Once Upon a Time There Was… a Scientific Journal (IV)

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Once upon a time…The internet boom brought with it a number of changes which have affected not only one particular sector of the media but also the way we interrelate and communicate with each other internally and externally. The main virtue of this technological progress has been to reduce “distances”, allowing us to organise ourselves and connect with the people we work with in real time.

These new models of internal connection now form part of the way we run our little community, a community made up of the members of the editorial team, readers, and collaborators, each of whom finds and uses the model best suited to them.

Today, smooth communications between its different members is indispensable for any company, regardless of its size. In a scientific journal like VAD. veredes, arquitectura y divulgación, most of the internal communication takes place within the editorial team, between the members of the scientific committee, the advisory board, and the editor-in-chief who coordinates all their activity.

• “The scientific committee acts in the academic domain at national and international level to disseminate the journal, its issues, its calls for contributions and its international events. It also establishes links with prestigious researchers and other academic figures to identify potential article contributors, peer reviewers, guest editors, etc.”

• “The principal job of the advisory board is to ensure quality control for the content of the journal and help establish editorial policy.”

The tool chosen to conduct and keep this dialogue smooth and ongoing, and thus provide all the people involved with a permanent, easy-to-use means of expressing and discussing their opinions, was Google Groups. There were several reasons for this:

1. Simplicity. The tool is compatible with all email providers.
2. It allows group members to log on, post comments and follow the thread at the time most convenient for them, because everything is recorded in an orderly fashion.
3. This meets our present needs¹, which don’t usually require immediate action.

So how do we organise all the tasks performed by each team member, together with associated issues and/or projects like calendar scheduling, issue coordination, impact factoring, pressure, submissions, improvement plans, indexing, etc.?

We do that using a free digital tool called Asana,² a workspace that allows us to prioritise and keep up to date with all the tasks and projects in progress.

Such control³ is very important because not all ongoing projects and/or tasks share the same time frames, processes and/or procedures, and it is therefore necessary to create a log that will allow any member of the team (or authorised person) to easily consult the current status of the project/task in question.

We hope this broad overview, based on our own particular case, will help you remember the ninth commandment listed in stepienybarno’s “decalogue of the productive artist”:

“Thou shalt learn to use digital tools in line with the times.”

It’s worth keeping this in mind if you want to be efficient and productive.

Once upon a time…

^*This series attempts to describe the process by which the scientific journal VAD. veredes, arquitectura y divulgación was set up, to help any reader (or other interested party) to successfully implement their own digital scientific journal. The steps will be described in order but, as can be imagined, some processes are parallel to and/or dependent on others.

^** We’d like to acknowledge the indispensable collaboration of Silvia Blanco, and all the members of the scientific committee, the advisory board, external reviewers, and our own dear techie DAO.

Related post:

• Alonso, Alberto: Once Upon a Time There Was… a Scientific Journal (I). (April 2020)
• Alonso, Alberto: Once Upon a Time There Was… a Scientific Journal (II). (May 2020)
• Alonso, Alberto: Once Upon a Time There Was… a Scientific Journal (III). (July 2020)

Text translated by Andrew V.Taylor.