An Interview-Based Authoring Tool

5.1.1 Overview about the Interview-Based Authoring Tool

As stated in the architecture in Chapter 3, the authoring tool was a web-based application. User could just launch the browser and connect to the paper-review process authoring tool. By the observation, it could split the process of construction into 7 phases (These phases were illustrated in Chapter 5.2 one by one). By the “step by step” operation environment, this thesis facilitated user to complete the process construction work.

In order to collect the configuration in each phase set by user, several interview-based questions were proposed. Through the process of answering questions, the authoring tool made the corresponding setting. In addition to the ordinary multiple choice questions, this thesis also prepared the form-filling style questions for user. It was suitable for user answering specific types of questions. For example: different conference deadline, the criteria of reviewing paper, or the role frame setting described in Chapter 4.

In the process of answering questions, different questions could be mapped to different frames and rules setting. This thesis divided these questions into several types as follows:

a. Frame Structure Setting: after answering the questions, it could generate the corresponding frames. Different users might generate different frame structures after answering questions. For example: when user decide the information slots that end-user should provide, our authoring tool would alter the S-tuple of ResourceFrame(“User”, FR, S, VR) (see Definition 1 in Section 3.1) correspondingly.

b. Frame Instance Generating: There were some existent frame structures in the reconfigurable paper-review system generator. User could define new frame instances according to her/his demand. For example: When user defined the roles in his paper-review system, she/he just generated new role frames and made different setting on the slots in each role frame.

c. Rule Generating: During the user answering questions, it might add or change different types of rules defined in Chapter 3. These rules are generated by user after answering questions. For example: System generated the process control rules when user defined the mail sending rules;

system generated the authentication rule when user set whether the paper is public or not; Moreover, when user defined the paper frame structure, it may

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generate some verification rules. (such as “Non-Empty”, “Restricted in Some Options”) Data verification rules were attached in the VR-tuple (Verification Rules) of the 5-tuples in resource frame.

d. Action frame authentication setting: This section was related to role-based access control described in Chapter 4. When user made the configuration in role frames, she/he might set the allowed actions in each role.

User could switch between phases in Configuration System and reconfigure in each phase. Of course, the configuration in previous phases sometimes affected the configuration in following phases. That was the interaction between authoring tool and user, which were elaborated in Section 5.1.3. In next section, this thesis introduced the purpose of each phase in the process of paper-review process construction.

5.1.2 Different Configuration Phase in Authoring Tool

As stated before, this thesis defined several phases based on different purpose of the interview-based questions. For the mainly paper-review process construction, 5 construction phases were defined. In addition, this thesis defined 2 additional phase in the head and tail of these 5 construction phases for the initializing and saving configuration purpose. The structure of our authoring tool was shown in Figure 5.2.

The purposes of all the seven phases were stated as follows:

Figure 5.2: Different configuration phase in authoring tool

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Phase 1(Initial Phase): Since this thesis made different users generate their own paper-review process through the authoring tool, this thesis let user create a new configuration session. After creating the session, they could make the following configuration. User had to create a system manager identity. Different paper-review processes could be recognized through this identity. In addition, user could modify her/his configuration in the future through this identity.

Phase 2(Global Setting Phase): In this phase, user decided the purpose of the paper-review system. For a paper-review system, the paper-review process was similar no matter what the purpose of her/his system is. However, when papers were published, publishing to conference and publishing to journal were totally different.

Thus, we made user have a choice. User could also set the profile about this conference/journal. In addition, user could add the other static information such as call-for-paper, location information, etc. Moreover, user could define some important dates as well as the subtopics in the conference/journal. They would be the inference facts of the rule which were defined in following phases

Phase 3(Role Definition Phase): In this phase, user generated Role frames and defined the User frame structure. User had to set the actions which could be performed by each role when setting Role frames. Different roles might contain a subsidiary relation (for example: in Figure 4.1, co-editor could be generated by editor) as well as the setting of anonymity. In addition to setting the slot/slot type of User frame, user has to setting the verification rules of User frame (if need).

Phase 4(Manuscript Definition Phase): In this phase, user made the manuscript-related configuration. For a reconfigurable paper-review system generator, there were several setting options about the manuscript. Thus, this thesis divided this phase into 4 sub-phases: (a) Paper Frame Setting: To define the Paper frame structure. (b) Paper Category setting: To define the category structure. If user had defined the subtopics information in Phase 2, it generated a sub category stood for each subtopic in advance. (c) Paper State Setting: To define the varied paper states of the manuscript could be. (Ex: accept, reject, revise…) These states defined here might be the inference facts of the process control rules. (d) Paper Important Dates Setting: There were some important dates belonging to the conference/journal as well as belonging to the manuscript itself. (for example: the paper re-upload deadline was always set as a few days later after the paper state was set as “revise”) Thus, in this sub-phase, user could define the important dates based on the manuscripts.

