Publisher planning to manage a dedicated publishing infrastructure

The process of transitioning to a self-managed publishing infrastructure is not just a technological decision, but more importantly an operational and organizational transformation. For the change to be effective and bring long-term benefits, it is worth taking care of several strategic areas:

1. Develop a realistic transformation map

Before the organization takes technical action, it is necessary to prepare a detailed transition map. It should include:

• Audit of current infrastructure and dependencies (hosting, management systems, external APIs),

• Identify components that can be taken over internally (e.g., publishing system, user management),

• Identify which services will require gradual decoupling (e.g., DOI, backup, technical support).

A publisher using third-party OJS hosting can first run a test OJS instance on its own server to build competence before production migration.

2. Building internal technical competence

Moving to your own infrastructure doesn't have to mean a full IT team right away, but it should assume:

• Hiring (or developing) a technical person familiar with the basics of Linux, database and PHP system administration (OJS),

• Developing a basic understanding of versioning systems (e.g., Git) and plugin structures,

• Investment in training and documentation – both internally and using the resources of the open source community (PKP Docs, PKP Forum).

The editorial team does not have to be technical, but they should understand the structure of the system's work and know which processes can be automated.

3. Gradual assumption of responsibility for system components

It is not necessary to build everything at once. It's worth starting with:

• System configuration management (e.g., config.inc.php in OJS),

• Self-upgrade the software (e.g., upgrade to the latest OJS version),

• Integration of official plug-ins (Crossref, ORCID, XML export),

• Testing local modifications on the development environment.