Integrating Electronic and Print Publications Policies

By Terri Willard
November 1999

Case study from the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)

In late 1998 the International Institute for Sustainable Development created new publication policies which explicitly integrated both print and electronic publishing.

Up to that time, different departments had managed the two activities. For a while, the Internet team was getting very good at developing its own projects and products. But the presentation of the institute's own research base on IISDnet (http://www.iisd.org/) lagged far behind. No one seemed sure who to talk to if they wanted to create or post new content on the site. The Internet team was often unaware of new working papers of gray material being produced by researchers. And research program managers worked piecemeal with the Internet team to create their "own" mini-sites on IISDnet.

In 1998 everything changed. The position of Publishing Services Coordinator was established with a mandate to oversee both print and electronic publishing. This paved the way for an overhaul of publishing policies and procedures. This included creating four principal documents:
[Note: these documents are provided for downloading in Rich Text Format (RTF)]

• IISD Electronic/Print Publishing Policy and Procedure (18 KB - RTF format)
  A short document (1.5 pages) detailing the basics of who to contact, approvals and formal editing. It was written by the Knowledge Communications program director with input from all staff and was formally approved by the IISD senior management team.
• IISD Publishing Style Guide (12.5 MB - RTF format)
  The Publishing Services Coordinator in consultation with the Knowledge Communications program director created this 47-page manifesto about print and electronic production formats. The IISD senior management team formally approved this document.
• IISDnet Guidelines for the Design Team (95 KB - RTF format)
  This informal document highlights the portions of the IISD Publishing Style Guide necessary for Web design and markup. It also provides additional guidelines on creating meta-tags for the site.
• IISD Integrated Print/Electronic Production Flowchart (173 KB - RTF format)
  Another informal document, the flowchart was the result of trying to understand in detail how the print and electronic publishing processes work together. Although it helped the Internet Communications Officers and Publishing Services Coordinator, it was not meant to be used to explain the process to research staff developing content.

Other case studies from the International Institute for Sustainable Development

• The role of project leaders (29 November 1999)
  As the International Institute for Sustainable Development's presence on the Web has expanded from one site to three, it has cultivated project leaders able to bring together research and technical staff to ensure high quality online products.