Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique et Technique / National Centre for Scientific and Technical Research (CNRST) in Morocco has initiated a project to upgrade the Moroccan Scientific Journals Portal that hosts over a hundred Diamond open access journals. 

The Moroccan Scientific Journals Portal (PRSM) offers Moroccan and international researchers an open-access digital publishing service for their research. This platform manages the entire editorial process, including article submission, peer review, and online publication.

A key aim of the project is to migrate PRSM to a more up-to-date version of the journal management and publishing software, Open Journal Systems (OJS). It will also develop a search interface for the platform and implement a thematic classification system by research fields and sub-field. These upgrades will ensure improved discoverability and visibility of PRSM journals through greater interoperability with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), DataCite and ORCID, and provide more intuitive navigation for users.

To ensure that journal editors are able to use the upgraded platform, the project will develop practical tools and multilingual guides (Arabic, English and French). It will also organize regional workshops for journal editors across the country to support adoption of best practices in scientific publishing and ethics, and the importance of adoption of ORCID.

The project is one of 30  that have received grant support through a three-year project to strengthen no-fee 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.

Activities

• Migrating PRSM to an updated version of OJS
• Producing and distributing multilingual guides, including a tutorial video, on how to use the upgraded platform and the adoption of the ORCID identifier
• Developing a comprehensive toolbox for journal editors, with guides and templates covering best practices in OJS publishing
• Organizing capacity building workshops for journal editors across the country
• Co-constructing a national editorial ethics policy with journal stakeholders to strengthen editorial governance across PRSM

Timeline

September 2025 - September 2026

More about the Moroccan Scientific Journals Portal