The following is a list of questions that will help you begin your journal planning.

New journals

Preliminary questions

• What will your journal be about? Scope and content?
• Who is your target audience?
• How will you solicit new content? Is your journal tied to an annual event?
• Do you have funding? Is it required, or will all work be done in-kind?

Startup and sustainability

• Who will be on your advisory editorial board? Who will be in your pool of reviewers?
• How many faculty advisors? How to ensure sustainability?
• How many editors will you have? Will there be a separate editor for each section?
• Do you have copyeditors, layout editors in mind?

Publication cycle and frequency

• How many articles per issue?
• How many issues per year?
• Journal sections – book reviews, articles, commentaries, letters to the editor, news and announcements?
• Estimated turnaround time from call for papers to article submissions?
• Are you interested in an in-press issue idea – as manuscripts are completed they appear on the site until an issue is “closed”?

Review

• Peer review model? Double blind?
• How many reviewers per article?
• Do you have a list of questions or guidelines for peer reviewers?
• Estimated turnaround time for review and author revisions?

Stylistic publishing requirements

• What citation style and format?
• What are your submission guidelines? Font, borders, style guide?
• Specifics for manuscript preparations and online submissions?

Copyright and access policy

• Open access, embargo, subscription?
• Do authors retain copyright?
• Progressive author agreements that protect the journal but also allow authors to retain copyright:
• http://www.lib.umich.edu/spo/agreements/author-journal_article_license.pdf
• http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license
• Other publisher agreements: http://webservices.itcs.umich.edu/mediawiki/spowiki/index.php/Publishing_Agreements
• What about a creative commons license? Recommended: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/
• Will first publication rights be granted to your journal?

Evaluative sources and criteria to determine the journal’s impact and progress

• AWStats
• Counter
• Google analytics
• DOI (Crossref statistics)
• ISI and Scopus (impact factor)

How to get noticed

• Abstracts and indexes
• Google Scholar
• Ulrich’s
• Directory of Open Access Journals

Existing journals

• When was your journal created? How many issues/volumes exist?
• Do you have all of your archives in digital format? If not, could you acquire a copy from your publisher?
• Do you have copyright clearance to post your journal issues/articles online?
• Were you hoping to make your contents available open access? If this is not entirely possible, do you want to employ an embargo period where your latest issues are available to subscribers only? How long would you like this embargo to be?
• Do you have a list of your subscribers? To register subscribers with OJS, a name and email address are required.
• Do you have a publisher? If not, are you affiliated with an association?

For all journals

• Do you have a current design scheme/logo that we can use for your website?
• Is your journal bilingual?
• Do you have your own domain registered? Here’s where to get one at York: http://www.yorku.ca/computing/facultystaff/webpages/index.html
• Do you have an ISSN for the electronic version of your journal? http://www.lac-bac.gc.ca/issn/s13-204-e.html
• Will you be hosting multimedia content?
• Do you have a permanent staff member that we can train, or do you have a revolving staff?
• Are you exploring changes to your editorial workflow? Would you be interested in a system to manage the publishing process?

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