An Electronic Journal Management System

Hrvoje Bogunović, Edgar Pek, Sven Lončarić and Vedran Mornar

Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb
Unska 3, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
{hrvoje.bogunovic,edgar.pek,sven.loncaric,vedran.mornar}@fer.hr

Abstract. A web-based information system for In this paper, we present a web-based

management of scientific electronic journals is information system that provides support to all
presented in the paper. participants in the journal management process
Journal management requires exchange of including authors, editor-in-chief, editors,
information between many participants in the reviewers, lectors, and other editorial staff.
publishing process, including authors, reviewers, As far as scientific manuscript review is
editors, and lectors. Each participant in the concerned, journal management is quite similar
process plays a different role, and cooperates to management of conferences. However, journal
with other participants. The web system is management imposes some additional
implemented using open source solutions on the requirements that make it more complicated than
Linux platform. conference management. After a journal issue is
Three-tiered information system architecture published, the journal has not finished its life
has been used. Object oriented PHP (PHP time like a conference. Many papers are
hypertext preprocessor) is used as a server side continuously being processed and the involved
scripting language to implement the business editorial personnel constantly change as new
logic. Database management system is provided editors and reviewers join the process.
by PostgreSQL, although database connection Some of the observed popular conference
abstraction is utilized. Apache web server is used management systems are Confman [1], and Start
together with SSL encryption mechanism to [2]. Confman uses CGI scripts, which have
provide HTML content to end-user. performance and security issues. It also requires
The system is currently in use for editorial mSQL database system, which does not
support of an international scientific journal and implement triggers or transaction mechanism.
the initial results have been encouraging. Start conference manager on the other hand does
not use any database system and stores all the
Keywords. Journal management, PHP, web paper files and paper information in the file
applications, web content management. system. To summarize, both of these systems
rely on obsolete technologies.
1. Introduction An effective journal management system
requires database management with support for
Journal management is a complex and time- triggers and transactions. These requirements are
consuming task, especially without the process necessary to provide high-level data integrity.
automation, or if the manuscripts, reviews, and The journal management information system,
other information is circulated by regular mail. described in the paper, is implemented as a
The work overhead present in classical journal server side application with the help of the PHP
management causes time delays and requires scripting language. The user requires only a
additional personnel, extending the time required simple web browser and no applications are
to publish the paper. One of the most difficult being installed on the user machine. Thus the
requirements on scientific journals is reduction user is considered as a light client.
of time from manuscript submission to The organization of the paper is as follows.
publishing. To reduce this time it is necessary to Section 2 describes the general system
efficiently conduct the review process and this architecture. A detailed analysis of database
can only be done using an information system design is displayed in Section 3. Section 4
that speeds up the exchange of information. presents all the capabilities this web application
implements. Finally, a concluding section closes This brings us to the presentation tier. "Smarty"
the paper. template provides ability to create HTML code
from a template after PHP supplies all the
2. System architecture necessary variables. Once HTML is generated,
the web server, in our case Apache web server,
The proposed journal management system is delivers HTML content to end user's browser
three-tiered. The tiers are: the presentation tier, who then renders the web page with the help of
the business logic tier, and the data tier. The data the supplied cascading style sheet (CSS). The
tier is provided by database management system system architecture is shown in Fig. 1.
(DBMS). We used PostgreSQL DBMS for that Session handling must be provided since
purpose. users need to log into the web application.
PostgreSQL is an open source DBMS with Cookies are usually delivered to user's machine
the support for triggers and transactions. Both but some users do not allow any cookies. For this
were heavily used in order to maintain database reason, we decided to propagate session
integrity and avoid possible race conditions. variables through URL rewriting. All session
Connection to the database is made in abstract data together with the session identifiers are
manner so PostgreSQL can be replaced by any stored in the database.
equally functional DBMS. Database tables and
integrity constraints will be described in the next 3. Database description
section.
The middle business logic tier represents the The most important information stored in the
interface between the presentation layer and the database is person and paper data. The database
database layer. It is implemented by means of was designed using Chen's entity-relationship (E-
PHP scripts. PHP is an open source language for R) diagrams. The basic elements of the database
server side scripting. It is widely used and are the following.
contains a rich function library code, which Person data consists of personal information
makes it ideal for web applications. It is also (first name, middle initial, second name, address,
object oriented so the developed scripts take email, etc.), place, country, title, fields in which
advantage of object oriented design. Processing person is competent and institution in which
user data with PHP through HTML forms and belongs. Every person can be associated with
producing SQL queries for the database is fairly multiple fields. A person is associated with
effective. When a good mapping of database his/her role in the editorial process. Each person
tables to classes of objects is performed then the may have multiple roles in the editorial process.
scripts are well structured and easy to maintain. Paper data consists of paper title, abstract,
keywords, paper file, and paper source file. A
SERVER SIDE CLIENT SIDE
paper is described by paper category (like case
study, technical note, etc.). During the processing
HTML BROWSER
a paper is associated with different states
PRESENTATION INTERNET
(received, accepted, rejected, to be revised). A
Rendering HTML paper may have multiple reviews. Each review is
with CSS

