Launching a Journal: Part 4: Review, Edit, Format, and Publish.

Launching a peer reviewed, scholarly journal: Part 4: Review, Edit, Format, and Publish. This is a six-part video series from publishing consultant John Bond about the steps involved with starting a new journal. FIND OUT more about John Bond and his publishing consulting practice at www.RiverwindsConsulting.com
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TRANSCRIPT
Hi there. I am John Bond from Riverwinds Consulting and this is Publishing Defined.
This is the fourth in a 6-part video series on launching a peer reviewed scholarly journal. This part is called Reviewing, Editing, Formatting, and Publishing.
You have manuscripts that leaders in the field want your new journal to consider. What next? Let’s dive into the many steps involved in publication.
Setting the stage for a professional operation now, will payoff in the future. You will need a system to receive manuscripts, allow for peer review, and monitor the accepted ones through the production process. Some of these systems have many features and are quite robust. Editorial Manager, ScholarOne, Manuscript Manager and many others offer the options you would need to manage the process.
Part of this process is communicating with authors through a series of formatted emails that acknowledge receipt of a submitted manuscript, let the author know the journals decision, and more.
These systems were created to manage the peer review process. Reviewers consider a manuscript and render a verdict of reject, accept, or revise. Along the way the reviewers may give detailed comments about the work. The process may be blind to the author and reviewer or just to the author. The editor makes the final decision on a manuscript.
When a manuscript is accepted in an open access journal, an APC (or article processing charge) would need to be paid. There are some services that allow for this to be done seamlessly for a reasonable fee.
Many journals will run manuscripts through a program that does a check for plagiarism. One example is iThenticate. This simple step can save many potential headaches down the road.
The next step in the process is likely editing. Many organizations turn to outsourcing for this. I do not suggest you ask Board members or the like to do this. For one thing, it will burn them out and another is this is not their area of expertise. Be consistent with your editing and know that a portion of your audience will judge the journal by how well it is done.
After editing comes file preparation, or page make up, or typesetting. This is when the accepted and edited manuscript starts to look like a finished article. Once again, a lot of organizations outsource this work at a low cost and with professional results. Contact me for recommendations on potential vendors with editing or typesetting.
A decision has to be made as to what the final form will be for any articles, HTML, PDF both, or other.
And of course authors will need to see page proofs and give their feedback on the changes that were made.
The major question will be the journal website. There are many platform or hosting options for a journal. I suggest considering an established system like Bepress, Atypon, High Wire, Project Muse, or others. While a programmer or developer could create a website that delivers articles to your readers, why reinvent the wheel? Savvy readers today expect many specific features. Many of these out of the box systems offer a menu of services you can use. They also help address such key issues as responsive design for mobile users and SEO or search engine optimization. If you take nothing out of my advice here, take this: don’t program from scratch your own journal website.
When finalizing the accepted articles and preparing to post at your new website, pay careful attention to keywords and create good clean, industry accepted metadata. It is the essential tool for discoverability by your readers. Don’t cut corners here.
Also consider accessibility of your texts and figures for those with visual or learning concerns. This practice increases readership. Contact me about a white paper on wrote on its importance.
When your articles are about to be posted is when you would likely be sending to a printer if you are creating and mailing a print issue. Contact me for journal specific printers.

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