From pilot to scaled production

The challenge: a fragmented production process

For years, journals at Göttingen University Press relied on tools that were never built for modern, multi-format publishing. WordPress-based sites auto-generated PDFs from HTML with poor formatting and no usable metadata. Editorial teams spent hours cleaning up files, fixing typography, and stitching metadata together by hand before anything could be released through OJS.

With the relaunch of the New American Studies Journal in 2021, the team needed a workflow that could produce clean PDF, HTML, and XML outputs to the standards expected in contemporary scholarly publishing — and that could scale to other journals waiting in the wings, each with its own requirements.

SciFlow as the production backbone

• Templates that do the heavy lifting — automated formatting in line with each journal's design.
• Download single articles and collections, including a table of contents across single articles.
• Multi-format export in a few clicks — clean PDF and XML ready for OJS upload.
• Although the same workflow can be applied across disciplines, SciFlow supports specific content elements, such as poems and numbered law-style references.
• Browser-based and collaborative, with no installation, accessible to editors and production staff alike.

Implementation: from pilot to portfolio

Göttingen University Press, NASJ editors, and SciFlow piloted the workflow on a single issue. Editors handed off manuscripts. The press handled import, formatting, metadata enrichment, and export directly in SciFlow.

Once the first issue went live without friction, the team began evaluating other journals for fit and added them one by one — some are part of the Press, and some are associated and use Göttingen's infrastructure.

Today, five Göttingen journals across three disciplines run on the same production workflow. Although they share the same workflow, discipline-specific elements are still visible. SciFlow templates support content elements such as poems, law-style numbering, and right-to-left languages (e.g., Arabic). The workflow remains the same, but the appearance reflects discipline-specific elements.

The result: faster issues, cleaner outputs, more journals

Manuscripts that once required hours of manual cleanup now move from editorial handoff to OJS-ready PDF, HTML and XML in a few clicks. Editors stay focused on content. Production staff stopped fighting formats. And the press can take on more journals without scaling headcount.

Already compatible with OJS — native integration on the way

SciFlow already works hand-in-hand with OJS today: the production files SciFlow generates (XML, PDF, HTML) drop straight into OJS in the formats it expects. Customers like Göttingen are using this pipeline in production.

What's next: the SciFlow text editor will be available inside OJS 3.6, and dedicated plugins will enable a seamless, end-to-end integration between OJS and SciFlow — writing, editorial work, metadata, and production in one connected workflow.