The "free" trap: When journal management stifles scientific direction
In the world of scientific editorial management , especially in the vibrant and often precarious ecosystem of university and scientific society publications, there exists a figure that doesn't appear on any official organizational chart. It's a shadow that keeps growing, a role assumed out of necessity rather than vocation. We're talking about the IT editor.
It's that prestigious researcher, that respected professor, or that enthusiastic member of the editorial committee who, on a Tuesday night, instead of evaluating the methodological validity of an article that could change a paradigm, is trying to decipher a cryptic error message in a support forum. They're wrestling with a plugin that stopped working after the latest update, or managing a server outage that has left the journal inaccessible to authors and reviewers at a critical moment.
This figure is born from one of the noblest and, at the same time, most dangerous ideas in the academic world: the idea of "free".
Open-source platforms like Open Journal Systems (OJS) have undoubtedly been one of the greatest drivers of the democratization of knowledge. They have enabled thousands of journal to be launched, allowing scientific communities without the backing of a publishing giant to have a voice and participate in open access. Their license is indeed free. But this free access is an illusion. It's a mirage that conceals an immense cost, a cost not paid in euros or dollars, but in the most valuable and irreplaceable resource of an editorial team: strategic time.
The "free" nature of OJS, as mentioned in the platform comparison, comes with hidden costs in technical support, updates, and user experience. This article is not a technical analysis; it is a reflection on the human and strategic toll that journal pay when their scientific director is forced to become their systems manager.
The anatomy of hidden cost
To understand the trap, we must first dissect these "hidden costs" and translate them from technical language to the daily reality of an editor.
The first cost is maintenance and the "ghost of updates ." OJS, like any software, needs to evolve. Security vulnerabilities are discovered, web standards change, and new functionalities are needed. This requires updates. For a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform, updates are an invisible, automatic process managed by the provider. For the publisher who manages their own OJS, it's an event marked on the calendar with dread.
Updating isn't just pressing a button. It's creating a backup, crossing your fingers that plugins still work, and praying that the journal doesn't break. The fear of this breaking is so great that many journal choose not to update, leaving their platforms obsolete, slow, and, even worse, dangerously insecure.
The second cost is the reliance on "phantom" support . When the journal is hosted on a university server, technical support isn't provided by a dedicated team for editorial management . It's the institution's general IT team, an overburdened department that handles email, registration, and the internal network. For them, the journal is almost never a mission-critical priority.
So, when the journal goes down, the editor submits a ticket and waits. And while they wait, international authors can't submit their work, reviewers can't deliver their evaluations, and the journal erodes with every hour of downtime. The editor has no control; they are a hostage to the priority queue of a department that doesn't understand the urgency.
The third cost is the functional “Frankenstein .” A journal needs much more than a place to upload and download PDFs. It needs DOI assignment, ORCID integration, citation metrics, Crossref compatibility, anti-plagiarism tools, JATS XML generation for indexers like SciELO or PubMed Central, and alternative metrics.
In a SaaS model, these functionalities are usually integrated; they are part of the service. In the OJS model, each one is often an plugin that must be found, installed, configured, and maintained. The developer spends their time piecing together components from different developers, creating a functional "Frankenstein's monster" that threatens to collapse with every system change.
Strategic pricing: from director to firefighter
These technical costs are the root of a much deeper problem: cognitive drain. The problem isn't that the editor has to perform these tasks; the problem is that they have to think about them.
The scientific direction of a journal is a highly strategic endeavor. It requires a long-term vision. It requires asking questions such as: What are the emerging lines of research in our field? Which top-tier authors should we invite for a special issue? How can we internationalize our editorial board to enhance its prestige? What visibility strategies can we implement to increase the number of citations our articles receive?
Nobody can think about these strategic questions when their mind is 90% occupied with reactive tasks.
The IT editor isn't a manager; they're a firefighter. They spend their days putting out the fires of daily operations. The plugin isn't working. The SSL security certificate has expired. An author is complaining that they can't upload a file larger than 5MB. A reviewer has forgotten their password, and the recovery system isn't responding.
