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Practical Tips for EDIS Authors

Curtis Smyder, Program Assistant, Eric Simonne, Associate Professor, Horticultural Sciences Department, and Diana Hagan, EDIS Librarian

EDIS, the Electronic Data Information Source(http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/), houses a 7,000 publication collection with information on topics from many disciplines and provides vital information free to homeowners, growers etc. Here is an overview of the publishing process in EDIS plus some tips to consider when designing an EDIS publication.

1. Overview of the EDIS publication process:

1.   Authors develop a manuscript together with co-authors
2.   Manuscript undergoes internal review (at least 2, with preferably one county faculty. If authors from two departments are involved, the secondary department's chair may be included as an internal reviewer)
3.   Authors revise the manuscript according to reviewers' comments
4.   The cluster editor for HOS (Susan Gildersleeve) will review the publication for grammar, spelling, formatting and other edits.
5.   Authors correct any edits noted in the communications review and prepare a final version of the manuscript.
6.   Departmental editor (Curtis Smyder), local inputter, or EDIS Team formats the manuscript in the EDIS Authoring Tool and submits it as an EDIS document for approval.
7. The document is routed for approval in the following order:
   • Editorial Approval, Susan, signs off that she has reviewed the document and it is ready to go.
   • Technical Aapproval, The EDIS Team approves the publication and places a pdf version online. They check for obvious problems with content, publication number and footnote date, formatting problems with the pdf, and the like.
   • Center Director Approval, (if applicable) In order for a document to be routed to the center director, the center must be identified when the Digital Library Number (DLN) is requested. Please contact the EDIS Team if in doubt.
   • Department Chair Approval, Dr. Daniel Cantliffe signs off on the document
   • Program Leader Approval, Dr. Joan Dusky approves the document.
8. Once the program leader approves the document, it is Immediately indexed and published on the EDIS Web site. The publication will be listed on the New Publications mailing list, and added to an RSS feed which is syndicated to the EDIS Web site home page.

Please Note: this process may differ slightly for those located off campus. Please check with your local EDIS inputer for more specific information on this process.

2. Some tips for authors:

• Extremely large and complicated tables take a long time to set up, and often pose a problem for the PDF generator's logic to try to figure out how to break them up into pages. These are common difficulties we deal with, so we have gotten very good at handling large tables, but everyone involved should have an understanding of the additional work required for setting up, editing and formatting large, complicated tables.

• A large number of figures or combinations of figures and tables can also be difficult for PDF generation.

• Because people view html pages using a wide variety of browsers, we cannot count on any non-standard symbols to render accurately, so unusual symbols should be avoided.

• The authoring tool structures the document in headers with subheaders in a strict hierarchy, so text boxes or informational side-bars are very difficult to handle without awkward work-arounds.

• Publication-related correspondence can be directed to edislib@ifas.ufl.edu in addition to or instead of a specific EDIS Team member, to ensure that your communication is handled in a timely manner.

References:

• http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/about.html
• Diana Hagan, EDIS Librarian, dhagan@ufl.edu