Publications Manager

The Publication Manager user-account

The Publication Manager is a special user account in ReSeed. It is independent of any RUB user-account, and exists only in the local context of the ReSeed system.

The primary purpose of the Publication Manager account is to take "ownership" of works which have been either published or archived. There are two main reasons for this:

  1. Once a work has been published or archived, it should be "locked" - i.e. protected from further edits.
  2. If the "owner" of a work leaves RUB, then their user-account is disabled and eventually removed, with the work becoming "orphaned". The Publication Manager account is permanent and not bound to any particular person.

When works are published or archived, the ownership of them is passed automatically to the Publication Manager.

Important limitation of the Publication Manager user-account

It is important to note that, by design, the Publication Manager user-account should not be used to create/deposit new works. New works should be deposited by a regular user-account. Later in the life-cycle (e.g. when publishing or archiving), the ownership of these works may be transferred to the Publication Manager user-account.

Dealing with DOI registration errors

When a work is published in ReSeed, it is automatically registered with DataCite to obtain a DOI which is added to the work's metadata. This process is run, asynchronously, as a "background job".

It is possible that this process can fail - for example if the DataCite API is temporarily unresponsive. Another possible cause of failure is if the work does not have the required metadata - such as a creator. There are two aspects to checking for a failed DOI registration:

  1. The ReSeeD Administrator should check the status of the background job (see the Background Jobs documentation)
  2. the Publication Manager should check that the work has the requisite metadata (especially a creator)

The Publication Manager role

ReSeed also has a local Publication Manager role. This is entirely separate from the Publication Manager user-account. The Publication Manager role is given to a selected few user accounts. With this role, those user-accounts are permitted by the system to make editorial decisions concerning the publication or archiving of works. These editorial decisions are facilitated by a work-flow sub-system, built into ReSeed.