Making it easier to share multiple linked publications

As someone who publishes on Octopus, I’ve long known about a couple of annoying features.

If you want to share several publications at the same time, linked to each other – say, a Research Problem, a Rationale, and a Method – with a group of co-authors, then it has always been a case of doing them one at a time, in order. Which can be a rather painful process, particularly with co-authors who aren’t quick to respond to emails!

The reason for this clunky approach has a practical basis. You can’t create an Octopus publication without linking it to a previous one. And since a draft publication doesn’t yet ‘exist’ on Octopus, you can’t link to it. So, hence the stepwise procedure.

However, we’ve been able to streamline things, due to the fact that we mint a DoI for your publication as soon as you create it as a draft. So, it does ‘exist’ – it’s just not visible to others.

That means that now we have been able to create a workflow that allows a submitting author to create a whole chain of linked publications, which can all be approved by their relevant (and different) co-authors, and published in bulk with one click once all are ready.

Hopefully this will make bigger projects easier to publish.

And there’s one other new feature to go alongside that.

We’ve always been very cautious with author approvals. We’ve all heard of authors having their names put onto journal articles without their permission. In Octopus, every author named has to log on using their ORCiD, choose their affiliations for that publication, and approve it. We stick by that.

However, previously, if any changes were made to the publication after an author had approved, they would have to re-approve it. Now, we have allowed authors to approve ‘all future changes’ at the same time. That means that if you are co-authoring with your close and trusted colleagues you can allow them to make changes without needing to approve them.

However, if you are working with people you don’t know so well, you can retain your right to need to approve any future changes before publication of the draft.

I hope that this also streamlines the system for those working with multiple co-authors.