AT Journal Blocks User Guide

AT Journal Blocks is free. Download it from the Altechmind Store. You don’t need an account, a licence key or AT Gateway.

Introduction & the Four Blocks

AT Journal Blocks is a free plugin for Open Journal Systems (OJS) 3.5, developed by Altechmind Technologies (OPC) Pvt. Ltd. It adds four ready-made sidebar blocks that most journals otherwise build by hand in Custom Block HTML. You fill them in from one settings form, and they look right on desktop and on phones.

Block	What it shows
Indexing logos	The services that index your journal, as logos or names, each with an optional link. Grid or strip layout.
Call for papers	A title, short text, the deadline with a “days left” countdown and a Submit your paper button to your submission guidelines. It can hide itself after the deadline.
Journal info	ISSN (print and online), frequency, publisher, licence and language, filled in from your journal settings.
Latest announcements	Your newest OJS announcements (1–10) with calendar-style dates and a link to all announcements.

Highlights

• Clean, rounded cards with icons, in your theme’s own fonts and sidebar.
• Your journal’s accent colour (7 presets or any hex colour); text stays readable automatically.
• Light, Dark or Follow device. Dark is never forced on your readers.
• The blocks show on every reader page that has a sidebar: home, article, issue, archive, about and more.
• Citation data, OAI, feeds and sitemaps stay exactly as they are (see Indexing & Citations).
• No JavaScript on your journal’s pages, no web fonts, no CDNs, no tracking.

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Free & Open Source

AT Journal Blocks is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. Use it on as many journals and OJS installations as you like.

• No licence key and no activation.
• No premium version of the blocks and no upsell inside OJS.
• No Altechmind account needed, and AT Gateway is not required.

If you already use AT Gateway, its Free from Altechmind list shows AT Journal Blocks, the installed version and a link to its store page.

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System Requirements

Requirement	Version
Open Journal Systems	3.5 (3.4 and earlier are not supported)
PHP	8.2 or later (as required by OJS 3.5)
Your role	Site administrator to upload the plugin; journal manager to switch it on and change its settings

Tested with the Default and Health Sciences themes on desktop and phone. Other themes usually work too, because the blocks sit in the theme’s own sidebar. If something looks off, see the FAQ & Troubleshooting.

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Download & Installation

1. Download atJournalBlocks-<version>.tar.gz from the store page. Don’t unpack it.
2. Sign in to OJS as a site administrator and go to Administration › Site Settings › Plugins.
3. Click Upload a new plugin, choose the downloaded file and click Save.
4. Open your journal and go to Website › Plugins › Installed Plugins › Generic Plugins.
5. Tick AT Journal Blocks to switch it on in this journal.

On a site with several journals, switch it on in each journal that should show the blocks. Each journal has its own settings.

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First-Time Setup

1. In Website › Plugins, click the arrow next to AT Journal Blocks, then Settings.
2. Under Show these blocks, tick the blocks you want.
3. Choose your accent colour, corners and colour scheme (see Appearance).
4. Fill in the blocks you ticked (see the sections on each block below).
5. Click Save. Ticked blocks are added to your journal’s sidebar automatically; unticked blocks are removed from it.
6. Open your journal’s home page to see them.

Note: a ticked block with nothing to show stays hidden until it has content. Indexing logos needs at least one entry, Call for papers needs a title, text or deadline, and Latest announcements needs announcements switched on with at least one announcement.

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Appearance: Colour, Corners & Colour Scheme

Setting	Options	What it does
Accent colour	Lime (default), Ocean blue, Teal, Indigo, Crimson, Amber, Graphite, or Custom	Colours buttons, icons, the countdown and highlights. For Custom, enter a hex code such as #1a4f8b. Button text and link colours are adjusted automatically so they stay readable on light and dark cards.
Corners	Rounded, Square	The shape of the cards, tiles and buttons.
Colour scheme	Light (default), Dark, Follow device	Light: white cards. Dark: dark cards. Follow device: dark only for readers whose phone or computer is set to dark mode.

The blocks use your theme’s fonts. Hover effects are switched off for readers who ask their device to reduce motion.

For web designers: a theme or custom stylesheet can still fine-tune the cards through the --atjb-* CSS variables, for example .atjb { --atjb-radius: 6px; }.

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Indexing Logos Block

List the services that index or abstract your journal. Each entry is a name, plus an optional logo and an optional link.

• Without a logo, the name is shown as a neat text tile.
• With a logo, only the logo is shown, and the name becomes its alt text for screen readers and search engines.
• With a link, the whole tile (logo or name) is clickable and opens in a new tab.

Add an entry

1. In the Add an entry box, enter the Name, e.g. Directory of Open Access Journals.
2. Optional: enter a Link starting with https:// or http://.
3. Optional: under Logo (optional), upload an image.
4. Click Save.

Leave the Add an entry fields empty when you are only changing other settings; the form saves as usual.

