported on the platform are now comprehensively covered. |
| PLAT-1367 | Enhancement | Additional data to production team | Additional data was added to the author data that is sent to the production team, helping to make the typesetting process more efficient. |
May 21, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-979 | Enhancement | Referrer policy not defined | Security enhancement added to prevent browsers from sending sensitive information to third party sites. |
| OJS-1656 | Enhancement | Upgrade to 3.3.0-17, including speed improvements | The OJS system was updated to 3.3.0-17. As well as minor patches, this includes an increase in loading speed for the OJS backend/editorial system. |
| OJS-1781 | Enhancement | Additional data to production team | Additional data was added to the author data that is sent to the production team, helping to make the typesetting process more efficient. |
| OJS-1782 | Enhancement | Email configurations | Continued release of updated email configurations to enhance deliverability and high compliance standards (see OJS-1561, below). |
| OJS-1792 | Bug fix | Submitted/accepted dates not displaying properly | Some journals experienced a problem where the submitted and accepted dates on new publications were incorrect. This has been fixed. |
| PLAT-1401 | Bug fix | Correction of finance logging | Two minor data inconsistencies were noticed relating to how APC finance was being logged against the article in question. These have both been updated. |
May 8, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1745 | Bug fix | Issue page doesn't display custom thumbnails | A bug was discovered for journals released onto a new version of the frontend websites, where custom thumbnails were not displaying on the issue page. This has now been fixed. |
| OJS-1752 | Bug fix | Issue with frontend API after collections have been removed | If a collection that already had publications assigned to it was deleted then the removal of the collection assignment caused display issues for the publication(s) in question. This has now been fixed so that if the collection is deleted, any submissions/publications that are associated with it will be unaffected, apart from the removal of the collection. |
| OJS-1774 | Bug fix | Navbar content errors | After a recent upgrade, some journals with custom navigation menus saw errors introduced. These have been fixed. |
| OJS-1755 | Enhancement | Email configurations | Continued release of updated email configurations to enhance deliverability and high compliance standards (see OJS-1561, below). |
| PLAT-1364 | Bug fix | Production file upload | The Ubiquity production team experienced problems uploading files into the production workflow, causing delays to the typesetting and proofing process. This has been fixed. |
Apr 23, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1233 | Enhancement | Alt text for `alt` banner images | Addition of alt text for frontend images, helping to increase journal accessibility. |
| OJS-1260 | Bug fix | Versioning API | Update to the versioning functionality so that the frontend can receive the correct information. This does not yet make versioning fully functional, but removes a key bug to future development. |
| OJS-1737 | Bug fix | OAI-PMH error | The OAI-PMH feed was displaying an error for some journals. This has been fixed. |
| OJS-1740 | Enhancement | Email configurations | Continued release of updated email configurations to enhance deliverability and high compliance standards (see OJS-1561, below). |
| OJS-1741 | Enhancement | PKP Preservation Network | Instillation, testing and fixing of the PKP Preservation Network plugin, which will increase the preservation of content for all journals on the Ubiquity platform. |
| PLAT-1320 | Bug fix | Numerical reference lists | A bug was discovered that was preventing reference lists from displaying the numerical identifier, and instead showing a bullet point. This has been resolved. |
| PLAT-1343 | Bug fix | Author list for Harvard citation style | The citation export function was only showing the first author if the Harvard style was selected. This has been updated so that all authors now display. |
| OJS-1749 | Bug fix | Issue page | A bug was found on the journal issue page that caused an error in the display of some journals. This has been fixed. |
| OJS-663 | Enhancement | Preset email templates | Email templates have been updated so that new installations will have improved templates without additional setup required, thus lowering the setup time for new journals. |
Apr 9, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1450 | Enhancement | `Alt` text for journal banner images | The API was updated to include the alt text for the journal banner images, thus aiding site accessibility. |
| PLAT-1247 | Bug fix | Republish article galley files | An error previously occurred where unpublishing and then republishing an article with different galley files often didn’t update the frontend correctly. This has now been corrected. |
| OJS-1724 | Enhancement | UnitTests to the OJS API | Addition of unit tests into the OJS API, helping to reduce the number of introduced bugs. |
