Back in April, we announced a new agreement with the Royal Society of Chemistry to support them with their technology decisions as they look to cement their position as a data-driven, open access society publisher.  But what does this mean in terms of day to day projects and deliverables?  At the moment, it means increased trust and shared long term vision between both teams, plus the co-development of some new products that enable them to get closer to users.   Here is a short introduction to a few new, and established, products:

Digital manuscript tracker

An author submitting a manuscript to the Royal Society of Chemistry now receives an email with a personal link to a new online platform, where they can then track the progress of their manuscript, as it journeys through the peer review and production processes. The author can also get information such as which editor is overseeing it, how many reviewers have returned their reviews, and similar features.  This tool is highly used and the ‘self serve’ approach has massively reduced the number of queries.   

Digital licensing system

Similar to the digital manuscript tracker, when a manuscript is accepted for publication, the corresponding author will receive an email inviting them to sign a licence (open-access or standard) on an online platform, which will grant the Royal Society of Chemistry permission to publish their work. If they have selected open access, then usually there is a charge, which they can either pay by card, or they can fill in their details and the client’s finance team will invoice them.  Benefits include: better user experience with personalised recommendations/help functions, better use of Read & Publish deals and increased efficiencies, all within an entirely bespoke system built to the Royal Society of Chemistry’s own business rules. 

SupplierSend

SupplierSend is a tool that takes manuscripts post peer review and sends them to typesetters for enhancement, including critical metadata compilation elements. The product includes a custom built admin app which offers improved visibility of the manuscript’s progression, and paves the way for future expansion, particularly in delivery mechanisms.  

SupplierSend replaces a legacy system which required frequent manual intervention, posed licensing issues, and was at risk of outage and downtime. All these worries have now been eliminated.

Content distribution tool

We have also built a new tool to make it easier to send published content to third parties. Upon publication, various organisations such as Crossref, PubMed, British Library etc rely on publishers to send an article in a format that suits their needs, such as metadata only, full text xml (in a variety of formats) and PDF, full text + images + PDF + supporting material, etc.  The legacy version of this tool was unreliable and caused re-work and intervention.  Benefits of the new product include: the ability to send articles earlier in the life cycle, the automation of processes and removal of bottlenecks, and better and more secure ways to transfer content.

67 Bricks’ head of client services David Leeming said: “Signing the partnership agreement with the Royal Society of Chemistry means we are now included in their long term technology planning and they can rely on a continuity of service and skills from us for the next  two years.  This advantageous way of working continues to provide custom, co-developed products for the organisation.”

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