Program description and policies

Scope of Service

Service eligibility

Any existing journal with an editor currently affiliated with Cornell is eligible for the service. Should the editor leave Cornell, or should the journal name a new editor unaffiliated with Cornell, the journal may continue to use the service.

Service prioritization and capacity

We may not be able to provide immediate service to all candidate journals, and will queue prospective users accordingly. We use the following criteria to prioritize support for hosting journals:

• Active journals publishing at least twice per year
• Journals publishing peer-reviewed, scholarly content
• Open access journals and journals transitioning to open access
• Journals requiring authors to apply a Creative Commons license to their work
• Journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, or otherwise meeting the criteria for listing in the DOAJ
• Journals published by an academic unit at Cornell
• Cornell graduate and undergraduate student journals:
  • Student journals must be associated with a registered Cornell student organization and have a faculty and/or staff sponsor and an established student recruitment/succession process.
  • The editor in chief and at least one student involved with the production process must meet with CUL program staff at least once per year to review requirements and best practices.

As resources allow, and consistent with our eligibility requirements, we may elect to support:

• Active journals publishing once per year
• Toll access journals with a documented plan to transition to a fully open access (no article processing charge, or APC) model within five years
• Toll access journals published by a professional society
• Other types of serial publications, such as trade publications, publications produced by administrative units of Cornell University, or locally-produced publications not affiliated with Cornell University
• New journals
• Journals that publish at irregular intervals or that publish only whole issue files are generally not considered for hosting on OJS, but may be eligible to use eCommons for distribution.

As the service develops, we expect to modify these priorities. CUL reserves the right to refuse to host any journal.

Responsibilities of Cornell University Library

Cornell University Library provides:

• Consultation on the appropriateness of any journal for inclusion in the service
• Use of CUL’s journal hosting platform (whether hosted locally or by another service provider), including:
  • Overall set up and maintenance of the system
  • Metadata maintenance, remediation and transformation to support optimal system operation, updates, and migrations (note that CUL reserves the right to modify journal and article metadata to support these functions)
  • Initial journal configuration
  • Account creation for journal staff
  • User training and support for editors and editorial staff
  • Submission and monitoring of platform bug reports to developers.
• For existing journals, migration of metadata and backfiles into OJS, provided the metadata do not require unusually extensive remediation or transformation (as determined by CUL staff)
• Usage statistics, dependent upon the capabilities of the platform
• Backup of content
• Optional CrossRef DOI registration for each article, access to iThenticate for plagiarism detection
• Optional assistance with ISSN registration, consultation on abstracting and indexing services, consultation on the development of journal publishing policies and author publishing agreements, and consultation on registration with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• Inclusion of journal-level metadata in the CUL online catalog and in WorldCat
• Digitization of backfiles may be arranged for a fee via CUL’s Digital Consulting & Production Services.

Cornell University Library does not provide:

• Journal websites, aside from OJS-supported journal web pages
• Design services for customizing OJS journal web pages
• Print fulfillment
• Metadata creation for backfiles, although we can provide guidance on preparing backfile metadata for migration into the service, and provide a reasonable level of remediation of existing metadata
• Remediation of content to meet web content accessibility requirements.

Responsibilities of participating editors and journals

Participating journals must agree to the terms of a journal hosting agreement with CUL, and are responsible for:

• Establishing an editorial board and staff and managing for turnover
• All aspects of editorial workflow management, including (but not limited to):
  • Soliciting submissions
  • Managing the review process
  • Ensuring author adherence to copyright law
  • Managing allegations of research misconduct
  • Corresponding with authors, reviewers, and editorial staff
  • Managing user accounts for their journal
  • Managing article processing charges, if applicable
  • Providing user support to submitters and reviewers
• All aspects of production, including (but not limited to):
  • Copyediting
  • Graphic design
  • Content formatting, including meeting web accessibility standards (as described below)
  • Layout
  • Metadata creation, entry, and correction (if specified in the journal's workflow)
  • Publication scheduling (if specified in the journal's workflow)
  • Uploading articles and creating journal issues (if specified in the journal's workflow).
• Drafting and making available to users the journal’s policies
• All business, marketing, and communication functions
• Arranging for third-party fulfillment of editorial, production, business, marketing or communication functions, if applicable
• Developing and implementing journal policies and author agreements. An author agreement is required. Program staff can provide consultative help and referrals in this area, and a generic agreement is available.