| OJS-1728 | Enhancement | Email configurations | Continued release of updated email configurations to enhance deliverability and high compliance standards (see OJS-1561, below). |
| OJS-1729 | Enhancement | Translation portal | Additional of journal content into a translation portal, allowing for translations to be provided easily and quickly. |
| OJS-1731 | Bug fix | Error in navigation bar | A recent update caused an error within the website navigation bar when the journal was upgraded. This error has been fixed. |
Mar 26, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-402 | Bug fix | Make galley files private if unpublished | When a published article was unpublished, the original galley file was not being linked to, but was technically still available. This is now not the case. If a galley file is unpublished, it will not be available via the same URL. |
| OJS-1665 | Bug fix | Cover images | The method of providing the cover image to the frontend has been updated, as inconsistencies were being found, leading to display issues. |
| OJS-1691 | Enhancement | RSS feed configuration | The setting for RSS feeds has been updated so that external feed readers are able to load the data quicker. |
| OJS-1715 | Bug fix | Issue end point speed | The API end points for issue pages were taking too long to load. This has been addressed so that the data can be provided to the frontend pages quicker. |
| OJS-1719 | Bug fix | General content block not displaying | The general content block on the journal homepage was not displaying correctly for a small number of journals. This has been fixed. |
| OJS-1725 | Bug fix | Article order on issue page | The order of published articles on the issue page was not always updating correctly/quickly. This has been fixed. |
| OJS-1722 | Enhancement | Email configurations | Continued release of updated email configurations to enhance deliverability and high compliance standards (see OJS-1561, below). |
Mar 12, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Various | Enhancement | Continued investigation into OJS 3.4 upgrade process | Ongoing work updating plugins that will be required for the OJS 3.4 upgrade |
| OJS-1710 | Enhancement | Email configurations | Continued release of updated email configurations to enhance deliverability and high compliance standards (see OJS-1561, below). |
Feb 27, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Various | Enhancement | Continued investigation into OJS 3.4 upgrade process | Ongoing work updating plugins that will be required for the OJS 3.4 upgrade |
| OJS-1329 | Bug fix | Participant assignment lists not correctly displaying | A code contribution was submitted to core OJS to fix a bug whereby the assignment page for article participants gives the wrong number of rows/entries. Once merged into core OJS, Ubiquity will update its platform to include this fix. |
| OJS-1650 | Enhancement | Security patches | Security enhancements added to the journal platform |
| OJS-1689 | Bug fix | Full Issue downloads not working | Some journals that had uploaded full issue galleys had discovered that older files were no longer publicly available. These have been fixed so that all issue galleys are now available again. |
| OJS-1690 | Enhancement | New journal frontend infrastructure | A new journal frontend has been tested and will be deployed to all journals over the coming weeks. Whilst the design is the same, the new websites should bring significant loading speed improvements, among other things. |
| OJS-1692 | Enhancement | Email configurations | Continued release of updated email configurations to enhance deliverability and high compliance standards (see OJS-1561, below). |
| OJS-1700 | Bug fix | Submission Checklist | A bug was discovered in newly installed journals that was preventing the submission checklist from appearing on the frontend website. This has been fixed. |
| PLAT-1171 | Bug fix | Citation export error | Some publications were showing a 500 error when the reader tried to download the citation file. This has now been fixed. |
| PLAT-1221 | Bug fix | Submission date display error | The submission date was displaying incorrectly for some articles that had HTML article pages, due to the quick submit plugin being used. This error has now been fixed. |
Feb 13, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-863 | Bug fix | JPEG collection images | Uploading JPEG file types as a collection image was previously creating an error. JPEGs now upload correctly. |
| OJS-1057 | Bug fix | Single name author citation | The ‘how to cite’ function on the journal frontend previously created initials for the author name, even when the author only had one name entered, which is incorrect. The citation tool should now render the full name, if only a single name is provided, to fit recognised citation styles. |
| OJS-1117 | Bug fix | Competing interests policy updated not saving | The central competing interest policy was sometimes resetting the entered content and thus not saving new edits. This has been fixed so that the save works as intended. |