The configuration in Phase 2~Phase 4 was mainly the configuration on frames.

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There were some data verification rules, authentication rules setting among them.

The following 2 phases focus on the process control rules setting.

Phase 5(Action Configuration Phase): In this phase, user made configuration about each action in the paper-review process. This thesis split this phase into 5 sub-phases based on the difference of actions as follows: (a) Submit setting: User could define the 2-stage submission process in this sub-phase. Some paper-review process of conference/ journal request authors submit a part of information of the manuscript then continued the submission after editor permitting. If user wanted to use the 2-stage submission, she/he had to set what information should be provided first. (This information is referred to the Paper frame structure in Phase 4) (b) Dispatch Setting: If the manuscript would be reviewed by reviewers, user had to make the related configuration. (c) Review Setting: In This sub-phase, user set the review criteria about the submitted manuscripts. (d) Proof Reader Setting: User set the information which should be provided when proof reading as well as the following operation after proofreading. (e) Publishing Setting: According to the different purpose settings in Phase 2, the configuration in this sub-phase may be different. If this paper-review system was for a journal system, user could decide the indexing format of the journal and set the Journal frame structure. If the purpose of paper-review system was for conference, user could determine the agenda of this conference.

There was another configuration in Phase 5, which was defined the paper state transition rules under different actions. It might have several state transition rules within an action. These rules might form the flow of paper-review process as the example of Figure 5.3.

Phase 6(Messages Configuring Phase): In this phase, user could configure about the message passing. To simplify the problem, this thesis assumed that the entire messages among the paper-review system were sent by e-mail. Thus, user could define the mailing rules in the paper-review system. The timing of sending email could be classified as follows: (a) Send mails on the change of paper state (mapping to the large dots on the arrows in Figure 5.3) (b) Send mails before the important dates of system or manuscript. (c) Send mail after specific actions that would not cause the paper state transition. User could define the Mail frame, where contained the title, content, and receiver of this mail. Then set when to send this mail.

In addition, user could use the “dynamic slot” of other frames in the title/content of the mail. The dynamic slot could be replaced with the corresponding slot values of specific frames before the mail was sent.

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Figure 5.3: A scenario of paper-review process: the paper state transition rules were mapped to the arrows between rectangles of this figure. On the other hand, some of the mailing setting rules were mapped to the large dots on the arrows.

Phase 7(Saving Configuration Phase): After making the configuration in Phase 1~Phase 5, user could save the configuration at this phase. Authoring tool could check if there was an error in previous configuration phase and report the error to user. If there was no missing in configuration, this phase could generate the authoring script of the paper-review system. Then gave a URL linked to the output paper-review system. User could access the output paper-review system immediately.

If there was still other configuration need to be made, or the configuration should be changed, user could reconfigure in the previous phases immediately.

5.1.3 Humans’ Interaction with Authoring Tool

In order to facilitate user generate her/his own paper-review system, this thesis emphasized the interaction between authoring tool and user, where could help user avoid the unnecessary configure error. The interaction mechanisms were stated as follows:

a. Default Knowledge Loading: It is difficult for user to construct her/his paper-review process from the very beginning. Since the paper-review process were stereotyped (that is why we use frames to represent our paper-review process knowledge). Before user started up the paper-review process construction, the authoring tool loaded the default setting of the resource/action frames in advance. A part of setting was changeable or delectable but the other part of setting wasn’t because that it was involved in the system operation. For example: The email slot in user frame was the identification for end-user, so it could not be deleted from User frame. In addition to loading the default knowledge, user could load the authoring script into the authoring tool (the authoring script may created by other users) and modify it to generate a new paper-review process.

b. Enabled/Disabled Some Interview-based Questions: User’s answer of the question in previous phases might cause that the other questions have no

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need to be answered. An obvious example was: When user set the purpose of his paper-review system as for journal, there was no need to answer the questions about conference setting. To avoid user’s confusion, our authoring tool enabled/disabled automatically the corresponding questions.

c. Data Consistency Maintenance: Splitting the authoring tool into several phases might cause the data consistency issue. Some data setting in Phase B came from the previous Phase A. After user setting the data in Phase B, if user altered the referenced data in Phase A, the data in Phase B might still remain old data. Thus, this thesis proposed a mechanism that could automatically update the data which came from the data in previous phases when user modified them.

In addition to the mechanism stated before, the reminding mechanism during the construction was presented. When there was an obvious error in user’s configuration (such as creating the same role frame), the authoring tool would tip to users immediately. Of course, as stated in previous section, the authoring tool checked if there was an error in previous configuration phase and reported the error to user in Phase 7. That was also a part of interaction between user and authoring tool.