ReSourCe

Royal Society of Chemistry
Reviewed by Vikki Allen

This October sees the launch of a centralised journals service from the RSC designed to accelerate and facilitate the publishing process. The new service, ReSourCe, will make tracking the progress of journal articles a whole lot easier for both RSC authors and referees, say its developers.

Although electronic submission has been available to RSC authors for several years, this new online service takes it a step further. Authors can now track their manuscripts through the various stages of both the peer review and publication processes; authors can also collect their free electronic reprints. Over time, authors will be able to build up a valuable record of their publication history.

The service will make life simpler for authors by giving access to detailed information and enabling them to monitor the progress of their article from submission through to publication. ’I anticipate that manuscript tracking will be the most popular web page on ReSourCe, with some authors checking the status of their article daily,’ predicts Graham McCann, a ReSourCe developer and managing editor of Journal of Materials Chemistry. The development team is also working to automate the collection of article galley proofs, to replace the current email service.

The ReSourCe service for referees, launched in March 2004, has been warmly welcomed by users, being rated by one user as being ’one of the best publishing support systems available to chemists’. Referee services integrate referee report forms, a referee’s history, and information on individual researcher interests. The service can also provide an additional educational aspect with reviewers being able to follow the outcome of manuscripts. Stuart Rowan, assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, US, told Chemistry World that ’The facilities available through ReSourCe are extremely helpful . It really does allow you to obtain feedback that is not possible with most other publishers’.

Publishing has come a long way from red pens and submitting manuscripts in triplicate. The full range of online services is accessed by user ID and password.