Workflows, Actions, Portlets

Workflows are collections of defined states through which submissions go. For example, in academic journal publishing, workflow would consist of roughly these steps: papers get submitted; editorial board or managing editor picks them up, they get discussed at the editorial meetings; they get rejected or assigned to go through peer reviewing process, or in rare cases accepted as they are for publishing; often after peer reviews, of even after editorial board reviewing them, authors get asked to revise and resubmit; etc. You get the idea. These steps are connected with actions in between them and often the submission can move to the next state in the workflow only upon the completion of some task. Editorial board awaits for peer reviews to be returned before the decision on the paper is made, an example.

The strength of gComm(o)ns platform comes from Plone's in built workflow system. It allows us to customize the state and transitions (actions triggered by an even e.g. journal accepts a submissions, it triggers an action sending email to author).

For journals with existing workflows different that the default ones we provide, we can map it as it in gComm(o)ns. For journals with new ideas about workflows, we can implemented with minimal additional software programming work.

To illustrate, when author submits a paper, first step is submission of the the abstract. Once submitted, the paper page will look like this:

Note new Add a draft button. Note Awaiting Editors portlet (it shows all Articles in that state)This will take author to the form to upload a draft. Once that is done, the article will display an additional Action:

Note new Submit to editors button. Article view defines that submit a paper to editors button is shown only if at least a single draft has been added. Once author clicks Add a draft and uploads it, article view looks like this:

Note the article now appearing in the Awaiting Editors portlet. Also, this a articles has two drafts attached, it has been through revise and resubmit cycle. Clicking on the "+" icon next to History will display the history of the article, with each step of the workflow it went through.

 Here's the diagram of a workflow with the peer review (note different roles, they give access to actions and content visible to logged in user):