OpenJournals Publishing, an independent publisher of scholarly journals, provides an open source publishing system and support, as well as manuscript management. The platform provides for online manuscript submissions and tracking, promising faster turnaround times and streamlined processes. Journal archives will also be available online.

The South African Journal of Science website, with a completely transformed look, will be re-released to incorporate the new functionality on Friday 19 March 2010. Published articles will be openly accessible online in PDF, HTML and XML formats at www.sajs.co.za.

According to publisher Prof Pierre de Villiers from AOSIS, the journal will also be making South African history insofar as he knows, being the first South African scholarly journal to be published in all three formats at the same time. ” In particular the XML publishing will push the South African Journal of Science content to the forefront of accessibility through internet searches, which holds positive implications for its future impact measurements” he says.

After a manuscript is submitted via the online interface of the new website, it follows the normal editorial route of all peer-reviewed journals, through editors and peer reviewers.

After copy-editing, each article is sent to design for layout. However, whereas in the past, this finished article would have been published only as a part of a complete collection in a specific issue of the journal, the article will now be available online immediately after it has gone through the process. As articles become available online, they will be collated and await print in the next hard copy edition of the South African Journal of Science. This eliminates any delays between the article as a finished product and its accessibility to interested readers.