MPS' DigiEdit Online Editing Tool Enables Seamless Collaboration From Anywhere

Over the 44 years of its presence, the organization has evolved to offer services across every stage of the author-to-reader publishing process. MPS services include print and digital publishing services, technology solutions, engaging and interactive media products, and customer services for educational, STM, academic, trade, and directory publishers.

The Challenges

Publishers have moved towards embracing SaaS (Software as a Service) models for certain services and processes with increased vigor.  There is a need for a system wherein the publisher, suppliers, authors, reviewers etc. are able to work on a centralized cloud based platform and perform different activities like copyediting, author corrections incorporation, proof collation, proof reading, editorial review online.   The lack of an XML based content editing platform with What You See Is What You Get’ (WYSIWYG) interface prompted MPS to develop this system and implement it internally along with extending it to their customers.

The Implementation

MPS implemented DigiEdit, an XML-based online editor that enables authors, editors, and reviewers to carry out copyediting and content corrections. By using this application, corrections can be directly incorporated into the content using a WYSIWYG style sheet view without the user having to see XML tags.  These tags would be hidden in the background.

XML parsers and validation tools are built-in as part of the system to ensure the quality of the XML content. Third-party XML quality control tools can also be integrated with the system. The underlying XML is always ready to be exported and transformed to different formats for delivery to other platforms. The tool provides rich editorial functionalities, intuitive context-based editing, ability to be customized to output to specific DTDs, easy document navigation for faster access to document content, comments can be included where required, track change functionality, user-friendly math and table editing functionality, copyediting functionalities, integrated parser and QC tools, back-office support for extensive XML structuring/validation, integration with third-party databases, and search engine functionalities.

Project Head, V Narendra Kumar
Senior VP-Technology, MPS Ltd.

The Results

The DigiEdit implementation bought significant benefits for users. Editors now receive a clean, structured file that makes their job easy.  The workflow process has improved–with pre-editing done before it is sent to editors. Several copyediting functionalities are also available through DigiEdit that make the editing process even more efficient. It eliminates transferring corrections from hardcopy/annotated PDFs/email and enables online tracking for efficient management of articles. There’s On-the-fly generation of multiple products from a single source for multichannel publishing.