Aries Systems Corporation

Our 17^th Annual U.S. User Group Meeting took place a few weeks ago on June 20-21, 2019. The meeting was a great success, with our largest attendance of users to date. In addition, more than 63 first-time attendees joined us for their first EMUG!

One of the more popular breakout sessions at this years’ meeting was the Update on LiXuid Manuscript session, which took place on Friday afternoon and was attended by more than 30 users.

Update on LiXuid was presented by two Aries Product Management staff members who have been centrally involved in the LiXuid Manuscript (LM) project since its inception. Aries staff presented the current plan for development of LM and detailed where we stand on the development roadmap.

After a short discussion on the initial stage of LiXuid, which involved the extraction and conversion of “front matter” data into XML to prepopulate submission fields (known as Xtract), the group moved on to speak about the current phase of development: the XML Editing Tool.

A configurable XML Editing Tool

The assembled group seemed excited to hear more about the XML Editing Tool (currently under development), which will constantly parse XML as updates and changes are made, validating the underlying XML and warning of inconsistencies or issues, such as missing citations, images, or tables. The tool will also be configurable so that journal offices can choose if warning messages are simply displayed, or if outstanding warnings actually prevent submission.

Aries staff further explained some of the features and configurations they hope to incorporate in the Editing Tool. The Editing Tool aims to be configurable by task, with the ability to make certain sections hidden, or “read-only.” Configurations will dictate if Authors are prevented from changing the order of contributors or from changing the Article Title at this stage. These types of configurations will mean that journal editing policies can be more easily enforced. For example, journal staff will have the option to require Authors to answer all Editor queries prior to submission, or require all figures to be cited in the text. Sections of the editing toolbar will likely have the ability to be hidden or displayed by role, which will help to enforce journal style (for example, if a journal does not want to use boxed text, this element of the tool can be hidden).

The assembled group asked excellent questions and provided feedback to the Aries team. One item discussed by the group was the possible need for multiple Authors/Co-Authors to access the Editing Tool to view the proof (if a corresponding Author would like to double-check the document, for example) and how this can be accomplished.

View the full presentation file from the LiXuid Update session for more information. To stay up-to-date with the latest on LiXuid Manuscript, subscribe to our Aries Newsletter.