We’re working on a new Content Registration User Interface (UI), as introduced in this blog post. We welcome your input: where are your greatest needs and pain points for content registration helper tools? What types of content do you most need a helper tool to register?
We’ll periodically update this topic with progress reports on our new helper tool and calls for more feedback.
Hello,
Blog post link gives 404 error.
Just enable OJS exclusive v2 content registration API to all users. See: Enable to v2 API access endpoints for members using custom software and more intelligent submission reports to diagnose easily
Hi! Thanks for the heads up. It should be live now.
Rosa
We’re one of those small publisher you wrote about in your blog post.
We have been pointed to the Metadata Manager by Crossref and our sponsor as the preferable means to (re-)register content. We just started using it. The Web Deposit form appears to be more cumbersome and dated. So, I currently don’t see the benefit of switching to the Web Deposit form before we must do so.
Perhaps you have some convincing arguments besides that the Web Deposit form created more work on your side. Possibly small independent publishers might just more generally need more support (at the beginning) and that need for support is now shifted to supporting the use of the Web Deposit form. (I get your point about the “wastefulness” of supporting multiple competing tools though.)
We use the Metadata Manager a lot. I agree it’s not the best and can imagine would have been easily the 3rd most common ticket type given the issues it develops which require support’s intervention BUT, it’s still a lot better and useful than web deposit.
Another metric to look for would be to see the corresponding usage comparison between web deposit and metadata manager. If web deposit is not getting used much, it would explain fewer reported bugs too.
If there is a better tool on the roadmap, which would require temporary use of web deposit (maybe a couple of months or so), we can live with it but completely shutting down the Metadata Manager without an alternative tool would be painful.
Hi there, we also fall into the small publisher group; we deposit content through OJS and it works well. I have had experience with data manager, but find this is now as quick and easy as it should be. I find it also quite time consuming to find deposited articles to make any edits or addition to the metadata. Automatic depositing is by far the most effective.
Hi! Thanks for the feedback. Although this isn’t something we’re working on in the immediate term, it is something we’ll look into in the future.
Hi! Thanks for the feedback. You can certainly continue to use Metadata Manager until the end of the sunset period, if that is what is working for you. It is true that newer members do need more support at the beginning. However, the bulk of the Metadata Manager issues our Support team receives from Members are bugs in the tool, and many of those we have not been adequately able to address. Simply put, we need to take a new approach to a content registration UI.
As we progress, we’ll be looking for small members to help us as beta testers. If this is something you’d be interested in participating in, please let me know. We’d be grateful for your feedback.
Hi @sbowman,
I am always happy to contribute as small publisher as betatester. It my way to help the community and have participate for other organizations as well. Count on me!
Lucia
Hi! Thanks for the feedback. There are about twice as many items registered using Web Deposit as are registered using Metadata Manager.
Our hope is to have a new tool in place before Metadata Manager is deprecated, but our approach will be iterative and we’ll deliver features as we complete them. We’ll order features strategically - solving the most pressing problems and/or handling lowest hanging fruit first. That is to say, what is delivered before the deprecation of Metadata Manager might not be a wholesale replacement of everything Metadata Manager does.
We are going to launch a public roadmap soon, which will give the community more insight on what we’re working on and what we plan to work on next.
Can you share any specific features of Metadata Manager that are lacking in Web Deposit? Feedback from members about the most critical features or critical problems to solve is of utmost importance to us as we’re planning and building a new tool for content registration.
Great! Thanks very much. We’ll be in touch when we’re ready to get testing!
Hi Sara,
I have had both experiences here. On my bioinformatics side I run a few scripts and generate the xml, run a quick check on it and then submit. Has always worked well, and I was very happy with that approach. We are a very small publisher averaging 5 - 10 entries per quarterly release.
I also work a St. John’s University which runs a very small publishing effort. I have seen the total opposite of my bioinformatics experience. The xml files are seen as an almost insurmountable barrier. I shared the scripts, then modified them to work on google docs and sheets. Absolutely no go. We have a hard-working smart library staff, but the xml is just to weird for them.
