This document discusses tools and strategies for managing digital assets in scholarly publishing. It provides a timeline of how digital assets have evolved from 50 years ago when content was paper-based to today's digital environment. It then examines the goals of digital tools in reducing costs, increasing efficiency and quality. As a case study, it outlines the benefits of using an online submission and peer review system in automating workflows and reporting. It concludes by considering future digital assets like interactive readers' commentaries and open document standards.

1. SSP Tools and Strategies for Managing Digital Assets
Online Peer Review, Digital
Artwork, and the Future.
Joel Plotkin
eJournalPress
plotkin@ejpress.com
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

2. Navigating Change
 Digital assets / Historical Perspective
 50 years ago, probably none.
 Media = paper
 Content = manuscripts / books.
 Postal Mail
 20 years ago
 Overnight deliver
 Floppy Disks
 10 years ago
 E-mail / Zip Disks
 4-5 years ago
 The Web
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3. Tools & Strategies / Goals
 Why Change?
 Why Innovate?
 Reduce Costs
 Increase Efficiency
 Increase Quality
 Increase Revenue
 Increase Access
 Fulfillment of mission
Discuss one tool today…
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4. What is the Digital Environment?
Readers
Author
Online Submission
& Production Distribution
s
Peer Review
XML & Files XML & Files
 Technical Innovations - Timeline
 Distribution – Online Content
 Peer Review – Online Submission Peer Review
 Production – electronic dataflows
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5. Digital Assets
Readers
Author
Online Submission
& Production Distribution
s
Peer Review
XML & Files XML & Files
 Author / Reviewer Database  XML/SGML Manuscripts
 Accepted Manuscripts  Ahead of Print
 Article file  Version for Print
 Figures  Version for Web
 Videos
 Supplemental Material
 Datasets
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6. Tool: Online Submission & Peer review
 Allows authors to submit manuscripts via the web
 Article
 Figures
 Tables
 Videos
 Supplemental Materials
 Workflow engine to automate the peer review cycle

Tracking information to provide integrated reporting
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7. Tool vs. 7Goals
 Reduced Costs - Yes

Postage

Reduced paper work
 Increased Efficiency - Yes
 Reduced Staff time
 No longer need to manually

Chasing Reviewers
 Sending out mailings
 Basic filing & tracking
 Automated Reporting
 Tracking Reports
 Annual Meeting Reports/Charts
 Increased Quality – Yes

Get author original’s file so no need for re-keying
 Increased Revenue - No
 Increased Access
 Broader submission audience
 Broader reviewer audience - yes/no
 Fulfillment of mission – Yes

More quality submissions / better distribution of ideas

Faster time to press
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8. Lessons Learned
 Instead of 10% normal growth, expect
25%
 Extra submissions still same quality
 Age/technology bias
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9. Digital Artwork & this tool
 Raw artwork file
 Low resolution for peer review
 High resolution for peer review
 High resolution for press
 Low/Medium resolution for online content
 Merged PDF’s low resolution (72 dpi for web)
 Merged PDF’s high resolution (300 dpi for printer)
 When to get press resolution figures?
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10. Digital Artwork – Strategies
 File Formats
 Source format
 Tiff/PS/PDF/JPEG
 Backup / Archival
 Manuscripts with Decisions

Files - 6 months post decision
 Keep Merged PDF file
 age off other files to DVD / USB Disks / NAS

Meta-data
 Database data is stored indefinitely
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11. Digital Artwork Issues
 Types of files uploaded by the Author
 Frequency and timing of when Author is allowed to change
artwork
 Size and resolution of the artwork
 Where in the process is the best and final artwork received from
Author
 When/how is best and final artwork forwarded to Production
 Tools for assisting the Authors
 Flow through will depend on:
 required quality (varies by journal)
 frequency of post-decision author artwork changes
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12. Tomorrow’s Digital Assets
 Innovation.
 Your Digital Assets today may not be your key
assets tomorrow.
 Blogs / Slash / Zope
 Static content today mirrors printed page
 Future: Active Readers
 Readers will be able to provide instant commentary
 Commentaries will be a new form of digital asset
 Open Manuscript DTD
 NLM - Archiving and Interchange Document Type Definition (DTD)
 http://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/publishing
 Office 2003 – 4 years out
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