About

OpenScholar is open source software that allows end users to easily create dynamic and customizable academic web sites. Each site comes with a suite of apps, widgets and themes, enabling users to build and manage feature-rich web sites.

OpenScholar was originally developed by The Institute for Quantitative Social Science in collaboration with HPAC and HUIT at Harvard University with contribution from open source community.

Why OpenScholar?

Building professional-looking academic web sites can be difficult and costly. OpenScholar is an open-source solution with state-of-the-art technology out of the box. The user interface is logical and intuitive, making it easy for scholars to self-create, self-design and self-manage their own web sites and their content without having to know any programming code or HTML. OpenScholar is highly customizable from both programming and theming standpoint as well. Developers and designers can implement their own features and themes.

Designed for academic environments

OpenScholar is designed for academic environments as a tool for building academic web sites, such as a scholar's personal site or an academic project site. OpenScholar tools and features foster online collaboration and provide relevant site sections, such as "Publications", "Events", "Blog", "Classes" and much more.

Product Vision

The OpenScholar web content publishing application empowers scholars, as well as academic programs and departments, to create, publish, and maintain academic websites. The platform is uniquely tailored to the needs of the scholarly community, and places an emphasis on features that benefit the majority of users. It is stable, responsive, and user-friendly for both administrators and end users. It is an open source platform with a wide range of contributors, and is easy to support and maintain.

While the above describes the general vision for the product, below are more specific goals: