General
What is Vega?
Vega is an academic publishing system that offers a range of customizable features and workflows to interact with data and multimedia to take editorial management and academic publishing into the 21st century.
What can Vega do?
Through Vega, users can submit, edit, and publish high-quality academic publications that make use of rich media. Vega allows you to incorporate robust multimedia content into your editorial workflows and publishing venues while also providing traditional media options.
Who built Vega?
Vega was funded by the Mellon Foundation and was designed and developed by Bengler under the direction of West Virginia University and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.
Where can I get Vega?
After its worldwide release, you can download Vega at http://vegapublish.com.
When will Vega be available?
Vega will be available worldwide in January 2018.
Business
How much does Vega cost?
Vega will be available free of charge to editors and publishers worldwide.
What hosting options are available?
The Digital Publishing Institute (DPI) at West Virginia University Libraries is the institutional home of Vega and will provide fee-based online hosting services. Additionally, the DPI will offer editorial and layout services. Interested editors and publishers can contact the DPI.
Editorial
What peer review options does Vega include?
Vega provides real-time collaboration and feedback between authors, editors, and reviewers. The system includes multiple peer review options (open, closed, and crowd-sourced) and tools for the peer review process (inline commenting, notifications of discussion activity, tracking, and voting).
What editorial workflows does Vega include?
At all stages of the publication process, Vega offers flexible editorial and production workflows that allow for traditional or open peer review, recursive copy-editing processes, and design-editing opportunities for multimedia.
What types of content does Vega accept?
Vega is content-agnostic; in other words, the system’s flexibility allows it to accept all types of content.
Technical
What is Vega built on?
Vega is built on a content management system (CMS) called Sanity, a configurable JavaScript application. The main underlying component of Sanity is Gradient, which supports real-time collaboration and is document-oriented.
What languages does Vega use?
Vega primarily uses JavaScript (Node.js, JSON) and Go (Google’s open-source programming language) as well as CSS (cascading style sheets) to operate.
What languages do I need to know to work with Vega?
To manipulate Vega’s back-end, it’s helpful to know basic JavaScript. On the front-end, you can create templates and publications in the programming language of your choice.
How can I customize Vega?
With the system’s permissive license, you can modify, extend, and contribute to the code as long as you provide attribution to the project developers. You can create and use plug-ins to customize Vega or provide new interfaces. These plug-ins can be easily added to or removed from existing Vega installations.
Can I use Vega to create a website for my publication?
Yes. Vega’s front-end is open source and customizable. You can built upon default web templates provided with the Vega package, or you can create your own in the programming language of your choice.
How does Vega interact with other systems?
The Vega API (application programming interface) is a public application that can be shared with other systems, making it simple to integrate Vega content and editorial processes with existing systems.