| OJS-1653 | Enhancement | Email configurations | Continued release of updated email configurations to enhance deliverability and high compliance standards (see OJS-1561, below). |
| OJS-1671 | Bug fix | Publishing issues with articles already assigned | An error was occurring in journals that published a batch issue, whereby article were assigned to an unpublished issue and then the issue was published as a whole at the same time. In some cases, some articles were not being automatically published during this process. This has been fixed so that the the issues now publish in full, as intended. |
| OJS-1685 | Bug fix | Native XML export | The XML export function was not resulting in a valid XML file being produced. This has now been fixed so that the export plugin tool is now functional. |
Jan 30, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1618 | Enhancement | Omit Section title from issue page | An OJS setting to omit the Section/Article Type title from the issue page had previously not been implemented. The setting is now functional, meaning that a journal can choose whether to list the Section titles on their issue pages. To edit the setting go to |
| OJS-1655 | Enhancement | Page settings URL help text | A number of settings that create frontend page content did not display what URL the content would appear on. Help text has now been added to a list number of settings so that users can more easily find the content that they are editing. |
| OJS-1666 | Enhancement | Email configurations | Continued release of updated email configurations to enhance deliverability and high compliance standards (see OJS-1561, below). |
| Various | Enhancement | Continued investigation into OJS 3.4 upgrade process | Ongoing work updating plugins that will be required for the OJS 3.4 upgrade |
| OJS-1642 | Bug fix | Metadata errors | Specific aspects of the journal/article metadata have been optimised to allow easier indexing by databases such as Google Scholar. |
| OJS-1108 | Enhancement | Database cleanup | Certain database tables remained from the OJS 2 migration that could be optimised/removed. These were backed up and actioned. |
Jan 16, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1623 | Enhancement | Continued investigation into OJS 3.4 upgrade process | Ongoing work updating plugins that will be required for the OJS 3.4 upgrade |
| OJS-1652 | Bug fix | Dependent files sometimes not displayed | An error was discovered that was leading to a small number of images not displaying on their publication pages. This has been fixed. |
Jan 2, 2024
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1560 | Enhancement | Continued investigation into OJS 3.4 upgrade process | Ongoing work updating plugins that will be required for the OJS 3.4 upgrade |
| OJS-1644 | Enhancement | Email configurations | Continued release of updated email configurations to enhance deliverability and high compliance standards (see OJS-1561, below). |
| OJS-1651 | Bug fix | Articles that have no titles break the frontend | If an article was published with no title entered, it would break the article page on the journal website. This has now been fixed so that a publication without a title in the metadata will still display on the frontend pages. |
Dec 19, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1166 | Bug fix | Quick Submit plugin failures | A bug was reported when using the Quick Submit plugin that was leading to failed new submissions. This has been fixed. |
| OJS-1363 | Bug fix | Missing status data | Some stage assignments were missing, or set to NONE when passing from OJS to the Ubiquity infrastructure. This has been updated so that the correct status is logged. |
| OJS-1582 | Enhancement | Sentry profiling | Additional error logs have been added to the OJS platform so that the Ubiquity team see errors reported in real time. |
| OJS-1607 | Enhancement | Donation widget added to CSP exceptions list | The cafdonatewidget has been added to the journal to CSP exceptions list, allowing journal to display the external widget on the journal webpages. See here for the full list of permitted external services that can embed content into. the journal pages. |
| OJS-1611 | Enhancement | Email configurations | Continued release of updated email configurations to enhance deliverability and high complaince standards (see OJS-1561, below). |
| OJS-1612 | Enhancement | Enhancing SQL queries in API for improved response times | Optimising SQL queries in the journal API for improved response/page loading times. |
Dec 5, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-945 | Enhancement | Disable unused plugins | OJS installations contained a number of plugins that were not being used. These have been removed to increase site speed and remove confusion for journal managers. |
| OJS-991 | Feature | Custom text to issue page | A setting has been created so that custom text can be added to the Issue list on the journal frontend, above the list of cover images. For more information, visit this article in our Knowledge Base. |
| OJS-1601 | Enhancement | Email configurations | Continued release of updated email configurations to enhance deliverability and high complaince standards (see OJS-1561, below). |