Template
related to the reviewer (person conducting the
display code
scientific review of the paper).
A review consists of recommendation
BUSINESS LOGIC
PHP code
(accept, reject, major or minor changes),
summary of evaluation (excellent, fair, etc.),
comments to author, confidential comments to
Database
abstraction
editor. Fig. 2 shows the E-R diagram for the
layer
tables mentioned above.
The database also supports creation of an
electronic journal issue, which consists of
PERSISTENT DATA STORAGE accepted and lectored papers. Each published
Figure 1. The system architecture issue may have several sections. An issue section
consists of several papers and may have a section
In order to abstract HTML code from PHP title.
code into a script, a template mechanism is used.
 Place Title

1 1

LivesIn Has

Country 1 Lives IsIn N Field

N
N N
N
N Person
N Works
1

N
Per-Paper
Institution
Per-Func
N
N 1
State

1 N Function

IsIn
N Paper Rev-Paper
1 1 Review
N

N
N

Type Rv - Sum
N
Rv - Rec
1 1
1
Rv - Cat
Category Recommend
Summary

1
Figure 2. A simplified E-R diagram of the database

4. System functionality authors are automatically e-mailed and paper's

username and password is supplied. Each author
Several different functional modules within a gets his author_id. Using the author_id the author
journal are implemented. In this section we can retrieve his/her previous personal data when
provide description of the developed modules. submitting another paper.
All of the modules except paper submission are
protected by username and password. 4.2. Revised paper submission