Each of these minor crises steals the mental bandwidth that should be dedicated to quality. The result is strategic paralysis. The journal survives, publishes on time, but doesn't innovate. It doesn't improve its user experience, it doesn't scale, it doesn't explore new forms of dissemination. It becomes a functional repository of articles, but loses its soul as an engine of intellectual debate.
This cost is invisible in any budget. It doesn't appear in any expense line item. But it's the highest cost of all, because it's the cost of a lost opportunity. It's the difference between a journal that merely exists and journal that aspires to lead.
The anatomy of hidden cost
In this saturated ecosystem, a prestigious author has dozens of options for publishing their work. Before submitting a manuscript, that author does a quick assessment of the journal , and their first visit is to the website.
What will you find? If you encounter an outdated interface that loads slowly, doesn't adapt to your mobile phone, and features a confusing submission process, what will you think about the editorial rigor that awaits you?.
User experience (UX) is not merely an aesthetic embellishment; it is the journal 's calling card. It is the first tangible sign of the publishing 's seriousness, resources, and respect for its authors and readers. An outdated interface, the product of an unupdated or poorly maintained OJS, sends a subconscious but devastating message: "We are a journal with limited resources," "We are not technologically competent," "Our process will likely be just as slow and outdated as our website.".
The impact on reviewers is even more direct. Reviewers are the voluntary backbone of the scientific system. Their time is precious. If accepting a review requires navigating an obtuse registration system, if downloading manuscripts is confusing, or if the platform for submitting their report is unintuitive, they are very likely to decline the invitation. The editor not only loses a reviewer; they lose the opportunity to improve the quality of an article.
A modern SaaS platform, on the other hand, invests millions in optimizing this experience because it understands it's a competitive advantage. A clean, mobile-optimized design with intuitive workflows isn't a luxury: it's a talent acquisition tool, for both authors and reviewers.
Liberation: Redefining "control"
Often, the argument for maintaining a self-managed system like OJS is the idea of “control.” “We want to have control of our data,” “We want to control the source code,” “We want to control the hosting .”
But this is an outdated view of control. What good is "controlling" the code if you don't have the resources, time, or knowledge to modify it effectively? What good is "controlling" the data on your own server if that server doesn't have adequate security measures or the redundant backups that a professional infrastructure provides?.
True control in 21st-century editorial management is not technical control; it is strategic control.
True control is having the freedom to release a special issue without worrying about the server handling the traffic spike. True control is being able to integrate Altmetric metrics with a single click because the platform already includes it. True control is being able to guarantee authors that their articles will be generated in JATS XML and submitted to all indexers without the editor having to run a single script . True control is freeing the editorial team from the constraints of IT so they can dedicate 100% of their effort to scientific quality.
This is the paradigm shift that a SaaS solution proposes. It's not about "losing control," but about delegating complexity to gain strategic advantage. It's about having a technology partner whose job is to ensure the platform is seamless, robust, and always cutting-edge, allowing the editorial team to do the one thing no one else can do for them: run the journal .
Stop managing servers and start running your journal
The "free" open-source model has historically served a vital purpose. But for journal aspiring to grow, professionalize, and compete internationally, this model becomes a glass ceiling.
The "free" trap is subtle because its costs aren't explicit. They're disguised as the editor's "normal workload." But it's not normal. It's not sustainable. And it's not strategic.
The software editor is a tragic figure. He is symptomatic of a system that has forgotten that the ultimate goal is not to keep software running, but to disseminate knowledge as effectively and rigorously as possible.
The move to a SaaS platform isn't a software decision; it's a resource allocation decision. It's a declaration that the editorial team's time is too valuable to be wasted on technical issues. It's, in essence, the decision to stop being part-time IT professionals and finally become full-time editors again.
Stop being the "computer editor" of your journal .
Your time is too valuable to waste fighting with plugins , manual updates, and downed servers. Your real job is scientific management, not technical support.
At Index, we take care of all the infrastructure (hosting, security, automatic updates) so you can get back to doing what you love: running your journal .
Request a free demo and discover how to free yourself from the technical burden today.