IMS Bulletin #78 (24 October 2008)

Index:

1. Reminder: Automatic conversion of reviews following the 13 November 2008 quarterly submission deadline
2. Tip: Quick way of identifying which published reviews you still have to convert
3. Question of the week: I've heard that plans for the workflow system in Archie have been put on hold. Is that correct?

1. Reminder: Automatic conversion of reviews in Archie following the 13 November 2008 quarterly submission deadline

There are still many published protocols and reviews in Archie that have not been converted to RevMan 5. As mentioned in the last IMS Bulletin, all published protocols and reviews (including withdrawn ones) must be converted to RevMan 5 by the next quarterly submission deadline, which is 07:00 GMT/UTC on 13 November 2008. Any protocols or reviews you have not converted by this deadline will automatically be converted to RevMan 5 for publication in The Cochrane Library 2009, Issue 1, without any checks taking place.

CRGs will receive both the usual feedback report from Wiley as well as a special report from the IMS team which lists the reviews that have been converted automatically. It will be important, as usually, that the feedback report from Wiley is checked carefully and that someone from the editorial base is present to deal with potential queries from either Wiley or the IMS team.

To allow time for the automatic conversion, it will not be possible to unlock individual modules for resubmission until 20 November.

Archie will be unavailable during some periods on 14 and 17 November when automatic conversion is scheduled to take place. You will receive more information about this directly from the IMS team.

Note:

1. If there is a RevMan 4 draft of a protocol/review which supersedes the current published version, this draft will automatically be converted to RevMan 5 and 'reverted to' following the conversion and marking of the published version for republication.
2. A RevMan 4 review that is checked out will have the ‘Undo Check-out’ applied before the review is converted automatically. Authors that subsequently will need to have their review checked in will need to ask their editorial base to do so.
3. All RevMan 4 draft and inactive protocols/reviews and registered titles in Archie will be automatically converted to RevMan 5 after reviews for issue 1, 2009 have been converted. This will happen before the end of 2008 – we will let you know when the exact period has been decided. After this conversion, you will no longer be able to check in RevMan 4 XML files.

If you have any questions or concerns about the conversion of your reviews, please remember to contact your IMS Support person.

2. Tip: Quick way of identifying which published reviews you still have to convert to RevMan 5

If you have a draft review that has been converted to RevMan 5 but which won't be ready for inclusion in the November quarterly submission, it is difficult to know from the Resources screen in Archie if the currently published version has been converted to RevMan 5 or not because the summary information provided about the Type of review is based on the most recent version of the review in Archie.

A quick way of identifying which reviews you still have to convert to RevMan 5 is to open the full Publication Report (right click on the name of your CRG > Reports > Publication Report > Detailed), which will not only give you the number of protocols and reviews you still have to convert but also the individual titles.

3. Question of the week

Question: I've heard that plans for the workflow system in Archie have been put on hold. Is that correct?

Answer: No, plans for the workflow system are not currently on hold as far as the IMS team are aware. Stage 1 of the workflow pilot began on 30 September 2008, as described in a recent IMS Bulletin (No. 76), and is proceeding according to plan. Eight RGCs are involved in Stage 1 of the pilot – see www.cc-ims.net/Projects/newIMS/workflows for details.

In response to this question, Adrian Grant has replied to say:

"At its meeting at the Freiburg Colloquium, the Collaboration’s Steering Group gave further consideration to a request for significant extra funding to support the IMS Team. This will be further considered by the IMSG early in November, particularly the issue of prioritisation of the IMS Team’s workload. It is possible that this might affect the timetable for the workflow system if other tasks were to be given higher priority. We shall let you know immediately if it does, but you should assume that development will continue as planned until you hear to the contrary."