| OJS-1605 | Enhancement | Continued investigation into OJS 3.4 upgrade process | Ongoing work updating plugins that will be required for the OJS 3.4 upgrade |
Nov 21, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1546 | Enhancement | Contribution to Control Public Files plugin | Enhancement to the Control Public Files plugin, which limits the file types permitted for upload in some areas of the system, thus increasing platform security. |
| OJS-1570 | New feature | Latest Updates button | The OJS banner now includes a button titled ‘Latest Updates’, which links to this page, making it easy for journal users to see the latest platform releases. |
| OJS-1588 | Bug fix | CrossRef XML Export Plugin error | The CrossRef XML Export plugin was leading to an error on some journals, which was preventing the export of article data. This has been fixed. |
| OJS-1590 | Enhancement | Email configurations | Continued release of updated email configurations to enhance deliverability and high complaince standards (see OJS-1561, below). |
| OJS-1592 | Enhancement | Supported supplementary file extensions | bbl. files are now supported for supplementary files. |
| OJS-1596 | Bug fix | Contact form error | An error was introduced into the contact form of the journal website, leading to an error message. This has been fixed. |
Nov 7, 2023
*note: due to the email configuration updates, some releases will also need to be delayed. When each journal has the email configuration updated they will also receive the most up to date journal platform, including the below. Until the email configuration is complete some of the below releases may not be available.
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1188 | Enhancement | Update to LOCKSS manifest page | A setting has been added to the Distribution > Archiving setting so that a custom URL can be added that will change the LOCKSS manifest page data. This allows LOCKSS & CLOCKSS to archive the site when the journal frontend is on a different URL to the OJS backend. |
| OJS-1501 | Bug fix | Native XML import/export plugin | The Native XML import/export plugin was crashing and preventing exports. This has been resolved. |
| OJS-1555 | Enhancement | OJS setting speeds | Plugins have been optimised to help improve the saving speed for some settings. |
| OJS-1578 | Enhancement | Email configurations | Continued release of updated email configurations to enhance deliverability and high complaince standards (see OJS-1561, below). |
| OJS-1583 | Bug fix | H tags in Publication Fees setting | The Publication Fees setting allowed heading tags to be added to the entered content, but the frontend was not creating working links to these. This has now been fixed so that the heading tags create a functional link on the public website (e.g. for Waiver Information). |
| OJS-1587 | Enhancement | Increased speed to download reports | The OJS articles report could take a very long time to download, sometime leading to timing out problems. This has been improved so that reports should download without this problem. |
| OJS-1589 | Enhancement | Issue title displayed | The Issue page (e.g. here) previously displayed a list of all issues in the right column, providing the year, volume and issue data, but not the issue title (if present). The page has now been updated so that if an issue has a title then it will also be displayed in the right column. |
Oct 24, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1517 | Feature | Crossref Reference Linking plugin | The Crossref Reference Linking plugin has been installed, allowing journals who deposit DOIs directly from OJS exports to now include reference data and link them to known DOIs. The above link provides full information. |
| OJS-1521 | Enhancement | Review feedback export function | The recently added function to export completed review forms (see OJS-1462 & OJS-1492, below) has been tweaked so that the ‘author-friendly’ version of the export now does not include the reviewer’s name, so that it does not de-anonymise the review process. The export will now also include the .pdf suffix. |
| OJS-1561 | Enhancement | Email configurations | All journals will have a new email configuration put in place in the coming months. These are being released in stages on a per-journal basis and will give greater deliverability and increased compliance expected configuration standards (e.g. DMARC). The configuration changes will be done on a domain-level, so DNS owners will be contacted when their journal is ready to have the update. |
| OJS-1575 | Bug fix | Unsupported article languages | A bug was found where if an article was published in a language that the website frontend did not support, then the page crashed. This has now been fixed so that the publishing language does not cause a problem for the user language on the frontend. |
Oct 10, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1454 | Bug fix | Submission checklist ordering | The ability to re-order and save the submission checklist has been lost or the save process was often timing out. This has now been fixed. |
| OJS-1476 | Enhancement | Email configuration | Continued work to improve email deliverability by switching to domain-level configuration. |
