Archive:Tutorial:Creating an online publication

Statistics Explained is the production platform for online publications consisting of sets of Statistics Explained articles; in some cases an online publication may be converted into a paper/PDF version, either by using Statistics Explained tools (for instance Statistics in focus issues) or by extracting the content and layouting this professionally (for instance 'flagship' publications or some compendium publications). Every paper/PDF publications is to be based on a pre-existing online publication created in Statistics Explained and sometimes published before the paper/PDF version becomes available.

This tutorial sets out the general principles underlying the creation of publications, and then describes the different steps in the collaboration towards an online publication in Statistics Explained and how a PDF/paper publication can be derived from it.

General principles

Statistics Explained is the production platform for all publications

Statistics Explained is a wiki, a website or database developed collaboratively by a community of users, allowing any user to add and edit content (Oxford dictionaries). It uses Mediawiki software, also powering Wikipedia and numerous other huge collaborative websites, and has an extensive set of tools to facilitate collaboration: sophisticated access control, hidden drafts, history with near-perfect versioning and tracking changes, notification system, discussion page, differentiated user management, ...

Even when the final objective is a print-ready fully lay-outed PDF, it is more efficient to prepare a publication in Statistics Explained using these tools from the earliest possible moment, right after agreeing on a tentative table of contents and the very first draft of articles. Compared to the reverse traditional way of drafting in Word to the very end, sending back and forth a confusing number of versions overgrown with track changes, without a central place to bring them all together with comments and validations; and finally converting the print PDF to a Statistics Explained version for the majority of users, much more time-consuming and difficult than the opposite.

'Online first’ principle

Apart from aforementioned consideration that using wiki tools from the beginning is easier and more efficient, other strong arguments favour the ‘online first’ principle, that the first and primary product of Eurostat’s publication process is the internet version in Statistics Explained:

• The printed PDF, although nice to be leafed through and for completing a collection on a shelf, is not the primary product in terms of usability, but rather the Statistics Explained article with its many additional features and links and its integration within the whole publication output. The PDF is a derived niche product, with ‘flagship’ importance for management, policy DGs and decision makers, but hardly convenient for reusing the data and analysis.

• As a result, the online version by far exceeds paper/print in actual use: views of an online publication and its separate articles are at least 100 times the readership of the print version, as is proven by a comparison of past download figures and present page views of for instance the Yearbook and its articles.

Conclusions

Statistics Explained is the central repository of all publication output of Eurostat. Statistics Explained is also the production platform for publications, many of which are only available online where most users access them. Print PDF/paper publications are derived from an online version, in three possible ways described above: PDF creation wholly in Statistics Explained (Statistics in focus), extraction for full-sized equivalent (most PDF publications) and extraction for downsized equivalent (Pocketbooks).