Customer Case Study: Nature Publishing Group
keywords: content management strategy, journal publisher, STM, RSuite CMS
The History
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is an international publishing company that publishes academic journals, online databases, and services across the life, physical, chemical and applied sciences and clinical medicine. This includes Nature research journals and Nature Reviews journals (since 2000), and academic journals that are society owned publications. NPG's flagship title is Nature, a weekly multidisciplinary journal first published in 1869.
The Challenge
NPG needed to replace several legacy production systems while still being able to leverage the investment in existing tools including MarkLogic Server. Automation of manual workflows was a key business goal as this would facilitate scalable online journal production without associated increase in resource requirements.
The Solution
NPG selected RSuite to serve as part of its content management system and implemented RSuite along with complementary technologies. NPG’s Internal Systems Development group installed and configured the system to streamline editorial and production workflow for its “Nature Reviews” series of journals. RSuite’s workflow capabilities were configured to automate content production and enable the production of these journals with far fewer points of human intervention. The system was first implemented on a test and development server while working with editorial and production staff to identify processes to be automated such as Document Type Definition (DTD) validation, uploading files, running build processes, creating Table of Contents (ToCs), notifying editorial staff of content in need of review, and pushing the reviewed files live.
The Results
Based on a series of business rules, RSuite’s workflow engine classifies articles that are ready for publication. RSuite pushes NPG’s journal content to its live web site on a rolling basis. Implementing RSuite enables NPG to automate content production and apply automation wherever possible. NPG has been able to add new journals into its publication schedule without adding new staff. By consolidating multiple content-centric solutions, NPG can re-use media assets across titles. RSuite CMS has positively leveraged NPG's investment in MarkLogic Server.
"Using RSuite enables NPG to streamline and automate the production of online article content. Now our journal publication list is scalable without depending on additional staff and training."
--Anthony Barrera, Head of Internal Systems Development, Nature Publishing Group