| OJS-1536 | Enhancement | Update to CSP | Addition of kaltura.com to the Content Security Policy, to allow content hosed on kaltura.com to be embedded in journal pages. The full list of external services authorised on the site can be found here. |
| OJS-1552 | Bug fix | Correction to Author Guidelines | A minority of journals saw errors on their author guideline page due to a recent update. The effected journals have now been reverted to a previous state so that any incorrect information is no longer showing. |
Sep 26, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1487 | Enhancement | Security update | Security update to prevent malicious files from being uploaded |
| OJS-1497 | Enhancement | Removal of ‘Conversations’ setting | Due to changes in the X (formerly Twitter) policy, it is no longer possible to display the X/Twitter feed on the homepage. To avoid confusion, the setting has been removed from the OJS settings. It is still possible to link a X/Twitter account to the journal, which will appear as a button on the homepage. |
| OJS-1508 | Bug fix | PubMed XML Export Plugin error | Fix to the PubMed XML Export Plugin, where the exported XML were not correctly validating, thus preventing some indexing operations. This has now been fixed. |
| OJS-1510 | Enhancement | Security update | Reconfiguation of journal infrastructure to increase security resiliance. |
| OJS-1525 | Bug fix | DOAJ export plugin error | Fix to the DOAJ EXport Plugin, where the exported files were not correctly validating, thus preventing some indexing operations. This has now been fixed. |
| OJS-1531 | Bug fix | Issue when confirming reviews | An unintended consequence of OJS-1462 & OJS-1492 (see below) meant that some review forms showed an error prior to the review feedback being submitted. This has now been fixed. |
| OJS-1538 | Enhancement | MathJax extension | An extension to our Content Security Policy to allow MathJax to load additional extensions, such as boldsymbol. |
Sep 12, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-50 | Feature | Editor records reviewer response | An editor is now able to log the reply to a review invitation on behalf of the reviewer (e.g. if the reviewer emails the editor rather than logs the reply themselves). This has been added as a plugin to the Ubiquity platform, but will be contributed to OJS 3.4. Full instructions here. |
OJS-1462 & OJS-1492 |
Feature | Download completed review forms | An editors is now able to download a completed review form in PDF format, so that they can process it in a more flexible manner (e.g. read it offline, take to editorial board meetings). The setting gives the option to download an ‘author-friendly' version, where the editor-only comments are removed, or the complete form. This has been added as a plugin to the Ubiquity platform, but will be contributed to OJS 3.4. Full instructions here. |
| OJS-1480 | Enhancement | CLOCKSS HTML setting to the frontend | Update to the frontend /about page so that the CLOCKSS preservation service can more easily tell whether it should collect content from the site. |
| OJS-1485 | Enhancement | Update to Suggested Reviewers plugin | Change to the plugin configuration so that it can be set on a journal level. This is a public plugin that can be found here. |
| OJS-1488 | Enhancement | Security upgrades | Added function to limit the types of files, and how can upload them, into a journal, as part of ongoing security assessments. |
OJS-1494 & OJS-1496 |
Enhancement | Continued investigation into OJS 3.4 upgrade process | Ongoing work updating plugins that will be required for the OJS 3.4 upgrade |
| OJS-1507 | Enhancement | Heading tags | A platform-wide update to some frontend journal texts to implement the correct heading HTML tags, to increase accessibility for the site. |
Aug 30, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1308 | Bug fix | Statistics Report email sending when setting is disabled | The monthly email that can be sent to editors was being triggered even when the email had been disabled. This should now have been fixed. |
| OJS-1386 | Bug fix | Invalid DOAJ XML export | The XML file created by the DOAJ export included validation errors. This has been fixed so that the export is now functional. |
| OJS-1463 | Enhancement | Disable all Twitter(X) feeds | Due to changes in Twitter (rebranded as X) policy, it is no longer possible to display the Twitter feed on the journal homepage. All journals have had this setting disabled. |
| OJS-1483 | Enhancement | "allowedUploads" plugin | The "allowedUploads" plugin has been installed on all journals. This restricts what file types can be uploaded by the author during the submission process. |
| Various | Enhancement | Security upgrades | Various edits have been made to the security of the platform. |
Aug 15, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-919 | Enhancement | Multilingual article publication | The journal frontend previously did not support an article that was published in multiple language formats - e.g. the same article published with both English and German metadata (title, abstract, keywords etc). This has been updated so that if an article has multiple language metadata and has these frontend languages enabled then the reader will be able to choose which language to view the publication in. |
