OAQ is a web-based tool that helps publishers create author questionnaires and creates structured data from author responses. You can read more about the project on the Harvard Library portal.
SECTIONSAs a publisher, once you’ve sent a questionnaire to authors, you can view and manage the status of their responses.
OAQ workflows depend on updated response statuses for the communication of data between publishers and libraries. It’s important for publishers to keep response statuses current.
The Responses for questionnaire page will show a list of each author who has been invited to the questionnaire, along with the date it was last modified and the status of the response.
Note that each email address in the Author Email column is a hyperlink; if you click the link, your default mail program will open with the author’s address, a subject line, and a message body already filled in. The message will include the unique URL to the questionnaire. Feel free to modify this email before sending it, or you can use this feature as a way to access the questionnaire URL for later correspondence.
As a publisher, there may be times where you want to work on a questionnaire on behalf of an author. If you click **Start a new response to
Here’s an explanation of the Status dropdown menu options:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Sent | The questionnaire has been sent to the author, but the author has not saved any progress yet. |
| In Progress | The author has accessed the questionnaire and saved some amount of work. |
| Author Submitted | The author has gone through each section of the questionnaire and clicked Submit answers at the end. |
| Accepted | The publisher has marked the questionnaire as Accepted using the Status dropdown menu. This action makes the response visible to any partner libraries. |
| Not Sent | The publisher has created the questionnaire but not yet sent it to authors. |
| Library In Progress* | A partner library has received the accepted questionnaire and begun processing it. Note that when a library takes this action, it locks the questionnaire for further editing by authors or publisher staff members. |
| Library Complete* | A partner library has received the accepted questionnaire and finished processing it. |
| Not processed* | A partner library has received the accepted questionnaire but has not begun processing it yet. |
*These actions are taken by library users in a separate OAQ environment, not by publishers.
You can see the history of events that have been performed on each response by clicking Status History under Actions. Clicking this link will pop up a window that shows:
If a response’s status has never been changed, the popup window will be blank.
Once you have determined a response is complete, you can use the Status dropdown menu to mark it as Accepted. This action makes the questionnaire response visible to any partner libraries.
Additionally, a popup window will prompt you to enter an ISBN. You can enter an ISBN-10 or ISBN-13 and click Add, whereupon OAQ will validate the ISBN. Alternatively, you can click Skip Add ISBN, or you can click Close to discard your changes.
If you need to undo an Accepted status, you can change the status as long as two conditions are met:
You haven’t ended your browser session by leaving the page, refreshing the page, or logging out of OAQ.
A library has not changed the status of the response on their end.
Once either of these events has happened, you will not be able to change the Accepted status. Contact your OAQ site admin if you have reason to change an Accepted status and are unable to.
When a library begins processing the response in their separate OAQ environment, a library user will change the status to Library In Progress. This action locks the questionnaire for editing by authors or publisher staff members.
The Responses for questionnaire page provides you with the option to Export all responses. If you click this button, a CSV file containing all responses in the list will begin downloading.
You can also download individual responses by clicking the Download dropdown next to any response and choosing to download either a CSV or PDF file.
It’s good practice to associate each response with an ISBN if you have it available. Adding an ISBN will allow you to uniquely identify the work in exported data.