CRAFT-OA Brings Multilingual Improvements to Open Journal Systems 3.5

written by Antti-Jussi Nygård

Multilingualism is a cornerstone of scholarly publishing in Europe, where research is communicated in dozens of national, regional, and minority languages. For Diamond Open Access (OA) journals, while many serve local or multilingual communities, the ability to manage and publish content in multiple languages is essential for visibility, inclusivity, and professional publishing workflows. This principle is also highlighted in the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication, which calls for equal treatment of all languages in research assessment and publication practices.

As part of the development work in the CRAFT-OA project, new multilingualism features have been developed for Open Journal Systems (OJS) to further strengthen its already well-established multilingual support. Developed by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV), these improvements are available in the recent OJS 3.5 release and represent an important step toward making the platform more flexible and better aligned with the realities of multilingual publishing in Europe and beyond. In addition to the multilingualism improvements, OJS 3.5 also includes an early release of a metadata feature, support for controlled vocabularies, which was originally slated for a later version.

Parallel to the TSV development, TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library has been working on GDPR-related enhancements, which are also included in the 3.5 release.

This post introduces the most important new multilingualism features, explains why multilingual support matters so much for Diamond OA, and outlines how these developments fit into CRAFT-OA’s wider technical goals.

Why this work matters

Many Diamond OA journals, especially smaller or independent ones, face technical challenges that can limit their impact and ability to meet international standards.

One of the goals of CRAFT-OA is to help ensure that Diamond OA journal platforms can operate at a level of robustness, flexibility, and professionalism comparable to larger publishing systems. For Open Journal Systems (OJS), the project has identified several key development areas, such as multilingual support, GDPR-compliant user and data management, and more flexible metadata handling, as especially important for improving the usability and interoperability of the platform. These areas were chosen based on community needs and practical relevance for Diamond OA publishing.

Multilingualism improvements and more

Multilingualism is a defining feature of scholarly publishing in Europe, where research is often produced and shared in multiple national, regional, and minority languages. For Diamond OA journals, supporting this linguistic diversity is essential, not just for inclusivity and accessibility, but for ensuring research remains connected to local communities and meaningful policy contexts.

To better meet these needs, the CRAFT-OA project has introduced a series of improvements to Open Journal Systems (OJS) 3.5. These updates address longstanding limitations in how the platform handles multilingual workflows, including clearer distinctions between the user interface language, submission language, and metadata language. Together, these changes support more flexible, accurate, and discoverable multilingual publishing.

Greater control over submission language in the editorial workflow

In earlier versions of OJS, once a submission was made, the selected publication language was locked and no longer visible in the user interface. Editors had no way to adjust or even see which language had been originally selected. This often led to inconsistent metadata or incorrect language tagging, especially when submissions arrived with mistakes or when journals worked across several languages.

OJS 3.5 introduces a much-needed improvement: the submission’s language is now clearly displayed in the editorial workflow and can be edited by an editor at any stage. Changing the language prompts the editor to re-enter required metadata in the new language, ensuring accuracy and preserving the multilingual integrity of the record. This feature brings both clarity and flexibility to multilingual editorial workflows.

Enhancing discoverability through language-aware URLs

Previously, OJS used browser cookies to store the selected language, rather than embedding language information in the URL structure. This created a major issue for discoverability: search engines and web crawlers could only index content in the default language, leaving other language versions hidden and unsearchable.

To solve this, OJS 3.5 adds support for language-specific URLs using standard language codes like /en/ or /fi/. These URLs are now generated automatically when more than one user interface language is enabled in a journal. This allows search engines to crawl and index each version of the page independently, improving visibility of multilingual content. It also enhances accessibility for users who land directly on content in their preferred language.

Flexible language settings for article metadata

OJS has historically linked available article metadata language options to the platform’s installed UI languages. This tight coupling limited journals that wanted to support article metadata in languages without full user interface translations, particularly those publishing in regional, minority, or even historical languages.

OJS 3.5 introduces a new approach that separates article metadata languages from user interface languages. Journals can now configure metadata languages independently, selecting from a comprehensive list based on the BCP 47 standard. This includes more than 700 language codes, including script and regional variations (e.g., fr-CA, cnr-Cyrl).

