Setting Up Your Own Academic Journal
You want to launch a journal. Maybe your discipline is underserved by existing publications. Maybe you're tired of dealing with a publisher that moves at a glacial pace. Maybe you just want full control over the editorial process and open access policies. Whatever the reason, building an academic journal from scratch is doable but not trivial, and most people underestimate the work involved in keeping it running sustainably. The term refers to the practice of creating, managing, and maintaining a scholarly publication independently rather than through a traditional commercial or society publisher. This usually involves selecting or building a platform for submissions and peer review, defining scope and editorial policies, recruiting an editorial board, setting up the website and hosting, establishing a DOI registration strategy, and ensuring compliance with indexing requirements if that's a goal. Some people build entirely from scratch. Others use existing open-source journal management systems and customize them to their needs. The single biggest decision you face early on is which platform to use. Open Journal Systems, commonly called OJS, is the default for most people launching independent journals. It handles submissions, peer review workflows, copyediting, and publication in one system. It's free to install but requires server maintenance. The learning curve is moderate. You'll spend the first two weeks just figuring out how to set up sections, review forms, and workflow stages correctly. I learned this the hard way when I shipped a journal with OJS and didn't configure the reviewer notification settings properly. Reviewers didn't get reminder emails after the first two weeks, submissions stalled, and I had no visibility into why. The fix was going into Administration > Settings > Workflow and setting the automated reminder schedule to fire at day 7 and day 14, plus enabling the editor alert for overdue reviews. Once that was in place, the backlog cleared within a month.
If OJS feels too heavy or too technical for your situation, there are alternatives like Kenoby, Editorial Manager, or even a simpler WordPress setup with a dedicated plugin. Kenoby is cloud-hosted and easier to manage but costs money. Editorial Manager is powerful but expensive and designed for larger publishers. For a small journal with a lean team, OJS on a managed VPS is usually the best balance between cost and capability. A basic VPS from a provider like Linode or Digital Ocean runs around $20 to $50 per month, which is manageable if you have a small budget or institutional support.
Building the Editorial Framework
A journal without a clear editorial structure fails quickly, regardless of how good the platform is. You need editors who will actually do the work. This means finding people who have time, who understand peer review, and who are willing to commit for at least two years. One-year terms lead to constant onboarding churn. I've seen journals lose their entire editorial board in a single year because they only asked for annual commitments. The workaround is to ask for multi-year terms upfront and stagger them so you never lose everyone at once. You also need a conflict of interest policy and a clear author guideline document before you accept your first submission. These documents take time to write but prevent a lot of disputes later. A good guideline covers submission format, word limits, reference style, what happens during peer review, how appeals are handled, and your stance on plagiarism and image manipulation. Most new journal founders want indexing in databases like Scopus, Web of Science, or PubMed. The reality is that indexing is hard and slow. Scopus typically requires a journal to have been published for at least two years before they'll even consider it. Crossref registration is necessary for DOIs but doesn't guarantee anything. You register with Crossref before your first issue goes live, attach DOIs to every article, and make sure your metadata is complete. Missing or inconsistent metadata is one of the most common reasons journals get rejected during indexing review. I once had a journal application to DOAJ rejected because our submission guidelines page was hosted behind a login wall. They couldn't verify the content. The fix was making that page publicly accessible and adding the policy to the homepage navigation. It sounds minor but it's the kind of thing that stalls applications for months. Running a journal without a publisher means you cover the costs. Hosting, DOI registration through Crossref, possible article processing charges if you offer open access, and potentially funding a professional copyeditor or typesetter. If you charge APCs, you need to justify the price with actual services. Authors will not pay $500 for a journal that offers nothing beyond publication. Common APC ranges for new open-access journals sit between $300 and $1,200 depending on discipline and reputation. Underpricing signals low quality. Overpricing without a track record gets no submissions.
Another hidden cost is the time commitment. Managing a journal at a reasonable pace usually requires 10 to 20 hours per week for the editor-in-chief, plus review time from the editorial board. If your team is volunteering, retention becomes the main risk. People burn out. Have a succession plan from day one. Document everything. Keep your processes in writing so that when someone leaves, the journal doesn't collapse with them.
Common Pitfalls
Launching a journal is often treated as a one-time event. It's not. A journal dies quietly long after launch if nobody maintains it. Issues go unprocessed. Deadlines slip. Authors stop submitting because the turnaround time stretches to six months. I've seen this happen repeatedly. The journals that survive are the ones that treat the first two years as infrastructure building, not content building. Focus on getting the workflow smooth, the timelines consistent, and the communication clear before you worry about impact factor or citations. Another pitfall is trying to compete with established journals on breadth. Pick a narrow scope. A focused journal gets cited within its niche. A broad journal gets ignored by everyone. You don't need to publish everything under the sun. You need a community that trusts your editorial process and sees the journal as relevant to their work.
What Is Academic Journal Diy in Practice
In practice, DIY academic journal publishing is less glamorous than it sounds. It involves more configuration, compliance checks, and administrative decisions than it does editing. The actual scholarly work — selecting papers, coordinating reviews, making editorial decisions — is a small fraction of what you'll spend your time on. But for many, that trade-off is acceptable. You get to shape a publication around the questions and standards you care about, without answering to a publisher's profit margins or editorial priorities. It's sustainable if you approach it like running a small organization, not like starting a hobby project. Plan for the long haul, document your processes, and build a team that can outlast your own availability.
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