The Journal of Agricultural and Biomedical Sciences (JABS) is a multidisciplinary no-fee (Diamond) open access journal that publishes research in the natural sciences, medicine, health sciences, and agriculture. The journal plays a critical role in disseminating local and regional research that addresses Zambian and African developmental challenges. By providing a platform for rigorously peer-reviewed content without article processing charges, JABS significantly contributes to equity in the global scholarly ecosystem. 

JABS is one of 15 University of Zambia (UNZA) journals hosted on the university’s Open Journal Systems (OJS) journal management and publishing platform.  

In 2024 EIFL awarded UNZA a grant for a project (October 2024 to August 2026) to build further institutional support for JABS by professionalizing journal operations. The project included recruiting editorial assistants, developing standardized editorial processes, designing professional article templates, and implementing technical enhancements to improve discoverability of JABS and visibility in indexes like the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) and AJOL (African Journals Online).

“The project has fundamentally transformed the operational infrastructure of JABS, establishing it as a model for the university’s 15 journals.” –  Dr Christine Kanyengo, Technical Advisory Board Member for UNZA Journals.

What changed as a result of the project?

JABS staffing and editorial and technical capacity has been enhanced

The project enabled JABS to recruit two postgraduate students from UNZA as Editorial Support Assistants. 

Editorial tasks such as troubleshooting and OJS workflow management, previously undertaken almost exclusively by the Chief Editor and Deputy Chief Editor, have been taken over by the Editorial Support Assistants, who achieved total operational autonomy. 

Capacity of the Editorial Board was strengthened by training on editorial workflows and roles of Editorial Board members. During training Editorial Board members also reviewed policies covering all aspects of journal quality and production, including article submission and review, copyright, Artificial Intelligence (AI), plagiarism and other areas. 

This project brought together nine key stakeholders across UNZA technical, editorial, and research support units, including the JABS editorial team; the Centre for Information and Communication Technologies (CICT) Systems Administrator responsible for direct OJS platform infrastructure support; the Directorate of Research and Development (DRD) and Library personnel responsible for the newly-launched Integrated Research Information Management System (RIMS), designed to harvest publication data directly from OJS.

“A Systems Analyst from CICT was integrated into all project-centric activities, including plugin development. Additionally, a representative from DRD was involved to ensure alignment with the upcoming RIMS, a DSpace-CRIS research management platform,” said Prof Erastus Mwanaumo, Directorate of Research and Development. 

Journal policies have been enhanced

In reviewing and enhancing journal policies, the JABS Editorial Board and project team adapted best-practice templates provided by EIFL (specifically from the document ‘Quality in Diamond Open Access Publishing: guidelines, policies and templates’). 

Key policies enhanced and validated include Copyright, Content Updates, Correction and Retraction, Self-Archiving, Complaints and Appeals, Research Data, and Plagiarism. “Notably, the Editorial Board members expressed strong appreciation for the inclusion of a specific Generative AI Policy, recognizing its growing relevance in academic publishing,” said Prof Chisoni Mumba, Chief Editor.

Workflows have been documented and standardized leading to more consistent publication output

The JABS Editorial Board and editorial team also validated the processes, procedures and guidelines for journal operations, which formed the basis for the new ‘Operations and Maintenance Manual for University of Zambia Affiliated Journals’ .

“Use of the operations manual has led to a more consistent publication schedule. During the project timeline, the journal successfully addressed previous workflow delays and maintained a consistent publication schedule. A total of 54 articles were published across ten issues of JABS during the project period, demonstrating the impact of the improved editorial workflows,” said Prof Chisoni Mumba, Chief Editor.

The visual quality and consistency of published articles have improved

Professionally designed MS Word and LaTeX templates have enhanced the visual quality and consistency of published articles. 

Design improvements included shifting from a double-column format to a single-column format to enhance readability and simplify typesetting. Additionally, the new templates now include a dedicated cross-reference link to Crossmark metadata, ensuring the journal adheres to international best practices for maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record.

The templates are now live and in use. They have been integrated into the journal's workflow and are now mandatory for new submissions.

The OJS journal templates and interface have been redesigned

The project team customized the OJS Theme plugin and redesigned the JABS OJS interface. “Africa Journals Online (AJOL) served as the inspiration for the multi-site platform structure and PLOS (Public Library of Science) journals for structuring specific journal content,” said Dr Lighton Phiri, Technical Advisor.  

“Significant structural changes were made to the menu systems to improve navigation, particularly for accessing the newly validated policy documents.”

The journal website has also been improved and updated. The site has been populated with details of the Editorial Board, updated Author Guidelines, and the newly created MS Word and LaTeX templates. 

JABS articles are more visible and discoverable

A comprehensive empirical analysis was conducted to assess the indexing visibility of the journals. Using Python scripts, the project team mined and analyzed metadata from OpenAlex, Google Scholar, Crossref, and the University of Zambia OJS platform. 

Guided by the findings of the analysis, the team executed a major retrospective update of legacy content. Incomplete or inaccurate metadata in archived issues was corrected to ensure alignment with international indexing standards. Meta-tag configurations were optimized to ensure accurate harvesting by Google Scholar and other aggregators.

Significant progress was made in the development and deployment of customized OJS plugins. The initial versions of the Metadata Verifier plugin and DSpace Exporter plugin for the automatic deposit of articles to the institutional repository have been successfully developed, tested, and published as open-source software on GitHub. These tools are publicly accessible to the broader OJS and OA publishing communities and are also indexed on the main project website's software repository portal. The DOI Depositor plugin for managing DOIs will be made available on GitHub soon.

ORCID integration has been successfully implemented within the submission workflow. 

JABS is now indexed in AJOL, currently the only UNZA journal. JABS has also renewed its application for inclusion in DOAJ, and at the time of writing, was awaiting feedback.

Establishment of University of Zambia Editorial Support Office

“All 15 journals published by UNZA benefited from the project, starting from changes implemented on the OJS platform, to training, to the development of ‘Operations and Maintenance Manual for University of Zambia Affiliated Journals’, which standardized and smoothed the path from article submission to publication. The Manual has been deposited in the shared project repository, where it is available to JABS and the other 14 University of Zambia journals. 

“The project team has drafted a Position Paper for the UNZA Executive Management proposing the permanent establishment of an Editorial Support Office for UNZA journals.

“For large institutions similar to the University of Zambia (hosting 15 journals, with over 900 academic staff and 2,000+ postgraduate graduates annually), our primary advice is to Institutionalize the Editorial Support Office. Relying on ad-hoc arrangements is insufficient for this scale. A dedicated office can centralize support not only for journals but also for broader quality assurance tasks, such as the processing of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs),” said Prof Erastus Mwanaumo, Directorate of Research and Development. 

Who sustains ongoing journal expenses? 

The University of Zambia is committed to the long-term sustainability of its journals.

• Infrastructure and Identifiers: The costs for server infrastructure, hosting, and maintenance are covered by the Centre for Information and Communication Technologies (CICT) budget.
• Staffing: To ensure no loss of technical capacity, DRD has retained the two postgraduate Editorial Support Assistants on six-month contracts while the Position Paper for the permanent Editorial Support Office is being processed. 

The project is one of 33 that have received grant support through a three-year project to strengthen Diamond open access publishing in Africa implemented by EIFL, AJOL (African Journals Online) and WACREN (the West and Central African Research and Education Network), with funding from Wellcome. 

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