Pulling All Production Processes Together with an XML-First System
Mark Gross, Charles O'Connor · Balisage series on markup technologies · 2023
Creating a seamless centralized workflow that starts with XML has long been the siren song of scholarly journal production workflows. Yet the definition of “start” is the critical piece in this publishing puzzle. For Aries Systems Corporation, innovating article production truly means starting with XML as soon as a manuscript is accepted after peer review. But how do you create a system for auto XML text conversion for Word files when you cannot control the creation of the Word file, nor force authors to follow any predefined template or complex instructions? Given all the ways that authors can use (and abuse!) the wide range of MS Word features, no automated system can produce good XML from 100% of author-supplied files. But Aries could not expect the users of Editorial Manager and ProduXion Manager to be detectives or tinkerers, figuring out what in a problem Word file needs to be fixed to get a good result, rerunning the file, QC’ing the result, maybe having to go back in and fix something else, rerunning the file, QC’ing the result. Editors and authors need to have confidence that when they submit a Word file for processing they will get a good XML file out every time.