The Content Acquisition and Curation System is the first of two systems that comprise the Editorial Content Creation platform for VisualML (See Peer and Editorial Collaboration System for details on the second system).  It begins immediately after an abstract is accepted for a Document (Chapter/Article) or Work (Book/Issue).  As described in detail below, authors are assigned to Documents and guided through an intuitive interface to capture their unstructured content - from Word, LaTex, etc. All complex constructs, such as images, videos, tables, equations and sidebars are captured and stored in structured XML in the Central Repository.

Both the Content Acquisition and Curation System and the Peer and Editorial Collaboration systems are composed of three primary tool groups:

  1. Composer:  Is the central set of tools which empower both publishing house internal and external stakeholders to create content - all in structured XML stored in the Central Content Repository.
  2. Curator:  Wraps around composer and is operated primarily by publishing house internal stakeholders.  It enables creation of Documents and Works within VisualML, invites Authors to the system, enables observation of the status of Author submission, and Author reminding as deadlines near.  It is used most heavily to initiate a Document, then again when the Document is coming back from the Author.
  3. Commander:  Wraps around Composer and is operated by both publishing house internal stakeholders and Authors.  It provides workflow control, user dashboards, reports and the ability to check status on Documents in the workflow.  It is used most heavily as Documents are being created in Composer.

The workflow and interaction of the stakeholders with the System is shown in the figure below:

The System includes a content hierarchy of Documents within Works, which are chapters of a book or articles within an issue of a periodical.  

The Curator tool set enables the publisher's internal stakeholders to:

  • Create and add metadata to a new DocumentTitle (if known)
    • Author(s)
    • DOI
    • Due Date
    • Print, eBook and Accounting Details
  • Create and add metadata to new Works
    • Title
    • ISBN/ISSN
    • Print, eBook and Accounting Details
    • Add Documents to a Work
  • Invite Authors to the System
  • Assign Authors to Documents and Works
  • Verify Authors are entering content into the System
  • Send follow-up emails and track replies/discussions with Author
  • Document revision control to compare versions and revert to older versions if desired.
  
    Composer can be viewed either from the perspective of the Author or of a publishing house internal stakeholder:    
    Viewed from the Author's perspective, Composer provides the tools to readily enter all the information known about the content in an intuitive, visual way - creating well formed, valid, correct XML at each step without actually having to know and XML what-so-ever.  At the time of creation, authors know a great deal about their content such as concepts that are valuable for indexing and the correct display of mathematical formula.  Composer provides construct wizards that enable the author to entry these items (along with pictures, video, audio, sidebars and tables) and anchor the resulting constructs within the body text.  The author can work initially in an unstructured document such as Word, LaTex, rtf, etc and can import that into the body of the Document via the Composer interface.  
     

    From the perspective of the publishing stakeholder, Composer provides two major functions:

    1. The ability to add front- and back- matter to a Work level project (i.e. an accumulation of Documents into a Book that requires both front- and back-matter).  Both areas are templated for metadata and field content - templates that can be used across multiple publications to save creation time.  Further, both have "special" section to capture non-standard content and place it in the proper order with the front- or back- matter.  Front matter has an auto-generate table of contents/. Back matter has extensive cross-document index manipulation tools that drive the automatically created index during production.
    2. A method to edit Documents submitted by authors.  All modifications made are tracked for revision and can be rolled back via an administrative interface.  This capability can be enhanced with the Peer and Editorial Collaboration System which provides dual-window editing and preview and collaborative comments between team members.  As further discussed in Commander below, the workflow system provides a method to send Documents to various users, both inside and outside the publishing house, to perform work, such as language editing, peer review, image clean-up, etc.
    		  
     

    Commander handles all the heavy lifting of the internals of VisualML, it enables:

    • Full search of the XML stored in the Central Content Repository.
      • Basic keyword search
      • Advanced Search with customized facets including
        • Work Title
        • Document Title
        • Workflow State
        • Contributor
        • Categorization Tags
        • Date
        • Role
        • User
        • ISBN/ISSN/DOI
        • Volume and Issue
      • See the Search Module for full details 
    • Extensive dashboard and reporting
    • Management of workflow states, which default include:
    • Stub: an incomplete record for later revision
    • Submitted: a record considered ready for being pushed through the workflow
    • Cleared for Peer Review:  An editor reviews the submission and decides whether to put it on track for peer review and (ultimately) publication (Peer and Editorial Collaboration System)
    • Peer Review:  Peer reviewers are assigned by an editor; depending on reviews, document gets pushed into Editing. Alternatively, back to submitter (Peer and Editorial Collaboration System)
    • Editing:  After Peer Review is completed, an editor does the heavy-lifting editing (fills in missing information, restructure, etc.)
    • Copy-Editing:  A copy-editor irons out remaining issues of (house) style, consistency, down to grammar and punctuation (Peer and Editorial Collaboration System)
    • Author Review:  Enables sending the Document back to the Author for comment and approval of editing
    • Final:  After the publication workflow has been completed, an editor reviews the record one more time before pushing it live/published
    • Published:  Available for production and website display
    • Recalled:  Regardless of publication state, an editor may decide to take an entry out of the pipeline
    • Administration interface, and
    • Content download/export. 
    		  

    Contact VisualML for more details!