[Feature request] neptune server for copy-editing with the authors

[vacary]

Hi,

We're currently looking at ways to make our copy-editing process as flexible and efficient as possible. In particular, we'd like to involve authors as early as possible in the process, so that we can advise them on how to improve figures, tables and bibliography.

We're thinking of setting up a neptune web server for this purpose.

Is this something that other journals might be interested in? If so, could episciences host the server?

all the best

[anciaux]

Or a sharelatex/Overleaf service ?

[a3nm]

At TheoretiCS we currently involve authors by importing their papers to Overleaf. (The alternative would be to leave it entirely up to the authors to take care of formatting their article, but as our LaTeX stylesheet is quite young we understand that authors may need assistance with it.)

This is all manual, however, and does not scale well. We would appreciate a better solution.

@vacary: I did not know about this Neptune system, it looks interesting, but is it open source? how does one run it?

[vacary]

Neptune is used by Elsevier for proof reading. Not sure that it is open, unfortunately. I will investigate. Perhaps, a adapted overleaf server is the solution.

[vacary]

An article associated with the Neptune software published in TUGBoat.

I think Neptune is proprietary code, sold by an Indian company. The article has the advantage of setting out the functionalities that we would like to have. There are several solutions:

• Pay for Neptune licences
• develop extensions to an open LaTeX document management code such as overleaf to get similar functionality.
• consider developing from scratch

In any case, integration with the Episciences platform would be very welcome.

[a3nm]

Hi, I'm just another Episciences user, but I'm not sure I understand which part of this discussion is relevant to Episciences development, given that indeed Neptune and Overleaf are proprietary.

To focus the discussion, could you maybe explain what exactly which feature you would like Episciences to offer?

Thanks for clarifying!

[vacary]

Overleaf is distributed under Affero GPL licence.

We're looking for a tool that allows us to carry out copy-editing (at least the final phase) in a collaborative way with the users. In particular, we are looking for the functionnalities listed in Neptune amomg them

• Article, Source Comparison and PDF Comparison
• Synchronized pre/post-edited sources
• Source–PDF navigation
• Notes, requests, comments
• Version history

Our authors are not familiar using git, and overleaf only implemented a subset of these functionalities. We also consider to externalize a part of the copy-editing and such a tool might simplify the process.

Not sure if such a tool must be built-in in Episciences or just a plug-in.

[a3nm]

Thanks for clarifying. I wasn't aware that Overleaf was AGPL, sorry that I wrongly said it was proprietary -- though the AGPL edition is apparently lacking some features relative to the hosted version on overleaf.com.

There is also Fidus Writer https://www.fiduswriter.org/how-it-works/ which is an open-source tool to do some of the things you describe.

Anyway, I understand now that you would want Episciences to allow collaborative work on papers between authors and layout editors, either by hosting a solution like Overleaf, or supporting some kind of integration with an externally hosted service of this kind. Thanks!

[vacary]

Thank you for the link on Fidus Writer.

[rtournoy]

I have considered Overleaf, but I was not aware of Fidus Writer. Thanks for the issue and the comments