With this change, journals can enter and edit article metadata in any language – even those not available as user interface translations for OJS. Editors can provide multilingual metadata regardless of the language used in the journal interface. The update also ensures that metadata from previously published articles remains editable, even if the associated language is no longer active in the journal settings. Journals can now tailor their workflows to accept articles in a single language while still enabling metadata entry in others – for example, allowing English abstracts for articles written in Finnish.

These updates offer far greater flexibility for multilingual publishing and reflect the real practices of many Diamond OA journals working across linguistic and cultural boundaries.

Smarter metadata with controlled vocabularies

While the primary focus of the TSV development work for OJS 3.5 has been on multilingualism, the release also includes a sneak peek at upcoming improvements to metadata handling: support for controlled vocabularies in article metadata.

Until now, journals using OJS could only enter free-text values for metadata fields like keywords or disciplines. While the system suggested previously entered values to maintain some consistency, there was no way to enforce the use of standard vocabularies or to store identifiers and sources for each term. This made it impossible to distinguish between ambiguous terms, link keywords to authoritative sources like LCSH or national vocabularies), or ensure metadata interoperability with external systems.

To address this, OJS 3.5 introduces structured support for controlled vocabularies, laying the foundation for more robust and machine-readable metadata. The update brings several key improvements:

Terms can now store a label, an identifier (e.g., URI) and a source of the vocabulary entry.
Journals can integrate external vocabularies via plugins, allowing suggestions to be pulled from authoritative sources – such as national thesauri or domain-specific indexes.
Backward compatibility is preserved, so existing keywords and other similar fields in OJS will continue to function as before, while new entries can adopt the enhanced structure.

A reference implementation for the plugin architecture is already available in Github, which uses the Finnish Finto service as an example.

This feature was originally planned for OJS 3.6 but has been completed ahead of schedule, offering an early look at how CRAFT-OA is enhancing metadata quality for Diamond OA publishing. By enabling structured and connected metadata, this improvement enhances discoverability, disambiguation, and interoperability, helping journals meet international standards while supporting local needs.

Broader impact for Diamond OA

The multilingualism and metadata enhancements in OJS 3.5 represent a meaningful advancement for Diamond OA journals working across diverse linguistic and disciplinary contexts. By improving how the platform handles language selection, metadata structuring, and discoverability, these updates offer practical tools that directly support the day-to-day needs of editors and publishers.

These changes help Diamond OA journals to:

More accurately reflect the multilingual nature of scholarly communication
Reach broader audiences by making content more visible and accessible
Strengthen the structure and clarity of metadata for improved interoperability
Operate with increased professionalism using community-driven, open-source infrastructure

In supporting these capabilities, the improvements align closely with CRAFT-OA’s wider mission to enhance the technical resilience, sustainability, and inclusivity of Diamond OA publishing across Europe and beyond.

What’s next?

Building on the GDPR, multilingualism and metadata enhancements in OJS 3.5, the CRAFT-OA project is working on further developments to improve flexibility, inclusivity, and metadata quality across Diamond OA publishing workflows:

Support for contributor types: OJS currently treats all contributors as individual persons, which creates problems when crediting organizations, collectives, or anonymous contributions. This limitation forces journals to use workarounds that result in poor metadata quality and indexing issues. Upcoming improvements will introduce structured support for three contributor types: persons, groups, and anonymous. This will allow journals to accurately represent diverse authorship models and ensure clean, standards-compliant metadata.
Support for CRediT contributor roles: OJS will add support for the CRediT taxonomy, enabling journals to include standardized contributor roles such as “Conceptualization,” “Data Curation,” and “Writing – Review & Editing” in article metadata. This will complement OJS’s existing internal contributor roles and provide more granular attribution of contributions in line with widely adopted scholarly standards.
Support for data citation in article references: New functionality will allow journals to formally cite datasets in reference lists, promoting transparency, data reuse, and alignment with best practices.

These developments will be available in OJS 3.6 and reflect CRAFT-OA’s continued commitment to strengthening the technical infrastructure that supports Diamond OA publishing – ensuring it remains adaptable, standards-compliant, and inclusive.