[Open-access] MalariaWorld Journal

[Mike Taylor]

On 17 February 2012 12:26, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> I'm wondering if we can emphasize the support for *authors*.  I think one of
> the biggest things we can do technically is to make it as attractive as
> possible for authors to create their submissions. This includes:
> * taking *their* view of a manuscript rather than the publishers. For
> example if a group of people use dropbox and googledocs to create
> manuscripts then formal submission should simply be a pointer to the
> dropbox. Permissions are easy to manage. None of the awful forms we have to
> go through which are different for every publisher.

The principle is good here, but I must warn against using DropBox in
particular for this.  It's not a means of ensuring everyone gets a
copy of the same stuff, it is literally a shared folder.  So what I've
seen happening when it's used as a distribution medium is that someone
looks at a document and then deletes it because he's seen all he needs
-- or maybe moves it into a project folder -- and then it's gone *for
everyone*.

So some other technology is more appropriate here.

> Also - do most people now use Googledocs for communal authoring?

I don't trust it.  I find it better to use OpenOffice, save in MS-Word
format (.doc) so that my less enlightened colleagues can also work on
the manuscript, and use the fantastically helpful Track Changes
facility so that as we pass it around, we can each see what the others
have done.

-- Mike.