OJC's Impact Dashboard
As you may already be aware, OJC’s Impact Dashboard will be an openly available web platform that allows users to explore data and metrics about OJC’s journals. It will draw on a variety of open data sources, providing insight into the impact of OJC’s journals in a single place. It’s a joint project with the Open Book Collective, and will deliver an Impact Dashboard for each organisation, customised to local needs but based on shared design and a shared data model.
Why are we developing the Impact Dashboard?
The Impact Dashboard will provide access to relevant data about OJC’s journals, without the need to consult multiple platforms or data sources. We are regularly asked, particularly by libraries, about publication in OJC’s journals from their institution, and the Impact Dashboard will provide an easy to use solution to meet this need.
The Impact Dashboard will allow users to explore and analyse publication, citation and usage data to understand the impact of OBC and OJC publications. And in particular, it will help libraries, institutions, consortia and others to understand the current impact and future potential of OJC for their institution or the country in which they are based, and will support the development of business cases for membership and renewal.
The types of questions that the Impact Dashboard will help to answer include:
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Which authors at my institution have published in OJC journals?
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Which academics at my institution are on editorial boards for OJC journals?
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How many times are academics at my institution cited within OJC journals and who has been cited?
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How much usage have OJC publications authored by academics at my institution received? Where, globally, does this usage come from?
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How many OJC publications have been authored by academics from the country I’m based in?
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How have publications, citations and downloads changed over time?
What's happening at the moment?
Over the summer, OJC and OBC issued an Invitation to Tender, and following a rigorous process, we have appointed DQ Programming to deliver the technical work of building the dashboard and its data sources. DQ Programming provides technical and data expertise to organisations working in open publishing and open infrastructure. DQ Programming was established by Andy Byers and Martin Eve, and Andy Byers and Mauro Sanchez will be leading the work to develop the Impact Dashboard. DQ Programming has extensive knowledge of building applications for organisations such as OJC that are built in open source technologies and utilise open data sources.
The technical work is well underway and the core of the application that will power the dashboard is now almost complete. We’re working closely with DQ Programming through our joint OJC/OBC Project Board, and we’re very excited to see the dashboard starting to take shape!
When will the Impact Dashboard be available?
We expect the first iteration of the Impact Dashboard to be available to use before the end of the 2026 calendar year. We have split the project into four distinct phases, and functionality to explore institutional and country affiliations of authors is part of this first phase. More functionality and data sources will be integrated into the Impact Dashboard as we work through the subsequent phases, and we’ll publish one of these bulletins each time there is a new release.
Who will be able to use it?
The Impact Dashboard will be fully open, so anyone who is interested will be able to use it to explore the impact of OJC’s journals. The codebase will be made open source, and there will be an open API, allowing others to reuse the code and build integrations.
What will it look like?
We’ve had initial page designs created by Carly Murphy-Merrydew, the graphic designer who created the OJC website. They are just templates at this stage rather than the finished design, but the image below gives you an idea of what the Impact Dashboard will look like. We hope you like the design as much as we do!
How can I find out more?
If you have any questions or are interested in hearing more about the Impact Dashboard, please email Tom Shaw, OJC’s Library Engagement Lead and project manager for the Impact Dashboard: thomas.shaw@openjournalscollective.org.