In this panel session, we will talk about the main stages of a journal article through the stages: submission, Open Access processing, production, and publication.
Yesterday, we had the privilege of hosting a thought-provoking webinar featuring a panel of industry experts. We were joined by Michael Casp, the Director of Business Development at J&J Editorial, Romy Beard, the Head of Publisher Relations at ChronosHub who moderated and presented, Kate Horgan, the Director of Product Management at Aries Systems, and Nicole Brown, the Director of Customer Success at Silverchair. Together, they engaged in a lively discussion on article workflows, collaboration, and the importance of seamless integrations between vendors. It was an enlightening session filled with valuable insights from these seasoned professionals in the field. We have summarized a few of the key insights here, but we recommend that you watch the webinar too!
First up, we had Michael Casp from J&J Editorial.
He highlighted J&J Editorial's focus on submission to production workflows and emphasized the importance of configuring the necessary components in logical ways for an efficient and rapid workflow. Michael also discussed various aspects of the publishing workflow, including submission, peer review, production, and display/publication. He mentioned the challenges faced in each stage and suggested strategies for increasing speed and streamlining the process, such as clear policies, automation, and the use of XML formats. Michael also emphasized the significance of persistent identifiers, the need for human interaction alongside automation, as well as the importance of user centric design.
Next in line was Romy Beard, our very own representative from ChronosHub.
Romy delved into the significance of speed and user experience within workflows, specifically focusing on the post-acceptance processing stage. She presented insightful measurements and statistics related to the time it takes for articles to progress through various workflow steps. During her talk, Romy highlighted that the fastest recorded time for completing the workflow was an impressive two minutes and twenty seconds, while the average time stood at 40 minutes. However, she acknowledged that outliers and individual preferences could impact workflow speed. To expedite the process, she emphasized the importance of automation in reducing time-consuming tasks, such as emailing license agreements.
Romy also shared five valuable tips for enhancing author experience and optimizing workflows, such as one login, a balance between manual and automated elements, mapping out a workflow sequence, simplifying the workflow, and leveraging AI tools.
Next up, we had Kate Horgan from Aries Systems, who highlighted the need to prioritize the human element in peer review, improve reviewer engagement, and leverage tools for efficiency in editorial and production workflows. She emphasized the value of junior reviewers, the ideal review duration, and incentivizing reviewers beyond monetary compensation. Kate also discussed balancing the quantity of reviews and the importance of treating tools differently based on their maturity. In production, she envisioned automation for tasks like XML conversion and emphasized the potential for production tools to enhance editorial efficiencies. Overall, Kate's great insights focused on enhancing the peer review process and optimizing editorial and production workflows.
Our last speaker was Nicole Brown from Silverchair, who highlighted the platform's features such as automated alerting, content marketing, and analytics. Nicole emphasized the importance of integrations and partnerships, including Silverchair's collaboration with Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL). The platform focuses on discoverability by adhering to SEO best practices and facilitating indexing on search engines. It tracks user activity and offers widgets and metrics for audience engagement. Nicole also emphasized the empowerment of publishers through self-serve site management tools like Silverchair's Composer. This gave us a great overview of the Silverchair platform's contributions to the publication process and user engagement.
At the end of the webinar, we had a discussion which captured the dynamic nature of the industry, with its focus on leveraging AI, championing standards, fostering collaboration, and navigating integration challenges. Exciting times lie ahead as these ideas continue to shape the publishing landscape!
Romy is specialized in the academic online publishing industry, with a focus on publisher relations. And she’s one of our key experts in Open Access publishing terms.
Kate Horgan is the Director of Product Management at Aries Systems where she leads a team of Account Coordinators and Account Managers responsible for supporting publishers’ successful use of Editorial Manager and ProduXion Manager.
In this panel session, we will talk about the main stages of a journal article through the stages: submission, Open Access processing, production, and publication.
After short presentations of what each step involves and what has changed in recent years, we’ll dive into a discussion around some key questions.
Then there's elements like license signature and the payment of author charges that might happen at different stages depending on the publisher in question or the system used:
The session is led by industry experts from a range of publisher services, who will each speak from their experience in working with different publishers. This session will be of interest to anyone working with the different stages, as well as anyone interested in learning more about and discussing article workflow and author journey.