Academic journals are hosted on designated platforms where they can be accessible for their audiences. Since scholarly publications’ audiences include a few different groups of users – academic communities, scientists, peer reviewers, publishers – it’s important that an open-access journal hosting platform is designed to meet the diverse needs of each user group.
Some authors choose their hosting platforms based on their academic area as some of the platforms are oriented to specific disciplines, such as literature, medicine, engineering, and the like. However, each journal publishing platform offers different features and perks to enhance the experience of their users and to make the publishing process as smooth as possible.
As an author, editor, or publisher, you’ll find many journal hosting platforms that seem to be equally great. But what you really need is a place that will benefit your academic work in the long run.
Listed below are the most relevant factors to consider when choosing the right journal hosting platform:
Do you need specific IT skills to manage the platform?
The first question every publisher needs to ask themselves before landing on a publishing platform is whether the platform is easy to manage and operate. To save your time and money instead of hiring an IT person, you should opt for a platform that allows you to upload the publications, archives, edit them and publish in their desired format (PDF, HTML, XML or other) easily, without any extra technical knowledge. This won’t be a daunting task since this feature has become a new standard in most present-day publishing platforms.
Does it have a user-friendly, responsive interface?
Do your journal articles contain specific tables, equations, or figures? Do you need to display complex layouts? If you choose a user-friendly journal hosting platform, you won’t need to worry about the appearance of the content layout, neither on your laptop nor on the mobile. The software will perfectly display all the content, giving your audience the best user experience.
How well is it optimized for Search Engines?
To make it in the academic world, you need citations and you need to build your audience. SEO is not just for businesses – it’s as important for marketing as it is for science. A truly modern journal hosting platform with built-in SEO features will ensure that your content is discoverable and searchable, so you can increase your ranking on Google.
Does the platform support the HTML format?
Reverting to the SEO, the search engine optimization for the journal’s content would not be possible without full-text HTML format support. Apart from that, universal and versatile HTML format allows the user to share their articles by link, include interactive content into the article, copy text excerpts, and much more.
How long does it take to upload a publication?
Last but not least, if you want to save your time in order to focus on important tasks rather than manual ones, make sure the journal hosting platform enables a quick and smooth content upload process. Ideally, look for a platform where you can simply drag and drop your JATS XML or PDF files straight into the program.
PubliMill is a journal hosting platform that accommodates these five features and includes even more helpful functionalities – all that to maximize the reach of academic researchers’, editors’ and publishers’ work and to assist them at all stages of the journal publishing process.
