Welcome to Ambra
Welcome to the Ambra journal management and publishing system! Ambra is a high-volume, efficient and economical system for the publication of research articles in all
areas of science.
What is Ambra?
Ambra is an innovative Open Source platform for publishing Open Access research articles. It provides features for post-publication annotation and discussion that allows for a "living" document around which further scientific discoveries can be made. The platform is in active development by the PLOS (Public Library of Science) and is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
Who uses Ambra?
Ambra is currently used for by the following journals and publishing platforms:
- PLOS ONE
- PLOS Medicine
- PLOS Biology
- PLOS Computational Biology
- PLOS Pathogens
- PLOS Genetics
- PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases
- PLOS Collections
- Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene
How do I get started?
The best place to start learning about Ambra is through the Ambra Wiki. The Ambra Wiki is undergoing a lot of change, so please be patient while we put some order to the chaos.
Features
- Support for multiple journals on a single platform.
- Support for publishing articles with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Journal Publishing Tag Set.
- Community features such as threaded discussions and user profiles.
- Single sign-on service for user login and registration.
- TrackBack support.
You can see many of the features in action at PLOS ONE.
Architecture Features
- Ambra is written in Java. It uses Spring, Struts, and the FreeMarker templating system to construct HTML which is served by Tomcat. It uses the jQuery JavaScript library to create an advanced user interface.
- Ambra uses Hibernate for the storage and retrieval of Java objects to the MySQL relational database.
- The MogileFS distributed filesystem is used to store digital objects. MogileFS allows for automatic file replication, a non-SAN RAID setup and no single point of failure. MogileFS can be easily swapped for the base Linux file system or Amazon S3.
- Apache Solr is used as the search platform and uses the Apache Lucene Java search library for its core search engine.
- Ambra uses CAS (Central Authentication Service) single sign-on service for user login and registration.
- Admin portal for publishing content, managing users and managing user comments.
View the complete features list.
Release Notes
Ambra 2.10.6
Released September 23rd, 2014
- Removing the Editorial Board Knowledge Base box from the "my profile" page
Ambra 2.10.5
Released September 9th, 2014
- Improvements to user registration confirmation messaging
Ambra 2.10.4
Released September 2nd, 2014
- Changes to administration email notifications
- Apache Struts upgrade, from 2.3.16.2 to 2.3.16.3
View all release notes.