| OJS-1172 | Bug fix | Republished galley files not available | Some journals experienced a problem when unpublishing and republishing galley files, with the new files not being make publicly available. This has been fixed. |
| OJS-1416 | Bug fix | Not able to add new components | Adding new submission components had broken. This has been fixed. |
| OJS-1427 | Bug fix | Become a review button not responding to setting | The OJS setting to add/remove the Become a Reviewer button on the frontend banner wasn’t always being respected, meaning that sometimes it showed when it shouldn’t, or vice versa. This has been fixed. |
| OJS-1436 | Bug fix | Continuous loading wheel if email subject is too long | If an email subject included the title, and that title exceeded a certain length, the email would be triggered in OJS but not be received by the intended recipient due to a character limit. This has now been updated so that emails should no longer be limited by this issue. |
| OJS-1453 | Bug fix | Redirect for old OAI feed | Following the journal migration, the new OAI-PMH feed had a different structure from the old one, meaning that external services that were using the feeds no longer received the data. A redirect has now been put in place so that anyone trying to access the old feed structure will automatically be directed to the new, working page. |
| OJS-1455 | Enhancement | Plugin localisation | Updates to the English and German plugins that Ubiquity maintains so that the OJS interface has the correct language headers/terms displayed. |
| OJS-1468 | Bug fix | Remove GA tracking code | Following the move to Plausible.io site tracking. All Google Analytics tracking codes have been removed from the journal frontend. |
| OJS-1474 | Enhancement | Continued investigation into OJS 3.4 upgrade process | Ongoing work updating plugins that will be required for the OJS 3.4 upgrade |
Aug 1, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1438 | Enhancement | Continued investigation into OJS 3.4 upgrade process | Installation of vanilla OJS 3.4 and comparison analysis started. |
| OJS-1460 | Bug fix | Email configuration changes | Updates to the email configuration of some journals as part of continued testing to improve deliverability. |
Jul 4, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1419 | Feature | Add Site Usage dashboard to editor interface | Following the decision to move away from Google Analytics (see here), a plugin has been created to connect the OJS editor interface to site monitoring data, allowing editors and journal managers to see real-time data on how the frontend journal website is being used. See this article in our Knowledge Base for more information. The plugin needs to be manually setup. The process to do so has begun, but will take some weeks until all journals on the Ubiquity platform have the plugin setup and enabled. If journal editors/managers are not currently able to access the |
| OJS-1174 | Bug fix | Redirect to support old LOCKSS manifest URL | The migration to the new journal platform led to the URL for the LOCKSS manifest page changing, leading to existing links breaking. These are now supported, with the old URLs now redirecting to the new one. |
| OJS-1380 | Enhancement | Add issue title to Current Issue button | The Current Issue button on the journal homepage previously displayed year, volume and issue data didn’t include title information, if the issue had been given one. This has been updated so that the button will now also display an issue title, if one has been supplied. |
| OJS-1422 | Bug fix | Become a reviewer button fix | The implementation of the Become a Reviewer button on the journal banner (see below, OJS-533) caused a minor error, as the journal logo was not being displayed on the resulting page. This has now been fixed. |
| OJS-1437 | Enhancement | Collection names font size | The window displaying the title of a collection will now resize the title font if it is above 60 characters in length, helping to ensure that the title is displayed in full and not truncated. |
| OJS-1425 | Enhancement | Initial investigation into OJS 3.4 upgrade process | The first steps have been taken to prepare for the upgrade to OJS 3.4, which was released during June 2023. |
| OJS-1428 | Bug fix | Suggested Reviewers / Quick Submit error | An error within the Suggested Reviewers plugin was causing the Quick Submit form to fail, making it impossible to use. This has now been fixed so that both plugins are fully functional. |
Jun 20, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-514 | Feature | Prior journal title in citation export | It is now possible to log when a journal has previously published under a different title, so that the back content retains the historically correct title data in the citation details instead of the current journal title. This is a centrally administered setting, not in OJS, and thus needs to be inputted by the journal’s account manager at Ubiquity. |
