Journal Management
Every journal in the DDH is assigned a manager responsible for its state and curation. The manager’s duties include reviewing update suggestions. The journal managers are journal data sources or DDH editors, who can be seen as a special kind of journal data source.
Notification system
Each trusted data source has its representatives who, on its behalf, can perform certain actions related to the journal managed by the source. For example, they can accept or reject metadata changes for a given journal. Representatives also receive email notifications about actions waiting for their response. When the manager of a journal is a source system, such notifications are sent to all individuals with the role of Source Representative for this particular system. When the manager of a journal is the DDH editorial team, a selected editor is the contact point for notifications relating to the journal (usually the editor who last edited the journal).
Management transfer
If your journal is already on the DDH and you would like to become its manager, you need to suggest a change to this journal, either by resubmitting it as a trusted source or by choosing “edit” in the journal view, modifying the metadata and clicking on “propose change”. The current manager of the journal will have to confirm your update together with transferring the management in one step.
Journal Updates
Metadata updates adhere to management rules and source trust levels. For supporting sources, updates overwrite previous journal metadata, with the most recent timestamp taking precedence if multiple supporting sources are involved. Trusted sources always overwrite supporting sources metadata, and updates from the same trusted source replace previous versions. For updates between different trusted sources, metadata mismatches are resolved through notifications (automated emails) and with auto-acceptance mechanism when no decision has been made during a certain period of time. If multiple trusted sources attempt updates simultaneously, solutions include prioritising decisions from one source, queuing updates, or rejecting secondary requests. Metadata from supporting sources does not overwrite data from trusted sources or the DDH editor, since DDH editors are treated as a trusted source.
Examples:
- If a trusted source representative updates a journal which is managed by DDH editors, then DDH editors have the possibility to either accept or reject the updates. The change can be accepted with or without management transfer. If a DDH editor accepts the updates with management transfer, then the trusted source representative becomes the new manager of this journal. If no decision is made by the DDH editor within 14 days, then the update will be automatically accepted, but the DDH editor remains the manager of the journal within the DDH.
- If the trusted source A updates a journal which is managed by the trusted source B then the trusted source B representatives can accept or reject the change. If they accept the change, then the change is persisted and visible in the DDH. The change can be accepted with or without management transfer. If it is accepted with management transfer, the trusted A becomes the new manager of the journal within the DDH. If they don’t accept the change, the journal metadata does not change and the trusted source B remains the journal manager. If no decision is made, the change is auto-accepted by the DDH update workflow module and the trusted source B remains the journal manager.
The detailed description of the updating workflow for the most complex scenario is explained in Multiple simultaneous journal updates from different trusted sources.
Journal Deletions
Journal deletions work in the same way as journal updates. A journal managed by trusted source can be deleted directly only by a representative of that source. Representatives of different trusted sources can only propose the deletion that in turn must be either accepted or rejected by journal manager. If no decision has been made after 30 days, the journal will be deleted automatically.