Anyone who’s edited a work of digital scholarship can tell you the task comes with a unique set of challenges. Some are practical (“How do I know if I’ve read the whole thing?”) while others are philosophical (“How do we handle changes made after publication?”). With the release of Scalar 2.5, the Scalar platform gains a new set of Editorial Workflow features designed to make the process of preparing a Scalar project for publication easier for authors and editors alike. We’re excited to share these new additions with you!

We’ll be covering specific aspects of the new Editorial Workflow in detail in future blog posts, but here’s an overview of what’s new:

Editorial Tab

You may have noticed that Scalar’s new Dashboard includes an Editorial tab—which now includes the ability to activate the Editorial Workflow for a specific book. Once activated, the Editorial tab will become your headquarters for tracking the editorial review process. If you don’t need the Editorial Workflow, do nothing and your Scalar books will continue to function as before.

Editor Role

Under the Users tab we’ve also added a new Editor user role to Scalar to facilitate the Editorial Workflow. Authors and Editors will have different permissions and will be prompted as to their respective tasks while they guide content through a six step process with multiple opportunities for review, revision, and comment.

Editorial Path

The Editorial Path is a new view in Scalar designed specifically to assist with the task of editing. It presents the complete content of a book in a scrolling format which can be sorted in several ways, helping ensure that nothing is missed. Inline editing allows authors to make text and media changes directly, without any need to navigate to individual pages. Search features and an outline view provide quick navigation throughout the book.

Version Compare

The Edit Page now includes an integrated Version Compare feature which highlights changes between individual versions. After an editor completes their review of a page, changes are automatically highlighted for the author, who is prompted to accept or reject the edits before proceeding.

Editions

By default, once a book passes through all six editorial phases to the Published stage, any future changes made by an author will go live immediately. Scalar’s new Editions feature, however, makes it possible to “freeze” the text and metadata of a book at its current state as a named Edition. Future changes will be hidden from users until those changes have gone through the review process and are themselves published in a new Edition. Visitors will always be shown the latest edition by default, but can access past editions if desired.

This is just an overview of the new Editorial Workflow features—for details, look to future blog posts or explore our updated documentation. Our thanks the National Endowment for the Humanities for making these new additions possible.