Copyright and licensing policies

Compliance with copyright law

Journal editors and staff are responsible for ensuring their authors comply with copyright law, including (but not limited to) the following:

• evaluating the copyright status of third-party content used in material submitted for publication, making fair use determinations; and
• seeking permission as needed.

Journals must require authors to warrant that their work is original, contains no defamatory material, and does not infringe on the copyrights of others. Claims of infringement will be handled in consultation with Cornell University’s DMCA copyright agent.

Open access, author rights and Creative Commons licensing

Journal editors are strongly encouraged, but not required, to make their journal content openly available to view and read, without charge.

Journal editors are strongly encouraged to allow their authors, at a minimum, to retain the rights described in the SPARC author addendum, and to include this (or equivalent) information in their author agreements.

CUL supports the use of Creative Commons licenses by the journals it hosts, and journal editors are encouraged to promote among authors the adoption of Creative Commons licenses in order to clearly convey to readers permissible uses of journal content.

Web accessibility practices and standards

In support of Cornell’s Web Accessibility Policy, CUL requires editors to ensure journal web pages and all newly published documents are fully accessible. Legacy content that is not fully accessible may be migrated into the service regardless of accessibility status, and regardless of date of entry into the program.

Standards and responsibilities for accessibility of journal content and journal web pages:

• Program staff are available to consult with journal staff in creating accessible MS-Word and/or HTML templates for article formatting.
• CUL will not perform testing to determine if content meets web accessibility guidelines.
• If a user notifies CUL or the journal that content does not meet the accessibility standards defined below, or CUL or the journal receives a request for an accessible version, it will be the responsibility of the journal to remediate or provide an alternate, accessible version. CUL reserves the right to remove content if it is found to fail to meet these accessibility standards and the journal fails to provide a remediated or alternate accessible version.
• Accessibility standards:
  • For PDFs: PDFs shall pass Adobe Acrobat’s native accessibility check without errors. If verifying accessibility, CUL will not perform manual checks where indicated by Acrobat.
  • HTML: HTML documents (journal websites, HTML versions of journal content) shall pass the SiteImprove (full program or browser plug in) accessibility check without errors. If verifying accessibility, CUL will not perform manual checks where indicated by SiteImprove.
  • Supplementary a/v material: All a/v material shall be captioned by authors or journal staff.

Accessibility of platform and documentation:

• CUL does not control the software used to support its journal publishing program, but does contribute bug reports and feature requests to encourage support for web accessibility and will continue to do so.
• Public-facing program web pages and internal documentation will meet Cornell’s accessibility guidelines.
• A link to CUL’s Web Accessibility Assistance statement will appear in the footer of CUL’s instance of OJS.

Privacy

• CUL (or its service provider) is responsible for configuring the service in accordance IT@Cornell best practices, to the extent possible within the limitations of the platform.
• Journal must link to CUL's privacy policy.
• Journal must abide by and post this privacy policy: The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Preservation policy

CUL preserves journal content utilizing the capabilities of the platform in use. Currently, PKP-hosted OJS preserves qualifying journals (journals with an ISSN and at least one published issue) via LOCKSS.

Additional information:

• Journal articles will be preserved, but not journal web pages.
• Only the published versions of articles will be preserved.
• Continued preservation of ceased journals, or journals that move to another publisher or platform will be determined on a case-by-case basis. Ceased journals may be moved to another platform at the discretion of CUL.

Change log