The Help document for Open Journal Systems (OJS) is designed to assist users in the process of reading, submitting, editing, and publishing items in scholarly and general-interest journals. It is also intended to serve as a manual for OJS that describes the scope and workings of this journal management software. The Help document also provides editorial advice on common journal practices in scholarly publishing. In addition to this Help document, users have access to this journal's technical support person, who will be listed in About the Journal, under Contact.

Because OJS employs designated publishing roles or titles for each function and process - from the Journal Manager who sees to the journal's Setup to the Author who proofreads the galleys - each topic covered in Help refers to what role should be doing what. On the same principle, access to the document is determined by who is doing what where within the system. That is, the Help is context specific. What one sees depend on one's role; people can have more than one role in OJS (a Reviewer can also be an Author or a Journal Manager can also be an Editor). What one sees also depends on where one is working within OJS. The role and location determine which Help topics come up, although the user can work out from there to related topics in order to explore any aspect of the system.