Research Journal Builder & Manuscript Workspace

The Journal Builder is part of the Research Portal (ahgResearchPlugin). It is a single tool with two modes over one shared data model, letting a researcher either run an institutional scholarly journal or draft a single article toward an external journal.

This is distinct from the researcher logbook (the daily "Journal" of activity entries). The Journal Builder produces structured, publishable scholarly output.

Two modes

Publication mode

Build and run an institutional journal:

1. Define the journal — title, subtitle, ISSN / eISSN, publisher, aims & scope, editor name and email, optional DOI.
2. Build issues — each issue has a volume, number, title, date, description and its own draft/published status.
3. Place articles — each article carries a title, authors, abstract, keywords, a Markdown body (rendered to HTML, word-counted automatically), reference style and optional DOI. Articles can sit in an issue or stay unassigned.
4. Table of contents — the journal view groups articles by issue (newest first), with any unassigned articles in a final "Unassigned" group.
5. Publish / archive — set the whole journal's status to draft, published or archived.

Manuscript mode

Draft a single article aimed at an external target journal:

• Capture the same article fields (title, authors, abstract, keywords, Markdown body, reference style).
• Choose a target journal. When the target-journal directory (issue #114) is installed, the builder offers a picklist and validates the manuscript against that journal's rules:
  • required completeness (title, abstract, at least one author, non-empty body);
  • the journal's expected reference style;
  • the journal's word limit (max_words).
• When the directory is not installed, the builder still works — it simply validates completeness and you can enter a target id manually. This graceful degradation means the feature ships independently of #114.

A submission checklist banner is shown on the manuscript article editor listing any outstanding problems; a green banner confirms when the manuscript passes all checks.

Reference styles

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, Chicago, MLA, IEEE.

Markdown

Article bodies are written in Markdown. On save, the body is rendered to safe HTML (using the bundled Parsedown in safe mode where available) and the word count is computed from the rendered text. A live preview of the rendered body is shown on the article editor.

Screens / routes

All screens require an authenticated researcher; unauthenticated users are sent to login, and users without a researcher profile are sent to registration.

Data model

research_journal.target_journal_id and research_journal_article.target_journal_id are soft references to research_target_journal (#114) — resolved only when that table exists.

Service

ResearchJournalService (lib/Services/ResearchJournalService.php) provides all CRUD, the table-of-contents assembly, Markdown rendering, word counting, and the validateManuscript() / targetJournal() helpers that degrade gracefully when the #114 directory is absent.