Single Source Publishing Workflow at the Specialized Information Service of Philosophy at the University of Cologne, Germany

Authors of this Workflow

Joao Martins
ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7027-8065
Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln

Eric Eggert
ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9876-4495
Universität zu Köln, Thomas-Institut

Institution

The University and City Library of Cologne is the main research library in the University of Cologne, which is a public university in Germany.

Description

This page describes the media-neutral publishing workflow in the Specialized Information Service (FID) Philosophy, using the Open Source Academic Publishing Suite (OS-APS). As the primary test user of the BMBF-funded project, the FID Philosophy has been using a single-source publishing process with four Diamond Open Access journals since mid-2023. The workflow is based on JATS-XML standards and enables the automated generation of multiple output formats (HTML, JATS-XML, PDF) from a single source. The output formats are then uploaded to the University and City Library of Cologne publication platform Open Journal Systems (OJS).

The workflow for publishing scholarly articles in the FID Philosophy’s media-neutral publishing process consists of five main phases:

• Submission
• Peer Review
• OS-APS Import and Editing
• OS-APS Export (Formats: HTML, JATS-XML, PDF)
• OJS Integration

The process begins with an application to establish or migrate a journal to the FID Philosophy, followed by approval or rejection by the Scientific Advisory Board. Once approved, a draft template for the OS-APS is developed, and authors submit their articles into the OJS platform. The peer review phase runs parallel to further template refinement.

Next, the accepted article is imported into the OS-APS system after comprehensive training by FID Philosophy. Editors collaboratively refine the article in the OS-APS editor, in an iterative process until the text meets formal requirements.

Once finalized, metadata is entered, and article proofs (including DOI assignment) are created in OJS and then integrated into OS-APS. Finally, the formats are exported from OS-APS, integrated into OJS, and published.

The workflow was described in more detail in the following article (in german):

Medienneutrale Publikationsworkflows: Praxisbericht aus dem FID Philosophie

Motivation

The main motivations are:

• Enable reading in different screen sizes
• Improve accessibility,
• Consistency between formats
• Make JATS-XML available for research in the digital humanities
• Archiving

Formats

• Accepted input formats: DOCX, Latex (only a few articles so far)
• Generated output formats: PDF, HTML, JATS XML
• Single-Source of Truth format: JSON imported via pandoc.

Software

• OJS: Used for submission, peer review, and publication of articles.
• OS-APS: Opens Source Academic Publishing Suite (https://os-aps.de)
• Docker: Runs the application in a docker container, being the served as a webapplication behind a reverse proxy.
• PrinceXML: Tool to generate the PDFs. It comes bundled with the docker image.
• PagedJS: Open source alternative to the PDF generation. Still being used by one of the journals.

Staffing requirements

Number of people involved:

• Submission handling (peer review organization, editorial decisions): ~12
• Typesetting: ~5 between editors and auxiliary staff

Required skills/training:

• Knowledge of OJS, OS-APS platform, and Metadata

Extra requirements imposed on authors

• Insert citations using Zotero.
• Include basic headings for section titles
• Inclusion of some metadata, part of the OJS submission process

Costs

OJS and OS-APS are free for journals with editors at the University of Cologne and for journals that were accepted by the scientific advisory board of the FID Philosophy. PrinceXML has a one time fee for academic licence and yearly updates.

Challenges and Trade-Offs

One of the main challenges for users of the software is the required technical expertise to develop templates, particularly in web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. While technical staff are beneficial, efforts have been made to create a user-friendly interface that allows configuration even without in-depth knowledge of the web stack.

Experience shows that much of the work occurs in the early stages of a journal’s setup—template configuration and user training are significant time factors. However, this initial effort pays off in the long run: the import, editing, and export processes for subsequent issues become significantly more efficient, and the quality of submissions improves as editorial teams and authors gain experience. Currently, journal managers and editors are the primary users of the system. As familiarity with the software grows, it is expected that authors will also take on parts of the production process, ultimately enabling self-sufficient editorial teams.

A central concern of the application is quality assurance for final documents. As a web-based tool, OS-APS allows multiple editors to iteratively review and correct documents online. Due to the restrictions on a user management, only editors and copy-editors are using the tool, but it could potentially also be used by authors.

Metadata for the workflow

OS-APS Supports a broad range of metadata, including journal metadata, article metadata, authors, and references.