| OJS-1426 | Feature | Author names added to peer review assignment form | Feedback from editors showed that assigning reviewers was more difficult due to the fact that the submission author list was not visible in OJS at the time reviewer assignments were made, making errors such as competing interests hard to manage. OJS has now been updated to display both the author list and the affiliations at the top of the assignment page, so that editors can make more informed decisions when inviting reviewers. |
| OJS-1375 | Enhancement | Connection to Plausible | The journal platform is now connected to Plausible.io to track site usage. This will be a replacement to the Google Analytics service that has previously been supported. Further announcements regarding this switch will be made shortly. |
| OJS-1418 | Bug fix | Enable Hypothes.is viewer only if the tab is selected | The annotation and commenting function available on the journal platform, Hypothes.is, was previously displaying public annotations as default. This has been changed so that public annotations are now only displayed if the user clicks on the Annotations tab on the publication page. |
Jun 6, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1407 | Enhancement | Increase in OJS loading times | Efficiencies have been found in how OJS and the frontend website query the OJS database. This has led to loading time improvements of up to 28%. |
| OJS-166 | Feature | JPPS badge integration | The OJS platform has had a setting added so that if a journal is registered as part of the JPPS scheme (see https://www.journalquality.info/en/ ) then the relevant badge will display on the journal banner. |
| OJS-533 | Feature | Become a Reviewer button | It is now possible to add a ‘Become a Reviewer’ button onto the journal banner, helping to encourage journal readers to engage with the journal and aid the peer review process. The button can be enabled/disabled via OJS Journal Manager settings website > Appearance > Setup. |
| OJS-1168 | Bug fix | Liveness probe (journal resilience) | The cloud infrastructure that supports the journal platform will now automatically check that OJS is available every 5 minutes. If OJS is not responding properly (i.e. the site is ‘down'), OJS will be restarted so that any unintended downtime is minimal, with automated correction. This is an interim solution in preparation for an upcoming long-term solution. |
| OJS-1343 | Feature | Additional publisher URL | The Press URL setting previously provided the URL for the publisher name in the footer as well as linking from the logo in the banner. Some journals fed back that they needed these to be separate, so that the logo links to one location and the publisher name in the footer links to another location. This has been implemented. Website > Appearance > Setup > Press URL now provides a link to the logo in the banner whilst a new setting at Journal > Masthead > Publisher URL provides a link for the publisher name in the footer. A Knowledge Base article on the setting is available here. |
| OJS-1346 | Bug fix | Incorrect URLs in automated reviewer reminders | A bug has been fixed that was providing incorrect URLs to reviewers when they received automated review reminders. All URLs provided to reviewers should now be correct. |
May 23, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-1382 | Enhancement | Speed improvement | Infrastructure upgrades were completed to help increase the loading speed for OJS installations. |
| OJS-1354 | Enhancement | Add Print ISSN to frontend footer | If a Print ISSN is added into the OJS metadata then this will now display in the journal footer on the frontend. Previously only the Online ISSN was displayed. |
| OJS-1360 | Bug fix | Peer reviewed status | Each journal Section/Article type has a setting option ‘Will not be peer-reviewed’. When ticked, the frontend should not display the ‘peer reviewed’ status on the publication page. This setting was not being respected, so some publications were being labeled as peer reviewed when this was not the case. This has been corrected so that the frontend respsects the Section setting. |
| OJS-1335 | Bug fix | ‘Show Carousel’ setting not working | The ‘Show Carousel’ setting was not being edited in OJS but not reflected on the frontend unless other actions were also taken. This has been fixed so that when the setting updates then the frontend immediately. |
| OJS-1325 | Bug fix | Author name display for Table of Contents | The display of author family names was not correct on the homepage or issue Table of Contents if the author had multiple family names. Previously the list would only display the last name available. Now it will show all names in the Family Name field of OJS. |
| OJS-1323 | Bug fix | API throws a 500 error if collection does not exist | The journal frontend was crashing if a specific collection path was searched for but didn’t exist. The API now responds with a 404 response so that the frontend can handle this appropriately in the event that a user navigates to one of these pages. |
