Special Issues

[chris-huggins]

Currently special collections and issues are a very "manual" process, and involve lots of cross team communication to manage articles being published correctly. They're also very "closed" as a result, but would be great to have the option to both invite authors to submit as part of a collection, and allow authors to submit their work for consideration to be part of it. We also need concept of an "open" and "closed" issue, and ability to "formally launch" it.

Initial notes from requirements meeting with Maria (Journal Development Editor)

[chris-huggins]

There was a follow up meeting with Giuliano and Maria on Fri 21 Jun 2019 - mainly to discuss shorter term options to improve the overall Special Issues workflow and "discoverability" on the journal. Some "Short term options" were added to the above notes. Also here:

Shorter term options:

• Change the journal template (for all collections!) "Editors" would replace "Contributors" "Edited by" would replace "Curated by"

• In call for submissions we could request authors to add a specific reference or hashtag etc. to cover letter so that we can more easily identify submissions that belong to the submission

• Build crude dashboard with list of all submissions with the hashtag and include links in eJP

• Improve discoverability of past special issues/define landing page - somehow? Low volume so perhaps makes sense to remain in “Collections” (A suggestion to aggregate Special Issues more effectively could be to review title as "Special Issue: XXX" instead of "XXX: A Special Issue")

• Add some content in author guide to inform authors of the currently open special issues and instructions on how to submit to them (i.e. what to add to cover letter)

• Could we use the xPub database to query on a regular database if new submissions have been received intended for the special issue, and send an email with details/URL to eJP

• Longer term could we have a basic xPub dashboard that shows just the submissions including the hashtag/reference (after “staff dashboard” milestone)