Nova JournalPort

01 — Problem

Academic journals are stuck between shared national platforms and self-hosted open-source software that is heavy to install and maintain. There is no modern infrastructure that gives a journal its own brand, its own domain, enforced blind review and the metadata indexers expect.

02 — System

We designed a multi-tenant SaaS where every journal gets its own public site and a role-aware editorial desk on the same host. When a journal is approved, the system provisions a dedicated database, runs migrations and creates its owner. Submission, blind review, production, issue publishing, the DOI queue and indexing exports form one continuous flow.

03 — Architecture

Each request is routed to the journal resolved from its Host header: a subdomain or a custom domain whose CNAME has been verified. The catalogue lives in one master database; every journal's data lives in its own. Email and DOI jobs are processed from RabbitMQ queues by dedicated workers.

04 — Capabilities

1. 01

   Per-journal isolation

   Every approved journal gets its own MySQL database; tenant tables carry no tenant_id. Application, approval, provisioning and owner account creation run automatically.

2. 02

   Editorial workflow

   13 roles, multi-role users, section-editor scoping; reviewer invitations and recommendations, editor decisions, revision rounds and decision letters sent by email.

3. 03

   Blind review, enforced in code

   Reviewers never see author identity or original file names; emails to reviewers are filtered for identity leaks.

4. 04

   Issues and production

   Volume/issue/year, early view, full-issue PDF and table of contents; language editor, layout editor and proofreader assignments; cover images rendered server-side from a PDF's first page.

5. 05

   Metadata and indexing

   Crossref 5.3.1 deposit XML, DOAJ, PubMed/MEDLINE, JATS 1.3 and PhilPapers exports; Google Scholar meta tags, schema.org, sitemap and RSS on every article.

6. 06

   Migration tooling

   Import back issues from Crossref XML, JATS, DOAJ or the Crossref API by ISSN; preview, single-transaction commit, SSRF-safe PDF fetching and undo.

7. 07

   Journal websites

   11 themes, block-based pages, two-level menus, an in-browser PDF reader, 7 citation styles, BibTeX/RIS, search and editorial turnaround statistics.

8. 08

   Custom domains

   A journal registers its own domain; the platform binds it once the CNAME is verified. A custom CDN domain can be verified separately.

05 — Impact

• 01

  A journal can go from application to a live site without operator intervention.

• 02

  Blind review is enforced by the system, not left to an editor's vigilance.

• 03

  Back issues import with a preview and can be rolled back in one step.

13

editorial roles

1:1

database per journal

11

journal themes

7

citation styles

6

indexing export formats

304

automated test files