An XML-Based Migration from Digital Commons to Open Journal Systems

Abstract:  The Oregon Library Association has produced its peer-reviewed journal, the OLA Quarterly (OLAQ), since 1995, and OLAQ was published in Digital Commons beginning in 2014. When the host institution undertook to move away from Bepress, their new repository solution was no longer a good match for OLAQ. Oregon State University and University of Oregon agreed to move the journal into their joint instance of Open Journal Systems (OJS), and a small team from OSU Libraries carried out the migration project. The OSU project team declined to use PKP’s existing migration plugin for a number of reasons, instead pursuing a metadata-centered migration pipeline from Digital Commons to OJS. We used custom XSLT to convert tabular data exported from Bepress into PKP’s Native XML schema, which we imported using the OJS Native XML Plugin. This approach provided a high degree of control over the journal’s metadata and a robust ability to test and make adjustments along the way. The article discusses the development of the transformation stylesheet, the metadata mapping and cleanup work involved, as well as advantages and limitations of using this migration strategy.