Celebrating 10 Years of the OLH and New Developments in Janeway 

It’s #OAweek, and this year we’re also celebrating 10 years since the publication of the first article in the Open Library of Humanities Journal marking a decade since the launch of the OLH itself. We’re proud to celebrate a decade of scholar-led, diamond open access publishing, sustained by our incredible community.  
 
Since its launch in 2015, the OLH has published 13,000+ open access articles, downloaded over 8 million times worldwide. Our team has grown to 12 members, and we’ve built Janeway, our open-source publishing platform, ensuring knowledge remains open and community-owned. 
 
Our new editorial by Dr Rose Harris-Birtill (OLH Editorial Director) reflects on these achievements and the values that guide us: collaboration, community governance, and editorial freedom in academic publishing. You can read it here: https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.25841 
 
As scholarly publishing evolves, the question “Who owns our knowledge?” has never been more urgent. At the OLH, we believe ownership belongs with scholars, libraries, and readers, not commercial interests. 
 
Highlights from Janeway in 2024–25 
 
Alongside celebrating the OLH’s tenth anniversary, this year has also seen exciting developments for Janeway, our open-source publishing platform. 
 
Strengthening community governance and expanding reach 
 
Our tech team has focused on developing the community governance of Janeway and refining our processes to support a growing number of users worldwide. 
 
In 2024–25, we launched new hosted services for Aberdeen University Press, Aperio Press, and CDRXIV, with four more currently in progress. We also began working with engineers at the Public Library of Science (PLOS), who are developing Janeway’s codebase to use the platform for parts of their article submission workflow. 
 
The OLH tech team has completed seven journal migrations for journals migrating to the OLH, involving complex technical imports of back content and custom styling projects. We’ve also released 10 new versions of Janeway, which is significantly above the sector average, and delivered numerous plugin updates to extend and enhance Janeway functionality. 
 
 Accessibility implementation 
 
Following an accessibility audit by Dr Steph Driver (Publishing Technologies Developer), development work across all areas of non-compliance has been completed. This marks a major step forward in ensuring the OLH’s journals, publishing platform, and documentation are accessible to all users.


 
Research collaborations to improve user experience 
 
In September 2024, the OLH tech team began a collaboration with the California Digital Library (CDL) to conduct user research aimed at improving the Janeway dashboard and enhancing the overall user experience. 
 
Integrating ROR data 
 
In 2024–25, Joe Muller (Senior Publishing Technologies Developer) led a project to integrate ROR (Research Organisation Registry) data into Janeway. This work also included a complete redesign of the author information interface, helping journals better capture and display institutional affiliations. 
 
Introducing the Hydra plugin 
 
Designed by Mauro Sanchez (Senior Publishing Technologies Developer), the Hydra plugin allows a single submission system to publish seamlessly to one or multiple journals at any stage of the editorial workflow. This innovation streamlines the author experience and enhances the reach and flexibility of the Janeway ecosystem. 
 
OA Switchboard Janeway plug-in 

Publishers using Janeway to manage the researcher-to-reader workflow for submission, peer review, and production of scholarly articles, can now easily connect to OA Switchboard with a new Janeway plug-in. With the plug-in installed, articles published will seamlessly and immediately be reported to relevant institutions and research funders. The relevant metadata will automatically be extracted on article level and pushed to the stakeholders in the standardised OA Switchboard message structure format. 

Looking Ahead 
 
As the OLH enters its second decade, and Janeway continues to evolve as an open, community-driven platform, we remain committed to our mission: to support and extend open access to scholarship in the humanities for free, for everyone, for ever 
 
Here’s to the next ten years of building a more equitable and sustainable future for academic publishing. 

If you are interested in learning more about Janeway or in hosting your journal with the platform, please visit: https://janeway.systems/hosting.  

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