IdeaScale : The repository should provide authoring support

The repository should provide authoring support

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:00:00 PDT

This is a refinement of the current top-rated idea, based on one of my blog posts on research repository systems.

Authoring support should include version control, collaboration, possibly publisher liaison, and be integrated with the repository deposit process. It does need object disclosure control, see below. Version control would support ideas, working drafts, pre-prints, working papers, submitted drafts undergoing editorial changes, and refereed and published versions. Collaboration support would need to include support for multiple authors contributing document parts, and assembly of these into larger parts and eventually “complete” drafts. It should also include some kind of multiple author checkout system for updates, something like CVS or SVN, maybe a bit WIKI-like. It must support a wide choice of document editor, eg Word, OpenOffice.org, LaTeX etc (I don’t know how to combine this with the previous requirement!).

Comments (4)Category/Tags : Repository functions (10) Mark as duplicate

Comment by o.stephens

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 PDT

I can't support stuff that says 'the repository should do x'. Can we start phrasing this type of thing like:

The availability of research via Open Access would increase if the same systems that provide Open Access also provided, or were integrated with, tools which support the authoring process

I'd vote yes to this!

Comment by c.rusbridge

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Something weird happened here; I was given an opportunity to vote on this (which I thought I already had... it was at 2 and I voted up and it dropped to 1!

Comment by o.stephens

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Also lost my comment/rant which was:

I can't support stuff that says 'the repository should do x'. Can we start phrasing this type of thing like:

The availability of research via Open Access would increase if the same systems that provide Open Access also provided, or were integrated with, tools which support the authoring process

I'd vote yes to this wording!

Comment by Andy McGregor

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Sorry about this. I changed the categories of some posts and this meant that the comments got lost somehow. I have told the developers about this and they have identified the bug and a fix should be put into the production system tomorrow. Hopefully that should mean that comments will reappear.

Comment by ian.stuart

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 PDT

This is a variation of what Peter Murry-Rust proposed back in '07: google-docs mixed with a CRIS.

I've been promoting this idea for a while too :)

Comment by forkel

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 PDT

my experience is, that feature requests of this sort are exactly the ones which end up in the "users didn't know what they wanted bin" (i'm a developer). they basically mean, let us keep on working exactly the way we worked before and just have everything in the repository. while this may be the optimal solution, i don't think it will work. so if we have to make the users adapt their ways, why not point them to apps like google docs right away?