New tool in place to support authors and CERN as a publisher
CERN has published the Yellow Reports since the inception of the Laboratory. Until now this activity has followed a traditional, largely manual publishing workflow. Thanks to its new publishing platform, the CERN Publishing Service now offers a modern tool to the CERN community for its in-house publishing needs, managing the publication workflow from the submission of manuscripts to peer-review and publication.
Like every scientific institution, CERN has the important task of communicating its work, discoveries and achievements via publications in journals, the proceedings of conferences and books. For material that is not submitted to a third-party publisher, which is often the case for reports and in some cases for proceedings, the CERN Publishing Service supports the workflow with a dedicated Publishing Platform based on open-source software, Open Journal System, developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) and currently used by thousands of institutions all over the world.
Now available to all CERN users, this Publishing Platform supports many services, ranging from editorial management (submission, peer-review, copy-editing, layout and proofreading of manuscripts) to publication tasks. “Once a document has been submitted to one of our publications, the editor receives an automatic message, so that he or she can manage the peer-review process and assign reviewers to the job,” explains Nikos Kasioumis, who is responsible for the technical aspects of the platform. As with classical scientific journals, the peer-review process can be done in different ways, including a double-blind peer-review. The papers can be accepted, conditionally accepted with requests for revisions, or rejected. Once a paper is accepted, if required by the specific workflow, it goes into production (copy-editing, layout and proofreading).
When the manuscripts are ready, the platform itself can be used to make them publicly available. “For the moment, the platform hosts three official CERN publications: the CERN Yellow Reports, the Annual Reports and the IdeaSquare Journal of Experimental Innovation,” says publisher Valeria Brancolini. “Each publication has its own homepage, where specific information about the publication itself (Editorial Board, publication guidelines, copyright policy, etc.) is displayed.” The articles can be viewed, downloaded and shared in different ways, statistics can be gathered and the system can automatically assign Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). For each new volume/issue, an alert can be sent out to subscribers.
To make the authors’ lives easier, the Publishing Service provides tailor-made guidelines. The team can also advise editors on copy-editing services and help with the indexing of publications in the relevant bibliographic databases. The system itself makes it easy for authors and editors to keep track of the status of the articles, as it sends automatic messages at each step. And of course, all the files and different versions are archived on CDS.
“The Publishing Platform is and will continue to be in constant evolution,” concludes Nikos. “We look forward to improving it and fulfilling users’ expectations wherever possible, so they should not hesitate to contact us with any suggestions. In particular, this tool offers interesting possibilities for anyone at CERN involved in the publication of conference proceedings.”
If you would like to know more about the Publishing Platform, please contact Valeria Brancolini.
