AT Issue Display: User Guide

AT Issue Display gives every issue of your OJS journal a clean, modern table of contents: article cards or a wide-card list, light or dark, and great on phones. Get it from the Altechmind Store. Questions? See the FAQ & Troubleshooting.

Introduction

AT Issue Display is a plugin for Open Journal Systems (OJS) 3.5, developed by Altechmind Technologies (OPC) Pvt. Ltd. It restyles the list of articles on each issue page and on the current issue on your home page. With a licence it also adds usage and Open Access badges, your accent colour and a year selector for the issue archive.

It only changes the look. Titles, links, PDFs, DOIs and every citation tag stay exactly as your theme makes them. No theme or OJS file is changed.

Highlights

• Cards in a grid or a wide-card list: 2 or 3 columns, soft shadow, outline or minimal.
• Light, dark or follow the reader’s device. One column on phones.
• Badges (premium): abstract views and downloads from OJS’s own statistics, and an Open Access badge only on articles readers can actually open.
• Accent colour (premium), kept readable automatically.
• Year selector (premium) on the issue archive, covering every published year.
• Indexing untouched: article pages, citation tags, OAI-PMH, feeds and sitemaps stay byte-for-byte the same.

What’s new in version 1.1

• New card design: a softly tinted card in your journal’s colour, an accent edge and soft shadows. Every card has the same structure (cover, title, authors with the page numbers, then a footer), so titles and buttons line up across a row.
• Wide-card list: Refined list now shows one wide card per article, with the cover on the left and the details on the right. It stacks on phones.
• Buttons and badges on one line: the PDF is a filled button; the Open Access badge (now green), views and downloads sit next to it.
• Colour setting: Altechmind lime or the classic blue of version 1.0. Journals that used 1.0 keep their blue after the update.
• Clearer settings: a licence status box, plain-language help and a live preview of your cards.
• Safer updates: settings, colours and your licence seat are kept, and indexing stays byte-for-byte the same.

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System Requirements

Requirement	Details
Open Journal Systems	3.5 (PHP 8.2 or later), on MySQL/MariaDB or PostgreSQL. OJS 3.4 and earlier are not supported.
AT Gateway	Free. Needed for premium features only: it activates the licence and installs updates. Get AT Gateway.
Theme	Cards and the list work with the Default theme and themes built on it (for example Manuscript). With Classic and Health Sciences the theme keeps its own list; badges and the year selector are added.
Usage statistics	For the view and download badges, OJS’s statistics must be running (OJS processes them once a day).
Your role	Site administrator to upload the plugins and enter the licence key; journal manager for the settings.

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Free and premium

Feature	Free	Premium
Cards in a grid (2 or 3 columns) or a wide-card list	✓	✓
Card style: soft shadow, outline or minimal	✓	✓
Light, dark or follow the reader’s device	✓	✓
Colour: Altechmind lime or classic blue	✓	✓
Cover images on top of cards, even rows	✓	✓
Same style for the current issue on the home page	✓	✓
Abstract-view and download badges		✓
Open Access badge (only where readers can open the article)		✓
Accent colour		✓
Archive year selector		✓

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Licence & Seats

• The plugin is free. Download it and use the free features with no account and no licence. You buy a premium licence only for the premium features; it switches them on in the plugin you already have.
• AT Issue Display is licensed per journal. Each journal that uses premium uses one seat. Buy 1, 3 or 5 journals.
• The licence key is entered once, in AT Gateway, by the site administrator. AT Gateway checks it with the store once a day; reader pages never wait for it.
• Updates and support are included for 2 years. After that, premium keeps working; renew to keep receiving updates.
• If the licence is not active, or AT Gateway is switched off, your journal shows the free layout. Nothing published is hidden and your premium settings are kept for when the licence is active again.

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Installation

1. Download atIssueDisplay-1.1.0.4.tar.gz: the free version needs no account; licence holders also find it (and AT Gateway) under My Account › Downloads on the store. It is the same plugin either way.
2. As site administrator, go to Administration › Site Settings › Plugins › Upload a new plugin and upload AT Gateway, then enable it. (Skip for the free version.)
3. Upload atIssueDisplay-1.1.0.4.tar.gz the same way.
4. In each journal that will use it: Settings › Website › Plugins, find AT Issue Display under Generic Plugins and tick it.
5. For premium: Administration › Site Settings › Plugins › AT Gateway › Licences & updates, paste the licence key and click Save & activate.

