Reinventing Our Publications Department: How the COVID-19 Quarantine Pushed Us Into the 21st Century

Abstract

Half a century ago, paperless work environments were a speck on the horizon. Theoretically, the introduction of computers with visual displays would eliminate the need for printing because information could be shared digitally. The idea of paperless publishing—rapid delivery of content to an expanded audience—followed. But what about publishers themselves becoming paperless? Would the workflow process, and final product, suffer? This case study details how the Publications Department at the American Urological Association navigated the transition to a paperless office during the COVID-19 pandemic, propelled by the sudden switch to a virtual work environment. When our organization’s headquarters shut down in March 2020 for the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine, our publications department was still heavily paper-based. We’d made steps into the 21st century in our use of the cloud-based platforms Editorial Manager (EM) for manuscript submission/tracking and Citrix Files (ShareFile) for copyediting, but much of our work still involved printing out reams of article correspondence and proofs to mark by hand, scan, and email to our publisher. Our department produces 2 peer-reviewed journals, a monthly organizational news magazine, and a yearlong continuing medical education (CME) series—all handled by a relatively small group of 8 people (3 managing the peer-review/acceptance process and 4 handling all duties related to production, including copyediting and proof management, overseen by an executive editor). Though our peer-review team had been whizzing through the ins and outs of EM for years, our production team had barely started using the companion ProduXion Manager for content management and postacceptance tracking. As we watched […]