A Web-based publishing-management system

The management of a large number of manuscripts is integral to the publishi ng of a scientific journal. The process of submitting articles should be as simple as possible, both for the sake of the authors and for the reduction of the overhead associated with mailing and handling. For these reasons, t he entire pre-press process at Presence is now based on standard Internet p rotocols. Although a hardcopy document is still required by the publisher, the pre-press process-from original submission through the stages of review -to final acceptance for publication-can now be done electronically. All fu nctions involving electronic manuscript submission and management, as well as correspondence with reviewers, has been bundled in a modular package ame nable to modifications. This publishing system was developed in-house at a fraction of the cost of acquiring a commercially available system. It was d esigned in close cooperation with the editorial staff to ensure optimal fun ctionality.