Interestingly they did recruit a graduate assistant to submit data through the web form, but even that was a challenge. I imagine that there are allot of smaller groups like that out there that have a relatively untrained staff, but would like to deposit a slew of slightly different material. Things line dissertations, thesis , journal articles, and data. All they need is a simple easy funnel to enter this data.
Whatever the new UI looks like, it should have a huge does of short and easy training video to achieve what you want. The training would ideally be short and sweet, as focused on the appropriate choice of media type as well as the specific bits of data that you will need for each.
I would be happy to help in any way to make a better UI.
Thank you for asking and taking this on.
Marc
Hola,
Les escribo desde México, mi institución usa varias herramientas de depósito, el mejor y más común es XML. Sin embargo, muchos de nuestros editores no usan OJS y no tienen recursos para generar XML, para ellos nuestra opción es Metadata Manager, lo preferimos al Web Deposit pues es más tedioso subir la información.
Espero la nueva herramienta sea igual de intuitiva que Metadata y permita subir otros contenidos como en Web Deposit. Espero que en la misma interfaz pueda depositar libros, informes y conferencias.
Sería para mi un placer poder probar la versión Beta de la nueva herramienta.
Gracias!
Hi Sara
I am a contract production editor for a small publisher. Part of my role has been to sort out the huge mess the DOIs were in after using a contractor to create and deposit XML, so I have spent a lot of time on various parts of the manual deposit systems and redoing XML manually.
I’ve been using Metadata Manager since it launched for 5 of the 6 journals. This simple form is greatly needed for small companies like this where there is nobody in the company who can work with XML files.
The web deposit form is too fiddly and I found people create errors when using it. Because they need to locate and enter manually far too much information for the journal, we’ve found that nearly every time they get stuck on the journal information page before they manage to get to an actual article. They often created errors here too.
For any non-article content (this is white papers, supplements, poster books), I either do the XML myself or ask the Indian contractor to do it, as we have found the web deposit form generally far too cumbersome.
MM has made a huge difference to the quality and timeliness of the article deposits (~150 articles/year). It means that anyone in the small team is able to deposit or update easily with minimal training.
The key advantages of MM for this client:
• No need to add journal abbreviations, ISSNs etc.
• Can add an article and save metadata before an article publishes, then add the date information and deposit.
• Saved information can be checked pre deposit to ensure it’s correct - this means an editorial assistant can add the article but there is a level of checking which isn’t available in web deposit.
• Clear layout and easy to follow.
• Easy to correct a deposit.
I admit, my heart sunk when I saw the post about closing MM. It has really made a positive difference to my working life.
Hi,
using web deposit form is easy but first of all you have to generate a world or excel file including all the details about each article you will enter. But if you make a mistake then you have to find where is the mistake sometimes it is very hard to find the mistake because you do not enter one article.
If something is found about this , it will be so useful
thanks
Hi there,
Thanks for sharing your experience with and feedback about Metadata Manager and the Web Deposit form. It’s really helpful to hear from members which features are most important in a content registration tool, so we can prioritize these appropriately in our new tool.
As we make progress on this project, we’ll be looking for beta testers to try the tool and give feedback. If this is something you’d be interested in participating in, please let me know. We’d be grateful for your help and feedback.
Hi Marc,
Thanks for sharing your varied experiences in your organizations. I’ll reach out when we get to the beta testing phase, in the event you might be willing to participate.
Hi there,
We are sponsors for several members in Latin America and most of them use OJS. Metadata Manager was very useful in these cases:
So we are wondering if the new metadata tool could provide an easy solution for the above user cases. Finally, for Latin American users is absolutely important to provide metadata in several languages. For example, there is one article where its full text is only in Spanish, but metadata is in English, Portuguese and Spanish. So it would be wonderful if your new metadata tool support adding translated metadata for the fields “title” and “abstract”. This is not translated articles, it is only translated metadata, because the full text will remain only in one language with one single DOI.
Hi
I’d be delighted to be a beta tester - thank you!
Hi Sara,
Yes, absolutely would love to do so. We (meaning Reactome) are still interested in being involved more closely with Crossref. Please let me know if there are any volunteer board or committee opportunities.
Cheers,
Marc
Reactome
Marc Gillespie • Biocurator
reactome.org • New York