When we established the Open Access team at the University of the Free State Library and Information Services in 2015, our first steps were to establish an institutional repository, KovsieScholar.
Simultaneously we were working on helping the accredited academic journals of the University to become Open Access. At that time the journals were still distributed in print, with minimal distribution online. The online articles were hosted on the University's website, but was not easily discoverable or accessible. In addition to that, there were no built-in tools on the web platform to cater for publishing workflows or access control.
With help from ASSAf we installed Open Journals Systems (OJS) version 3, the first to do so in South Africa. So not only was it a steep learning curve to get to know OJS, but no one to ask about OJS 3! With hindsight, this worked out very well. Our editorial teams learned how to publish online with version 3, so another learning curve from version 2 was avoided.
KovsieJournals was launched in 2016 with our 8 accredited journals:
Since then, a new journal was approved by Directorate: Research Development and have their first issue published - Journal for Translation Studies in Africa.
During Open Access Week 2020 we interviewed most of the KovsieJournals' editorial teams to find out what Open Access means to them, and how they experience managing Open Access journals. You can view them here or visit the Digital Scholarship Centre's YouTube channel.
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