The Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan, University Library

Goals for FY 2005


  1. Refinement and clarification of mission of SPO
  2. Outreach and promotion of SPO services and publications
  3. Refinement of intellectual property policies and practices
  4. Development of better content management practices, improve workflow
  5. Technical development
  6. Good housekeeping
  7. Additional project or publication specific goals

1. Refinement and clarification of mission of SPO


  1. Clarify SPO priorities and selection criteria. As part of this activity, form an advisory board to help make SPO selection decisions and to help give SPO a more concrete "identity" within the Library, on campus, and within the larger scholarly publishing community.
  2. Finalize and promote the SPO-SPARC Publisher Assistance Program.
  3. Conduct a series of “assessment” conversations with SPO content providers, geared toward helping SPO set goals for the future.
  4. Prepare and disseminate statement on SPO policies and practices for long term preservation of SPO publications.

2. Outreach and promotion of SPO services and publications


  1. An SPO goal that was not met in fy04 will be pursued this year: As part of its recruitment strategy, but also to promote existing publications and to raise the visibility of the concept of library-based scholarly publishing, SPO needs to develop a much more aggressive outreach and marketing plan. SPO will finalize a documented plan that includes a variety of methods (press releases, talks to faculty, distribution of marc records, email list announcements, etc) and create a timeline for implementing this plan, with activity underway before the end of year.
  2. Update and redesign SPO website to make better use of the web and better communicate with our content providers (current and potential), library staff, and readers. Use this or another site to better showcase SPO content.
  3. Create a summary/cheat sheet or FAQ about SPO for use with visitors/outsiders
  4. Prepare a report on the first three years of SPO activity and share this with the Library and the campus

3. Refinement of intellectual property policies and practices


  1. Prepare and disseminate formal statement of SPO policies and practices re intellectual property.
  2. Promote and document intellectual property agreements that are beneficial to scholars and libraries.
  3. Contact all rights holders for SPO publications and encourage them to agree to a Creative Commons license. Explore methods for encoding these agreements in headers and displaying in our publications.
  4. Prepare educational materials for SPO authors and editors and make them available on the Web and in paper as a general resource for the campus and library.
  5. Explore other rights expression languages and consider application in SPO and Library context. Prepare a white paper on this subject that makes recommendations for further action.
  6. Examine record keeping mechanisms for rights and permission clearance.
  7. Develop better and more reliable workflow for managing permissions clearance process for digitally reformatted volumes for the General Collection.

d. Development of better content management practices and Improved workflow


  1. Examine and possibly refine the SPO publishing model, with an eye towards allowing more direct publisher control over publishing content online and refining workflow and publishing models to improve ability to scale up.
  2. Explore alternate methods of online publishing, possibly including alternatives to bibclass for publishing bibliographic works and uses of other platforms to make content available online (blogs, wikis, CMS).
  3. Continue to look for ways to simplify/streamline/automate tasks, balanced against the need for publication customization and brand identity.
  4. Find ways, through better workflow and documentation, use of Drupal, scheduling and prioritizing, etc., to improve our turnaround time on projects. Continue to examine workflow issues, staff roles and responsibilities, and how best to organized and divide up SPO activities
  5. Design workflow for updating and correcting POD files available through Lightning Source.
  6. Continue to develop and refine methods for producing print versions of electronic publications.

5. Good housekeeping

  1. Clear the backlog of existing projects.
  2. Review release checklist for all publications and make sure that all steps have been completed.
  3. Develop project intake form to standardize procedures and make sure all pertinent information is gathered up front
  4. Continue working on documentation
  5. Hire and train new staff for programming work and other activities as necessary
  6. Hire and train temporary replacement for Kevin Hawkins; document Kevin’s activities and projects before his departure

6. Technical development

  1. Continue work on developing tools to manage content at all stages (submission, data prep and conversion, indexing and releasing to production)
  2. Explore ways to improve the text preparation process, looking at possible alternatives to the current RTF to XML method. Possibilities include further examination of using Open Office to create XML documents, and development of a set of tools and procedures to enable content providers to create XML themselves.
  3. Improve the management of conversion process, including creating guidelines, documentation and improving the conversion scripts and validation process. Work on a revamped transformation process that allows staff to more easily fix previously processed files, and allows Unicode end-to-end.
  4. Make all our publications work in new DLXS release.
  5. Continued design and development of the Print-on-Demand e-commerce system. Particulars of an e-commerce system will include a mechanism for availability and pricing at the item level. This will allow for variable pricing and the offering of titles based on specific restrictions rather then collection-level generic restrictions.
  6. System maintenance including middleware consolidation: Development of cross-collection SPO code to support common functionality. So far this affects only TextClass and includes perl modules, but also common template chunks and common scripts. e.g., for making bibclass/OAI files.
  7. Improve workflow design and support for collection-building processes.
  8. Move Philosophers’ Imprint to TextClass. This will be a large job for whomever is working with the Phimp editors. (Brian Sheppard notes: I'd like to broach the idea of having them deliver xml and having us make the pdfs. We'd probably need a phimp dtd which is a restrictive subset of textclass and which will expand as needed. Desirable would be equations in xml that could be rendered as SVG vector graphics -- same process that would make the pdfs.)
  9. Parallel DLXS development and data conversion of existing sgml to UTF-8, primarily to accommodate the upcoming movement to XSLT filtering. This will be a significant task.
  10. OJS/JMS development: The first step is to migrate the existing JMS to MySQL and install it on both development and production servers. This will provide some context for looking at the next version of the OJS. It will be useful to have SPO attempt a functional anaylsis of OJS which we could use to see whether we want to keep developing the JMS, to customize OJS, or to simply wait to see what the DPUBS open-source peer-review system has to offer.
  11. Better integration with standards-based access mechanisms such as OAI, implementation of DOIs, external resolution of IDs, etc. This will require some high-level thinking and decisions that will likely affect workflow and intake requirements, in addition to any programming.

7. Additional project or publication specific goals


LLMC:
  1. Tweak/reconfigure tracking db, with input from David, Bill, Brian, etc., to more accurately and easily perform all the necessary tasks and functions associated with it (this may also require some help from a Filemaker “expert”)
  2. Explore moving db from Filemaker to Mysql
  3. Continue to prepare and add documentation to Worktools; ensure that pertinent people outside SPO have documented and submitted their tasks as well
  4. Work on getting a backup for Nita selected and trained
  5. Train someone as backup for CD logging and record importing (and perhaps look at turning these tasks over permanently to an assistant)
  6. Transfer budget/billing responsibilities from Maria Bonn to Terri Geitgey
  7. Prepare to adjust workflow and tracking procedures to accommodate network delivery
  8. Technical development for LLMC including workflow/indexing procedures and any new functionality requests.

ACLS:
  1. Continue to refine backlist workflow process
  2. Develop and document workflow process for frontlist titles
  3. Continue to work on tracking mechanism(s) and coordination of all elements for backlist titles including, investigating possibility of storing markup separate from the text
  4. Prepare final budget report for first four year phase of the project. Negotiate new contract and billing with the project directors.
  5. Transfer budget/billing responsibilities from Maria Bonn to Terri Geitgey
  6. Design and implement workflow for ACLS POD sales
  7. Get PPP process documented; get backup for Rashmi selected and trained. Perhaps investigate whether PPP software is the best way to go, or if there are any alternatives. Improve PPP by considering:

Diderot

Design and implement Diderot including:
  1. use of a bilingual controlled vocabulary created in collaboration with ARTFL
  2. revised article metadata and content
  3. new support for cross-references and non-Latin characters.