Open any issue page: the articles now show as cards, each with its title, authors and page numbers, and a footer with the PDF button and the badges. The defaults (cards in two columns, soft shadow, light, covers, home page) look right on most journals.

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Settings

Settings › Website › Plugins › AT Issue Display › Settings. The window has three parts.

Licence status

The coloured box at the top shows what AT Gateway reports for this journal:

• Premium is active for this journal, with the date until which updates are included.
• Free version: install AT Gateway (free) to use premium, with the buttons Install AT Gateway (free) and Get a licence.
• Not activated: premium features are off (with AT Gateway’s reason, for example “No licence key”). Your site administrator activates the licence in AT Gateway.

Readers never see licence messages. They appear only here.

Preview

A sketch of three article cards that follows your choices as you change them (layout, columns, card style, colours, covers, badges, accent). On your site the cards use your theme’s fonts.

Layout (free)

Option	What it does
Table of contents style	Cards in a grid, or Refined list: one wide card per article, cover on the left (stacked on phones).
Columns	Two or Three, for cards on wide screens. Phones always show one column.
Card style	Soft shadow, Outline or Minimal (divider only).
Card colours	Light suits most journals. Dark only if your theme has a dark background. Follow the reader’s device (light or dark) switches the cards to dark when the reader’s phone or computer is in dark mode (with the Minimal card style, which has no card background, your theme’s page colours are kept).
Colour	Altechmind lime or Classic blue (as in version 1.0), for title links on hover, keyboard focus and the archive button, unless you choose your own accent colour under Premium. Journals that used version 1.0 keep the blue until you switch.
Show article cover images	Shows each article’s cover image on top of its card.
Keep cards even	Where some articles have a cover image, gives the others a matching placeholder so titles line up (wider screens only).
Also use this style for the current issue on the journal home page	Applies the same look to the home page.

Premium

You can choose these at any time. They are saved and start showing as soon as the licence is active.

Option	What it does
Badges: Abstract views, Downloads	Counts from OJS’s own statistics, shown under each article. Zero counts are hidden; large numbers are shortened (1.2k).
Badges: Open Access	Shown only on articles readers can open without a subscription.
Archive: Show the year selector	Adds a Year menu to the issue archive. Picking a year lists every issue from that year on one page.
Accent colour	Optional. Type a colour like #9bcb3d or use the colour picker. Used for a thin strip on each card, title links on hover and the archive button. Leave empty to use the colour chosen under Colour.

Click Save. Changes show on the next page load.

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How the badges work

• Abstract views and Downloads come from OJS’s usage statistics (Statistics › Articles shows the same numbers). OJS processes statistics once a day; the plugin caches the counts for up to 6 hours.
• Open Access appears when the journal is open access, the issue or the article is set to open access, or the issue’s open-access date has passed. In a subscription journal, subscription articles never get it.
• The plugin itself tracks nothing and adds no cookies.

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The year selector

With the licence active and Show the year selector ticked, the archive (Archives in your menu) shows Year, a menu with every year you published in (newest first) and a Show button. Choosing a year opens /issue/archive?year=2024 with all issues of 2024. All years returns to the normal archive.

Year pages are marked noindex,follow and are never in your sitemap, so search engines keep indexing your normal archive and issue pages without duplicates.

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Publishing, citation and indexing

• Article pages, galleys/PDFs, DOIs, every citation_*, DC.* and og: tag, OAI-PMH, feeds, sitemaps and “How to cite” are never changed. Altechmind proves this on a real OJS 3.5 before every release, with the plugin on, off and with a lapsed licence, and before and after an upgrade.
• On issue, archive and home pages the plugin adds only its stylesheet and, for premium, the badge rows.
• Switching the plugin off returns your journal to exactly how it looked before.

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Updating

When AT Gateway shows a new version, click Update now (or upload the new package with Upgrade in the plugin list). Every setting, the enabled state and your licence seat are kept, and a journal that used version 1.0 keeps its colours.

If an upload with Upgrade seems to change nothing, check that the new version number is higher than the installed one.

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Support

Open a support ticket or email support@altechmind.com. Please include your OJS version, your theme and a link to an issue page.

ALTECHMIND TECHNOLOGIES (OPC) PRIVATE LIMITED · Kolkata, West Bengal, India · store.altechmind.com