Adding/Repeating Steps in the Edit Process

[Lynne]

Hello--we have an established (print production) workflow that I am trying to adapt to OJS. The OJS Copyedit stage, for example, seems to allow only one pass with Copyeditor, and one pass with the Author. However in my world, we not only go back & forth with the author multiple times, but also need to send it internally to multiple staff, multiple times. While I'm looking into streamlining all that, it would help hugely to know if it's at all possible to ADD Steps to the OJS workflow, or at worst, simply REPEAT existing steps (but change who the recipient is).
Many thanks--
Lynne

[ramon]

Hello Lynne,

OJS's workflow is highly flexible.
The Copyediting stage can actually be restarted a few times, if memory serves.
What will happen is you'll lose all past records of the previous process.
If that doesn't fit your requirements, or if my memory has leaked, you may use the review process for the copyediting.
Using the review process will allow you greater control and further rounds to work with, with much better record keeping.
However, you'll need to register your "copyeditors" (translators, librarians for normalization, graphic artists, and other people you may need to involve) as reviewers, and find a way to "group" them with the reviewing interests so you can find them easily while searching and assigning.

I have filed requests to improve the copyediting stage, which is not used mostly, as it seems a very stiff process, but, since the review process can overcome most of the required needs, I doubt that changing the copyediting process or adding a customized workflow is in PKP's priorities right now.

Maybe creating groups of users, removing the "copyediting", layout and proofreading, and adding those to the "review" process would make OJS more flexible.

[Lynne]

Many thanks, Ramon. I'll look into adapting the Review process, as you suggest, to my editorial needs. Losing past records by restarting the Copyedit process would be a negative, but still worth considering I suppose. Maybe someone could confirm--with some tips on how that's worked (or not) for them. I am especially interested in discovering ASAP whether we would, in fact, be creating more tracking problems by moving our edit process into OJS--it's already pretty combersome.

fyi, we do Law Journals, which are heavily heavily footnoted, all Student-staffed, and are not peer reviewed, so our entire model is somewhat anomalous to what I understand is a more typical OJS user.

If anyone else has experience with (or the need for), implementing alternative editorial workflows, be great to hear from you.

Many thanks--
Lynne

[lschiff]

I am at the California Digital Library where we are using OJS to publishing many journals from a variety of disciplines, but have only just recently begun looking into what would be required to support the specific publishing practices of law journals. Needless to say, I would be really interested in learning what others have done to customized OJS to support law review workflows. One specific question is whether anyone has built a plugin or another way to bring submissions from Ezpresso into an OJS journal. Another is if any OJS based law reviews are using the OJS Quick Submit feature.

Thanks,
Lisa
Lisa Schiff
California Digital Library
lisa.schiff@ucop.edu
http://www.escholarship.org