0.8 Online hosting issues and options  (Page 2/11)

The online hosting services can be provided in a variety of ways:

Remote Hosting . Most typically, an online publishing service provider will handle all the digital production, uploading, and hosting of a journal, in coordination with the journal’s editor and society staff.

Software License . For open source software, and for some commercial solutions, a society can license the online journal publishing software and host the journal itself. This approach may best be limited to societies that are extremely cost sensitive, or that have access to adequate technical resources (including systems, hardware, and communications network support).

Application Service Provider (ASP) . Some online journal system providers offer access to their software on an ASP model, wherein the system provider manages the servers and hosts the journal at its location, but society staff (or contractors) upload digital files, exercise quality control, assemble issues, provide support, and handle all other management and administrative tasks for the journal.

The trade-offs between types of services and service providers include cost, available features and feature customization options, responsiveness to evolving technology and compliance standards, and levels of technical and user support. Depending on the type of provider and service chosen, a society may still need to dedicate significant in-house resources to manage and maintain the society’s publishing program.

Online publishing services

As noted above, the range of publishing services available will depend on the type of provider. Services typically available include:

• Editorial services, including copyediting and proofreading;
• File conversion into conforming formats (e.g., XML/XHTML, PDF, etc.), from author or typesetting files;
• Digital production services, including file tagging and mark-up, and content quality control and uploading for online distribution;
• Digital backfile conversion;
• Online editorial manuscript tracking services; ^{Online manuscript editorial workflow systems allow a society and its journal editors to track manuscripts through the editorial process, including managing peer review, tracking submissions and acceptance, and reporting. Some large publishers have developed their own in-house systems, and others license such services from an editorial system provider. For a description of some of the most popular systems, see Ware (2005b).}
• Web site design services;
• Online hosting, including guaranteed performance standards and failsafe back-up systems;
• Subscription management and fulfillment services;
• Pay-per-view e-commerce support;
• User authentication and access, typically through IP address ranges for institutional users, ID and password for individual users, and/or proxy servers for society members;
• User and technical support for end users and society staff;
• Usage reporting; Most institutional libraries expect online services to be COUNTER compliant. The Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) project is an international project to develop standards for the creation of online usage statistics for online content. COUNTER compliance allows libraries to compare usage statistics from multiple content providers. See (External Link) .
• Rights and permissions management;
• Marketing and sales support, including advertising sales; and
• Financial reporting.