August 15, 2016

5 Tenets of Agile Publishing for STM

Agile jumper in front of mountain landscape

STM publishing requires production agility to achieve success. The art of transforming scientific documents from manuscript to final form for publishing and syndication is gauged by these tenets:

1.   Accelerated Timelines

Agile publishing for STM continues to evolve to meet the needs of the research community and exploit new avenues for distribution. The point-to-point speed for taking manuscript to proof to delivery as fast as possible is a benchmark for measuring success.

2.    Excellence

STM publishing demands precision and accuracy during all stages of production and in all versions of the articles produced. Publish ahead of print articles depend on the quality of the transformation from manuscript to proof and thorough version control to create the finished version of record.

3.    Accessibility

Scientific content is meant to be used and shared as part of the natural growth of knowledge. Accessibility is the means to ensure people with disabilities are included in the process. But, accessibility has other benefits in that it promotes search and discovery across the semantic web.

4.    Easy to Use

Truly agile publishing for STM requires that authors, editors, production staff, composition teams and third-party vendors are able to work in synchrony in as frictionless a way as possible.  This means that truly agile systems, able to take in variable content and output high-quality articles in different versions, are at their core highly structured – so well-structured that they leave their users feeling that it just works.

5.   True XML

Underpinning all of the above, converting manuscript into XML early in production as possible.  A True XML workflow introduces structure to articles that enables excellence and allows articles to be accessible. With structure and quality, the door is wide open to exploit automation for transforming delivery at high-speed and in multiple formats.

As publishers and their partners get farther into the 21st century the competitive pressure increases to cast off old production models. Focusing on solutions for the five tenets of agile publishing for STM will help them get there.

 

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