Beta release "Bern" - both plugins are published!

We are pleased to announce the first beta release - codename "Bern" - of the two plugins for Open Journal Systems (OJS) developed as part of the OPTIMETA project, the OPTIMETA Citations Plugin and the OPTIMETA Geo Plugin.

The release of the two plugins - the OPTIMETA Citations Plugin (https://github.com/TIBHannover/optimetaCitations) and the OPTIMETA Geo Plugin (https://github.com/TIBHannover/optimetaGeo) -  is a major milestone for the project and we hope to find many early adopters of our work so that we can fix bugs and align the upcoming developments to user needs.

This software is an early beta release, so please use a staging or testing system to provide your valuable feedback before proceeding to your production system. Both plugins have been tested with the two most recent OJS releases (versions 3.3.0 and 3.1.2). You can reach out directly to our OPTIMETA developers with any concerns or reports, e.g., if you need support for a specific OJS version or have troubles installing the plugin, by opening an issue on the respective code repositories (linked below) or sending us an email at daniel.nuestuni-muensterde.

As these plugins break new ground and are developed as part of a research project with a fixed funding term, we are currently working on providing long term support so that both plugins will be available through the OJS Plugin Gallery. Follow us for updates (https://twitter.com/OPTMTA) or reach out to the OPTIMETA team (https://projects.tib.eu/optimeta/en/team/) if you have any questions or would like to be updated about future releases.

Take a look at the next news entry on the OPTIMETA website to learn more about the software development roadmap or check out the published version of the project proposal at https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.7.e66264.

Release Notes

OPTIMETA Citations Plugin

The OPTIMETA Citations plugin provides state of the art reference capturing and publication for OJS journals. In this release, the complete submission flow works and authors can now automatically turn a list of references into meaningful metadata. The source code of the plugin is released under the GNU General Public License, Version 3 and developed online at https://github.com/TIBHannover/optimetaCitations.

The full feature list of this release is as follows:

  • References provided during submission are parsed and enriched based on metadata from OpenAlex (http://openalex.org/)
  • Enriched citations can be edited in the article details pages by authors and editors
  • Deposition of the references to external open access platforms either manually after publication or later with a scheduled task
  • Supported deposition target: OpenCitations CROCI test repository (actual OpenCitations CROCI connection depends on pending implementation by OpenCitations)
  • User interface translated  to English, German, Spanish, French, Dutch and Turkish
  • Continuous integration tests verify all features for OJS versions 3.2.1.x and 3.3.0.x

Follow these steps to install the plugin:

  • Download the plugin from https://github.com/TIBHannover/optimetaCitations/releases/tag/v1.0.1-beta
  • Extract the files to [your OJS installation directory]/plugins/generic/optimetaCitations
  • Login to your OJS instance with an admin account and activate the plugin (Website > Plugins, find "Optimeta Citations Plugin", and click on the checkbox to enable)
  • Configure the plugin: open the plugin's settings and fill in the GitHub login details at "Open Citations CROCI" (you can for now ignore Wikidata, this connection does not work yet) - see detailed instructions at https://github.com/TIBHannover/optimetaCitations#registering-for-opencitationsorg-croci
  • This plugin requires the feature "References" to be enabled. (Workflow > Submission > Metadata, find "Enable references metadata", and click on the checkbox to enable)
  • The built-in plugin DOI needs to be enabled (Website > Plugins, find DOI (Public Identifiers Plugins), and click on the checkbox to enable); Open the settings page and configure the plugin: Issues, Articles and DOI Prefix must be enabled/fill in.

OPTIMETA Geo Plugin

The OPTIMETA Geo Plugin offers an innovative way to capture and provide geospatial properties of research articles in OJS. Authors provide  location information and time periods that are relevant for their manuscript during the submission and the metadata is displayed on article landing pages as well as for whole issues and journals on and interactive map to improve discovery of relevant works. The source code of the plugin is released under the GNU General Public License, Version 3 and developed online at https://github.com/TIBHannover/optimetaGeo.

The OPTIMETA Geo Plugin requires an adaption of the theme to provide specific features, namely the adding of a "Map" link in the top level journal menu on the public website and the adding of a map on the issue table of contents page. The OPTIMETA Geo Plugin Theme has been developed as a flexible child theme. The theme can extend different parent themes with the same code base to insert the required small changes. The theme is published at https://github.com/ifgi/optimetaGeoTheme. You have your own theme or your theme is not supported yet? Please get in touch so we can work with you on these changes!

The full feature list of this release is as follows:

  • Submission form contains interactive map and calendar form to enter spatial and temporal metadata respectively
  • Support for one time period and multiple geometries of different types: location markers, line features, and areas
  • Automatic retrieval of the most suitable administrative unit based on GeoNames (https://www.geonames.org)
  • Publication of spatial article metadata on maps for articles, issues, and journals
  • Publication of spatial article metadata in machine-readable from in HTML metadata
  • Listing of temporal article metadata on article landing pages
  • User interface translated to English, German, Spanish, and French
  • Continuous integration tests verify all features

Follow these steps to install the plugin:

  • Create an account for GeoNames at https://www.geonames.org/login and note your username
  • Download the plugin from https://github.com/TIBHannover/optimetaGeo/releases/tag/v1.0.0.0-beta (file optimetaGeo.zip)
  • Extract the files to [your OJS installation directory]/plugins/generic/optimetaGeo
  • Login to your OJS instance with an admin account and activate the plugin (Website > Plugins, find "OPTIMETA Geo Plugin", and click on the checkbox to enable)
  • Configure the plugin: open the plugin's settings and fill in the username and the appropriate API endpoint as explained in the settings form
  • Download the theme from https://github.com/ifgi/optimetaGeoTheme/releases/tag/v1.0.0.0-beta 
  • Extract the files to [your OJS installation directory]/plugins/themes/optimetaGeoTheme
  • Login to your OJS instance with an admin account and activate the theme
  • Configure the theme: open the theme configuration page, enable the theme and configure the correct parent theme