PART 1: The ARPHA Writing Tool: Adding Value to RIO

The online, collaborative ARPHA Writing Tool (AWT) is an innovative, entirely Web-based, authoring, submission, peer-review, publication & dissemination authoring platform. While flexible to accommodate more traditional journal concepts, it clearly fits neatly with RIO’s novel approach to research publishing.

In the following two-part blog post, we will explain how the newly updated AWT will be integrated with RIO to provide a number of great features for unique user-experience.

All About User Friendliness:

The ARPHA Writing Tool did not appear out of nowhere. Pensoft has been developing its own writing tool since 2012, and the AWT is an updated version of this prototype, the Pensoft Writing Tool. The AWT builds onthe experience we have accumulated during the 3-year lifespan of its predecessor, and is designed to make the user experience as seamless and pleasant as possible.

How we did that? The AWT features a modern and intuitive design, where all features are listed and just a click away for the authors to use. The tool runs in one mode, showing real-time changes, comments and updates. Comments are left inline and automatically navigate through the text to make review and correcting easy.

A New Level of COLLABORATION:

RIO is all about collaboration, and within the ARPHA Writing Tool, this is now easier than ever. Authors can not only work collaboratively on a manuscript with their co-authors, but can also invite external contributors, such as mentors, pre-submission reviewers, linguistic and copy editors, or just colleagues, who may modify the manuscript or comment on it before submission. The system allows for such external contributors to not be listed as co-authors of the manuscript.

The collaborative peer-review process provides easy communication through track-change functionality, comments and replies, and automated, but customizable email and social network notification tools.

TEMPLATES for all needs

The AWT provides a large set of predefined, but flexible article templates covering many types of research outcomes. At the moment, the list fits the needs of the existing Pensoft journals, but with RIO coming soon, the choice of templates will grow to accommodate the needs of publishing full research cycles across a wide range of disciplines.

Adding CONTENT and REFERENCING made easy

A set of Web-based services and tools in AWT allows, e.g. for search and import of literature or data references, cross-referencing of in-text citations, import of tables, upload of images and multimedia, assembling images for display as reusably composite figures,  and even add videos to your article.

All the author needs to do to add content to an article is to select the right type from the side menu and then navigate through the instructions in the pop-up window. If in doubt, the authors can also consult the ‘Tips and Tricks’ on our website.

So far, we have explained some of the main features of the AWT that are useful throughout the authoring process, but there is much more to explore! In next week’s post, we will look at what happens after your manuscript is completed and ready for submission.