Case Studies

Journals running on Alkademy Press

Real editorial teams, real operational outcomes. These case studies cover different journal sizes, fields, and starting points — from emergency relaunches to planned migrations.

Environmental ScienceGhana~120 submissions/yearStarter plan

Journal of Tropical Ecology and Conservation Science

Migration from OJS 2.4

The Challenge

The journal had been running on OJS 2.4 for eight years. The installation required hands-on IT maintenance from the host university and had accumulated broken plugins from several attempts to upgrade. Peer review assignments were tracked in a separate spreadsheet because the OJS notification emails had stopped working reliably two years earlier. When the journal's technical contact retired, the editorial team had no one to call.

What Changed

The editorial team exported their submission archive from OJS using the native XML plugin and migrated to Alkademy Press in 12 days. The migration included 340 historical submission records, 180 reviewer profiles, and 3 years of published issue metadata. The editorial team configured double-blind review and set up a custom domain (jtec-journal.org) pointing to the new platform. The entire process required no IT involvement beyond DNS configuration.

Outcomes

  • Time from submission to first decision dropped from 47 days (median) to 23 days
  • Reviewer acceptance rate increased from 31% to 44% within 3 months of launch
  • Editorial team reduced their weekly administrative time by approximately 6 hours
  • Custom domain live and verified within 48 hours of platform setup
  • DOAJ application submitted 4 weeks after migration (previously pending for 2 years)

“We had been living with broken email notifications for two years and just working around them. The migration took less than two weeks and everything worked on day one.”

— Managing Editor, Journal of Tropical Ecology and Conservation Science
Humanities / Cultural HeritageItaly~60 submissions/yearFree plan

European Heritage Studies Quarterly

Emergency relaunch after infrastructure failure

The Challenge

A small learned society journal operating on a shoestring budget. The society had previously self-hosted on a shared server — which was decommissioned when the IT volunteer who maintained it took a new job in industry. The journal went dark for 6 weeks while the board figured out how to move. They needed to relaunch quickly without any upfront technology cost and without ongoing technical maintenance requirements.

What Changed

Launched on the Alkademy Press free plan. The journal had fewer than 20 submissions per month, so the free tier covered their full operational needs. The editorial board set up the journal in one afternoon: journal profile, branding, submission form configuration, and editorial board invitations. The public journal website was live the same day.

Outcomes

  • Journal relaunched within 72 hours of signing up (compared to 6 weeks of downtime)
  • Zero platform cost — fits within the free plan limit
  • Submission volume recovered to pre-downtime levels within 2 months
  • Editorial board accessible from three countries without shared infrastructure

“We went from 'the server is gone and we don't know what to do' to fully operational in three days. That was not something we expected to be possible.”

— Editor-in-Chief, European Heritage Studies Quarterly

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