In order to efficiently process manuscripts, you will probably need a suite of production workflow tools to help you along.
Which sorts of tools you need, which ones you need to focus on, and which ones are less critical will depend on quite a number of factors. You may view the “production workflow” to cover part (or the entire) publishing process, so learning what these are is critical to a smooth operation.
Here, we’ll cover the most critical stages in the production workflow, and also go over some tools.
Stages in production workflow
In order to properly select tools, you need to know the major stages of the process. Let’s briefly go over them:
- Submission
- Peer review and revisions
- Acceptance
- English editing
- Layout and typesetting
- XML conversion
These stages all might have workflow tools associated with them that make the process much easier. In the following sections, we’ll cover what these stages are in a little bit more detail.
Submission
The submission stage is the first part of the production workflow. This is when a manuscript is submitted to your journal for potential publication. Having some form of automated submission process (such as those included in many journal management systems) can be greatly beneficial to track the submission, notify your team, and facilitate interactions with authors.
If you do not have a system that automates the submission process, it is critical to ensure that you use a checklist. Once your team is familiar with the checklist, they can ensure that all parts of this stage in the production workflow are correctly done.
Screening guidelines are critical to ensure that you are not wasting time on manuscripts that will not be published in the end.
Peer review and revisions
The peer review process ensures that the content of a manuscript is correct and sound. The process is conceptually straightforward. Manuscripts are sent for review to subject matter experts. This review is then provided to the journal in the form of a report. Using this report, a journal can make determinations as to the soundness and validity of a paper. Authors of the paper are then provided with the reports.
At times, manuscripts are rejected at this stage. Often, peer reviewers will provide guidance on how to improve the manuscript.
Like all stages of the publishing workflow, there are ways to improve the peer review pipeline.
Acceptance
This is an important, but simple part of the production workflow. If a journal can be accepted, the authors need to be notified of this. At this time, many journals need to provide additional details to authors. The specifics might vary from journal to journal, but may include instructions of what to do next, deadlines to be aware of, payment details, and more.
Templates are often used in these cases to standardize emails. Using journal management systems, however, will allow multiple templates to be used for different situations more intuitively.
Knowing which templates are for which situation is critical, regardless of which path your journal takes.
English editing
The asterisk here is that your journal is being published in English. If not, you can change “English” to whatever language you are publishing in, but the principle is the same. A manuscript’s ability to clearly communicate its message is critical. While experts during the peer review process might be able to navigate weak English, most people cannot. This communication is important to your journal in a number of ways.
Citations, for example, will only occur if people can understand what they are reading. A clearly written manuscript helps to achieve that.
Like all stages in the academic publishing pipeline, English editing is important. This can be handled by an internal team or external freelancers. Which you pick will depend on your needs. Regardless of your choice though, having clear and easy-to-understand guidelines for your editors is critical.
Layout and typesetting
These two things are similar, but not the same. They both relate, however, to design. Very briefly, layout is the way that the different elements of a manuscript (this might include the journal logo, the title, graphics included in the manuscript, etc.). Layout tends to be more commonly discussed, as these may require changes and exceptions depending on various factors.
Typesetting more specifically deals with the way that text is composed. The fonts that are selected, line spacing, and so on.
These two factors, however, have to be carefully selected when the journal is starting (though of course they can change over time). When they are selected, many journals will wind up setting up macros to quickly and effectively institute these changes in all manuscripts that are submitted for approval. Making sure your layout is carefully considered can make a big difference in the way your journal is viewed.
XML conversion
XML (or Extensible Markup Language) is a file format used for data storage and exchange. It allows easy access and storage of files by organizing them in a structured way. Because of its utility, it’s basically an industry standard in many fields. XML can also be converted into other more common formats (such as PDFs or HTML), and many journals use this format for the final publishing of journal articles. Conversion to XML uses specialized software, commonly Adobe Acrobat, FME, and Altova, but it is an important format that is not commonly used by most academics. This means that authors will rely on journals to take care of this conversion process. Not only that, but because it’s an industry standard, journal companies need to have a solution for this.
One of the most beneficial perks of using a journal management system is that they have solutions to allow for this sort of specialized process to be included in the workflow.
Why production workflow tools are important
Because the production workflow has so many different stages, not all of them might be initially intuitive. Sometimes it takes time to learn and refine your own workflow so that it works best for you and your journal.
But there is always the risk of failure with new companies and new journals are no different. The early stages of your journal’s life can be full of problems and issues, so trying to remove as many obstacles is important. Not only that, but if certain problems can be eliminated completely, that can cause a significant reduction in risk (and stress).
While there are many tools that are available to journals, some of the most powerful ones continue to be journal management tools (or suites of tools). Many of these tools can be selected in an a la carte way from companies that provide these services. If you want to learn more about journal management systems in general, we have further reading on the matter you might be interested in.
At the end of the day, your journal will survive by growing. This means to handle more publications and to generate more income. Journal management systems are an effective way of operating at scale, and being able to grow in an effective and controlled way.
Scaling growth using production workflow tools
One of the most complicated parts of growing a business is to scale it efficiently. You may not initially know how many of what resources you will need in order to manage growth. Employees take time to hire and new systems take time to implement. But what happens when your growth exceeds expectations?
Remember that even if percentage values do not change (for example, you’re growing 10% month over month), the actual numbers will change. For example, 10% of ten is only one. But that same 10% of a hundred is 10. This might not seem like a lot, but if this is in relation to hiring, it’s not a simple situation. Hiring and training one person or ten are vastly different pools of resources.
Finding an option that provides fair and scalable pricing to support your team throughout your journal’s growth can help simplify your workflows. Many companies even offer a tiered system of pricing to ensure that you maximizing your money. The right pricing for your publishing model can make all the difference in the world.