Logo files

Rule	Limit
File types	PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP (SVG is refused because SVG files can contain scripts)
File size	Up to 1 MB
Image size	Up to 4000 × 4000 pixels. A wide logo around 300–400 pixels across is plenty.
Entries	Up to 12

The file type is checked from the file’s content, not its name. Logos are stored in your journal’s own public files folder. Nothing is bundled with the plugin or loaded from other sites. Only upload logos you’re allowed to use, and follow each indexing service’s logo rules.

Change, reorder or remove entries

• Name and Link: edit them in the entry’s row.
• Position: set the number to change the order.
• Remove logo, keep the name: turns the entry into a text tile.
• Remove this entry: deletes the whole entry.

Click Save to apply. You can also change the block’s title (default: Indexed in) and choose a Grid layout (equal tiles) or a Strip layout (each tile sized to its logo).

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Call for Papers Block

Field	Notes
Block title	Leave empty for the default, Call for papers. Up to 80 characters.
Short text	Plain text, up to 600 characters. Leave an empty line between paragraphs.
Deadline	Format YYYY-MM-DD, e.g. 2026-12-31. Leave empty for an open call without a countdown.
Hide this block after the deadline	On by default. When off, the block stays and says This call is closed.

Readers see an Open for submissions badge, the deadline, a countdown (N days left to submit, Last day to submit) and a Submit your paper button. The button opens your journal’s About › Submissions page, so authors find your guidelines first. The countdown is worked out on your server from today’s date (in the time zone set for your OJS installation) and needs no JavaScript.

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Journal Info Card

Shows ISSN (print), ISSN (online), frequency, publisher, licence and language.

• Until you save this form, the card is filled in from your journal settings: the ISSNs, the publisher, the licence and the submission languages. Frequency has no journal setting, so type it in, e.g. Quarterly.
• After you save, the card shows exactly what is in the form. Edit any field as you like.
• Empty fields are not shown.
• ISSNs must look like 1234-567X.

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Latest Announcements Block

Shows your newest OJS announcements as a compact list with calendar-style dates, newest first, plus an All announcements link.

• Number of announcements: 1 to 10 (default 3).
• The block uses OJS’s own announcements and stores nothing itself. Add and edit announcements as usual in OJS.
• If announcements are switched off for the journal, the block stays hidden. Switch them on under Website › Setup › Announcements.

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Placing & Ordering Blocks in the Sidebar

Saving the plugin settings places newly ticked blocks at the end of the sidebar. To change the order:

1. Go to Website › Appearance › Setup.
2. Under Sidebar, drag the blocks named AT Journal Blocks: … into the order you want.
3. Click Save.

You can also tick or untick the blocks there, the same as any other OJS sidebar block. Your order is kept when you save the plugin settings again.

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Indexing & Citations: What Stays Unchanged

Google Scholar, Crossref, DOAJ and OAI harvesters read specific parts of your journal. AT Journal Blocks never changes any of them:

• every citation_* tag for Google Scholar, and every Dublin Core (DC.*) and Open Graph (og:) tag;
• OAI-PMH in every format, including GetRecord;
• RSS and Atom feeds and sitemaps;
• “How to cite” and citation downloads.

These stay byte-for-byte identical with the plugin on or off, and before and after an upgrade. We test this on a real OJS for every release. The plugin only adds its blocks to the sidebar and one small stylesheet to pages that show a block.

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Privacy: What the Plugin Sends

Nothing. AT Journal Blocks makes no requests to Altechmind or any other site. It has no licence check, no tracking and no analytics, and it loads no web fonts or CDNs.

It only reads your journal’s own settings and announcements. It stores its settings in your OJS database (plugin_settings) and the logos you upload in your journal’s public files folder. It creates no database tables and never changes OJS’s own files.

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Updating

1. Download the new version from the store page.
2. Go to Administration › Site Settings › Plugins and find AT Journal Blocks.
3. Click the arrow next to it, then Upgrade, choose the new file and click Save.

Your settings, logos, enabled state and sidebar placement are kept. Each release is tested by upgrading from earlier versions with real data in place.

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Switching Off & Uninstalling

Switch off (untick in Website › Plugins): the blocks are taken out of the sidebar and your settings are kept. Switch it on again, and the blocks return to the same places.

Delete (Administration › Site Settings › Plugins › Delete): removes the plugin’s files.

• Switch it off in every journal first. OJS doesn’t tell plugins when they are deleted. If it is still on, its block names stay in that journal’s sidebar list. They are harmless (OJS skips them) and disappear the next time you save Website › Appearance › Setup.
• Uploaded logo files stay in the journal’s public files folder until you delete them.

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Getting Help

Most questions are answered in the AT Journal Blocks FAQ & Troubleshooting.

• Email: support@altechmind.com
• Store: store.altechmind.com

Please include your OJS version, PHP version, plugin version, theme, a link to your journal and any error message you see.

OJS and Open Journal Systems are projects of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). AT Journal Blocks is not affiliated with or endorsed by PKP or by any indexing service.