| OJS-1320 | Bug fix | Import/Export plugin error | The Import/Export plugin was giving a continuous spinning wheel when asked to export publications. This has now been fixed. |
| OJS-1282 | Enhancement | Add link to Community Portal | A link to the ]u[ Ubiquity Community Portal has been added to the OJS banner, allowing all journal users to easily ask questions and see comments from other users. There is also a specific Journal Editor community that editors are able to access (if access is required but not yet provided, please contact emily@ubiquitypress.com). |
| OJS-1279 | Bug fix | Ordering of sections & Collections error | Sections (article types) & Collections can have editable ordering in OJS but this was not being reflected on the frontend unless other actions were also taken. This has been fixed so that when the Section/Collection setting is updated then the frontend will quickly also update. |
| OJS-1219 | Enhancement | Repoint the 'start submission' buttons | Previously the ‘start submission’ buttons that are found on the journal banner and /about/submissions page pointed to the general OJS user dashboard. They now point directly to the submission form, helping prospective authors to directly access the submission system. |
| OJS-868 | Bug fix | Issue galley file | Further correction to the ability for an issue to have a complete galley available to the readers, allowing the journal to create an issue as a single file that is downloadable on the journal frontend. |
| OJS-1294 | Enhancement | Install Honeypot plugin | Installation of a plugin that helps to block out spam/bot user registrations. |
| OJS-742 | Enhancement | Install betterPassword plugin | Installation of a plugin that increases registration security by implementing NIST recommendations for passwords (e.g. miinimum length, checking passwords against known weak passwords, rate limiting failed password attempts). |
| OJS-1364 | Bug fix | DOAJ export issue | When trying to download articles using the DOAJ export issue function only a white page page being produced. This has now been fixed so that the export is functional. |
May 9, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-960 | Feature | Issue page: additional metadata | The issue page on the new journal platform didn’t include the article metadata such as pagination, volume and issue, nor a download button. These have now been added. |
| OJS-685 | Feature | Collections plugin: path setting | The ‘path’ setting in the collections form was previously not used on the new platform, with the frontend URL using the collection ID number. This has now been updated so that the ‘path’ in the setting will dictate the URL in the frontend for that collection page. The collection ID numbers that were previously used should now redirect to the URL using the path, so that old hyperlinks do not need to be updated. |
| OJS-1342 | Bug fix | Publication metadata | Bug fixed so that indexers such as Google Scholar can more accurately identify the whole author list and not only the first author. |
Apr 25, 2023
ID |
Bug/ Feature/ Enhancement |
Title |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJS-883 | Enhancement | Issue notifications | When a new issue is published there is a setting that dicates whether registered ‘Readers’ should be notified or not via email. OJS has this setting enabled as default. This caused a number of problems as a lot of journals publish the issue at the start of the year, when there is no/little content available. The OJS setting has been updated so that it is now opt-in rather than opt-out, so errors should be removed |
| OJS-1056 | Enhancement | Collection setting | Collections were only available on a submission’s publication tab if that collection was set to be open for submissions. This caused problems for journals that did not want a collection open to the public or wanted to amend an assignment after the call for submissions had closed. The collections plugin has now been updated so that all collections are now available to all submissions once they are in the OJS system, regardless of whether they are publicly available and appear on the submission form. |
| OJS-1102 | Bug fix | Formatting in titles | Ubiquity previously added formatting options into the title field for a submission, however, if a user pasted their submission title into OJS then it often retained non-permitted formatting formatting from the source document - this could have been displayed or hidden HTML style tags. The present of unwanted formatting HTML led to poor displays of the submission title within OJS, emails and publication pages. The platform has now been updated so that non-permitted formatting will be stripped out when the page is saved, so that only italics, superscript and subscript are retained. |
| OJS-1328 | Enhancement | Collection alt-text | Collection images now have a field so that the journal manager can add alt-text. The use of this setting is strongly recommended, to help enhance the accessibility of the websites. |
| OJS-1332 | Bug fix | Issue galleys | Issues may now have a galley file uploaded to provide the issue as a single collated file. Any file uploaded as an Issue Galley will be downloadable via the frontend issue page. |