The PAMJ IT Infrastructure

The PAMJ publication platform is a custom IT manuscripts management system (Haraka Publishing Platform^®) designed to comply with PAMJ manuscripts publication business processes and journal management best practices and processes. Haraka is Swahili and can be translated as “Quick” because the PAMJ IT platform can be set up very quickly to run as a single or multi journal system. All PAMJ Journals (The PAMJ, the PAMJ One Health, the PAMJ Clinical Medicine are all run through the PAMJ Manuscript Management Platform Haraka) The system is based on Open Sources Technology (PHP, APACHE, and MySQL). The PAMJ manuscript management is modular in architecture. The components of the system are:

• An author account management and manuscript submission system (PAMJ Manuscript Hut^®): Allows authors to register and submit manuscripts.
• The PAMJ Peer Review System: manages the entire peer-review process (Subset of the PAMJ Manuscript Hut)
• The PAMJ Workflow, which is the manuscript management system: with various user profiles for manuscript management. The current profiles are managing editor, assistant editor, scientific editor, language editor, admin, and finance editor, postproduction editor, and PAMJ Blog.

The PAMJ Manuscript Hut®

https://manuscript-hut.panafrican-med-journal.com

The PAMJ Manuscript Hut® was launched in Jan 2019 to replace the previous manuscript management system (a custom system based on OJS skeleton). The Manuscript Hut offers a user-friendly and highly intuitive environment where authors can submit manuscripts to all PAMJ journals. The system integrates ORCID and allows users to log into the system using their ORCID credentials or to associate their existing PAMJ account with their ORCID profile. Through the Manuscript Hut, authors can track the progress and every action on their submission and seamlessly communicate with the editorial team.

The PAMJ Manuscript Hut (Manuscript submission and Peer Review Platform)

Screenshot of the PAMJ Manuscript Hut login page

The PAMJ Manuscript Hut® is also the access point to the PAMJ Peer-review platform. The invited reviewer can log into the review platform using their provided peer-reviewer credentials.

The PAMJ Workflow

The PAMJ Workflow is a multi-journal manuscript management platform and probably the first journal management platform developed in Africa. The journals integrate the entire workflow of online publishing, from submissions to publication, including the generation of meta-data. The PAMJ Workflow was launched in April 2019 and provides. The system was developed in-house, through a collaborative process that involved all potential users of the system. The join application development approach resulted in a very powerful system that integrates more than 80 functionalities distributed over seven users’ profiles. The PAMJ Workflow is currently deployed for all PAMJ journals and the AFENET Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health (https://www.afenet-journal.net).

The PAMJ Workflow login screen

“The striking feature of the PAMJ Workflow is how intuitive, in fact even without training, one can grasp most of it” said Audrey Kenny, a senior editor with the PAMJ Cameroon office. “The ability to communicate with authors through the integrated communication tools, the capacity to assign submissions to various users and track the progress of the work, the one-click functionalities for almost everything including generating the PDF for peer review and published articles make the work so convenient”.

The joint application development process and the ability of users to direct the development of the system allowed the PAMJ workflow developers to add new functionalities or quickly improve existing ones.

The following screenshots provide an overview of some important features of the PAMJ Workflow.

The PAMJ Workflow Main screen of a Managing Editor. The view shows the Menu items providing quick access to important functionalities and a snapshot of actions such as The reviewers waiting for review material, the review report received and the status of manuscripts (Accepted for publication, under revision, tagged for follow-up by the editor, review reports and peer review completed.

The PAMJ Workflow Main Manuscript View (half view): This shows the status of the manuscript (accepted) and basic details of the submission. The “More action” allows the editors to access more functionalities for this submission.

The PAMJ Workflow Main Manuscript View (half view): This shows more details of the submission material. Editors can access all versions of the submitted material (Word Document and Figures). The one-click “Generate Review PDF” allows the editor to select the material to include in the PDF and generate the combined PDF with a single click.

The PAMJ Workflow Main Manuscript View (Communication Module): Allows the editor to communicate with authors by email. The communication module includes a rich in-built and editor-generated email template library.

Submission actions log: All actions taken on a submission by authors, peer-reviewers and editors are systematically recorded in the submission log file for accountability and traceability.

For more about the Manuscript Hut® and the PAMJ Workflow®, contact sales-service@panafrican-med-journal.com