4.1. New paper submission The paper username and password are used
to log into the system and view the paper status.
This module provides functionality for new From that area, revised paper or source files of
paper submissions. The new paper submission accepted papers can be submitted. Authors are
procedure consists of three steps. In the first step, also allowed to edit their personal data. This is
authors supply data about paper, including title, also the place where the reviews will be
abstract and keywords. The next step consists of published so that the authors can read them.
supplying authors' personal data. In the last step,
the authors submit the paper file. Corresponding
4.3. Administrator the journal, it may be rejected by the editor
without the review.
The administrator module provides a basic In order to determine reviewers for the paper,
web content tuning. The predefined e-mail the editor can search through the list of reviewers
content can be altered, if desired. Contents of by their field of expertise (we used ACM
some HTML pages are supplied from the classification), or by their names. The editor can
database so administrator can easily modify that also see how many times a particular reviewer
contents to his needs. Personal data of all the has been requested to review papers, and when
people active in the journal can be viewed or the last paper was reviewed. An e-mail
edited. Additional database entries can be notification form is used in the reviewer
modified e.g. possible categories of a paper. assignment process. An automatically generated
Administrator may also add/change editorial e-mail message can be customized by adding
personnel such as the editor-in-chief, or associate personalized text prior to actual sending of e-
editors. mail. The editor can add new reviewers and can
send e-mail reminders of overdue papers to
4.4. Editor in chief reviewers. The editor is allowed to browse
papers assigned to other editors in case
The editor-in-chief (EIC) has control over the consultation is required. Once all reviews have
entire journal management process. EIC has the arrived the editor makes a recommendation to
ability to view all the papers and has the duty of the EIC regarding the paper in question.
assigning an editor to every newly submitted
paper. An e-mail notification form is used by the 4.5. Reviewer
EIC to add some personal text to the
automatically generated message to the editor After logging into the web system, the
responsible for the paper. reviewer needs to enter the review. The scientific
The EIC also manages journal staff (edit, review consists of: the paper category (general,
view, add people). In case that the paper's editor case study etc.), the recommendation (accept,
is unavailable, the EIC can assign reviewers to reject, etc.), the summary of evaluation (good,
paper or send them reminders of overdue papers. fair, etc.), the note to authors, and the
A report can be generated with the time-line for confidential note to the paper editor. The
each paper, which is under review. The EIC can reviewer has an option to reject the review. If the
also decide whether paper will be rejected, reject button was pressed, the reviewer is
accepted or sent for author revision. Accepted supplied with an e-mail form, and is asked to
papers need to be screened by the lector prior to explain the reasons why he/she cannot serve as a
publishing. reviewer for that paper. In addition, the reviewer
The EIC creates a new issue by selecting the can suggest the names of alternative reviewers. A
papers from a list of accepted and lectored fair review process is ensured by an anonymous
papers. In cases where a conflict of interest exists review process.
for certain editor(s) who have access to the
system, the EIC may disable editor access to the 4.6. Lector
paper in question. This may be the case when an
editor is also an author of a paper submitted to The revised paper submitted by the author
the journal. must undergo the lectoring process to ensure the
EIC can also see a report showing the correctness of the English language. The
number of papers assigned to each editor. This lectoring process starts when the lector
information is useful to ensure the load downloads the paper and makes the necessary
distribution across the editorial team. language corrections and improvements. The
lector then uploads the revised version to the
4.4 Editor system, where it can be accessed for further
processing.
Each new paper has an editor who is in
charge of overseeing the review process and
recommending the decision about the submitted
paper. If the submitted paper clearly does not
meet the requirements and the editorial policy of
4.7. User documentation inner workings of the application and do not
have time to read lengthy documentation. To
The user documentation is provided as a ease the publishing process the author is obliged
flowchart of the web application for each to submit source files (preferably in LaTeX
module. The flowchart is built using Garret's format) of the accepted paper. From these source
information architecture (IA) diagrams [3]. We files a PDF document is generated and
figured that such flowcharts would be useful and consistency can be achieved in the paper
easy to navigate. Describing the information appearance.
architecture is demanding task and we have
found Garret's diagram to be the most 6. System realization and deployment
descriptive. The diagram of the reviewer actions
is shown in Fig. 3. The experimental journal management system
Logout exit to:
home page
runs on a personal computer running Linux
operating system and the required database and
web servers. The open software used in
Reviewer Change
realization of the system allows use on other
Personal data
Main Page password operating systems, too. The advantage of the
developed journal management system is that it
Change
Save
changes does not require any special hardware
Papers
requirements for the server.
The system is fully functional and is
currently in experimental use for managing and
publishing of a scientific journal called the
select Journal of Computing and Information
Technology [8]. The goal of experimental use is
Reject review to test the system and implement changes and
Paper Send mail Mail Review
improvements, if necessary. The experimental
file to editor message form
phase currently involves processing of more then
Send mail No
submit
twelve papers, with editors and reviewers
Is ok?
Yes
assigned and participating in the process. First
results demonstrated that the authors have
accepted the new system and experienced the
advantages offered by electronic processing of
Figure 3. An example of Garret IA diagram manuscripts. The amount of effort and mail
expenses have also decreased as a result of
5. Security and other issues electronic communication between the
participants in the editorial process.
An issue of secure access to the information
system has been carefully addressed. SSL 7. Conclusion
encryption is used for password security. The
system state changes depending on the current In this paper a web-based journal
user activity and the user's role in the system. management and publishing system was
Available functionality depends on the current presented. It enables easy, secure, and fast
user role. A user in a certain role cannot execute management of an electronic journal, at the same
scripts that are reserved for users in other roles. time reducing the editorial personnel
In order to prevent users from submitting requirements. It also enables a journal to be
parts of SQL code in a form that could entirely published on the web independently
compromise database integrity, all user data is from its paper version. The developed journal
first quoted before being included into SQL management system helps automate the review
statement. Of course as a prerequisite for the and publishing process, thereby reducing the
security of a web application, is the security of time from manuscript submission to publishing.
the server that runs the application.
The user interface is made as intuitive as
possible. This is especially important for authors
and reviewers who may not be familiar with the
8. Acknowledgements [4] Date, C.J.: An Introduction to
DatabaseSystems, Vol. 1, 4th edn. Addison
This work was supported by Croatian Wesley (1986)
Ministry of Science and Technology IT grant [5] Ratschiller, T., Gerken, T.: Web Application
2001-012. Development with PHP 4.0, New Riders
Publishing (2000)
9. References [6] Johnson J.H., MacKay S.A.: WitanWeb and
the Software Engineering of Web-based
[1] ConfMan: Web based conference manager, Applications, Proceedings of CASCON
http://confman.unik.no/~confman/ConfMan/ (2000) 198—212
[3/10/2003] [7] Bern J., Meinel C.: One step further:
[2] START: Submission tracking and review Extending Electronic Submission into the
toolset, http://www.cs.umd.edu/ ~rich/ Reviewing Process, SIGDOC '99
start.html [3/10/2003] [8] Journal of Computing and Information
[3] Garret, J.J.: A visual vocabulary for Technology, University of Zagreb
describing information architecture and Computing Centre, http://cit.srce.hr
interaction design, http://www.jjg.net/ia/
visvocab [3/10/2003]