Dear nature lovers and animal friends, welcome to BrehmSpace! Please take a little time to read the following introduction.
1. What is BrehmSpace?
Today the new media have become indispensable for the quick access to knowledge. As publishers of the traditional natural series Die Neue Brehm-Bücherei (NBB), we therefore decided to create a second big project: BrehmSpace.
With BrehmSpace we intend to establish an online resource for biological information where you can submit and publish your own articles, reports, images and other biology related content. For this, we are looking for biologists and naturalists who want to share their knowledge and become active as authors for BrehmSpace. We especially encourage users to build author communities to develop qualified content, which, step by step and after editorial approval, becomes adequate for online or even print publishing.
Have you become curious? Then please read the following chapters and maybe we can welcome you soon to our BrehmSpace team!
2. Instructions for authors
2.1. Password and registration
You will need to register yourself on BrehmSpace to have full access and to create own content. The registration is free of charge and can be resigned at any time. Of course, your personal data will be treated confidentially.
How to create a new account:
1. Click on “create new account”
2. Fill in your user name and your e-mail address. Your user name will be linked with every content you create later on, so you should choose a "serious" name. Also fill in your given name and surname (no pseudonyms!).
3. After you created a new account you will automatically receive an e-mail with a registration link and a randomly generated password for the first registration.
4. Click on the registration link and fill in the password. Once registered, you should replace the password with one of your choice.
5. From now on you can log in with your username and your personal password. Please log out every time you leave BrehmSpace.
6. As a registered user you have the possibility to edit your account. To do this click on "My account". There you can change your settings and provide further personal information. Click on the tab "Track" to read, edit and delete your content. Or you may want to invite a colleague or friend to BrehmSpace by clicking on the “Invitations” tab.
2.2. User roles
Each user is assigned one or more roles which are set up with different permissions:
1. Guest: A guest is a non-registered user. Guests can read most contents, but are not allowed to comment content and provide own content.
2. Registered user: A registered user can use "Sitemap & Systematics" to search content by categories (e.g. subject or organism group). He is also allowed to comment content.
3. Author: An author can provide own content and invite colleagues and friends for cooperation. Besides, he can contribute to the content of existing authors. If you are a registered user and want to become an author, please write us. Once assigned the author role you will have access to the “create content” button.
4. Moderator: Each author team is free to assign a moderator who coordinates their project. While the authors can only edit their own content, the moderator can also edit and reorganize the content of his/her colleagues. If you are part of an author team and want to become a moderator, please write us.
5. NBB author: You are an author of our natural book series Die Neue Brehm-Bücherei? If so, we give you the opportunity to provide further information for your readers by updating the content of your printed book on BrehmSpace. For example, you may want to provide new research data, citations, or images.
6. Editor: The editor supervises the quality of the content on BrehmSpace. He is also the contact person for the authors and provides technical support. See “Impressum” for details about the current editor of BrehmSpace or click here to write to the editor.
7. Administrator: The operator of BrehmSpace with all rights and permissions, e.g. changing the site configuration, the management of user roles and content types. (See “Impressum” for details about the current administrator of BrehmSpace)
2.3. How to create and submit content
First of all, an important principle: BrehmSpace is an online source for evaluated and qualified knowledge. This implies that the authors should write under their true name (no pseudonyms!). We also ask the authors for civility and fairness.
Click Create content, then Community-Beitrag
Give your article a title and assign it one or more appropriate categories such as subject area or organism group. Please be as precisely as possible to make sure that readers will be able to search your article using keywords.
Go to Book outline and choose either
- an existing book, if you want to add your content to it as a child page or
- choose “create a new book”. In this case a new parent page with the title of your article will be created. Later on you (or other authors) can add further child pages (“chapters”) to your book.
You can type your text directly in a WYSIWYG editor (an acronym for „what you see is what you get). If you choose to copy and paste your text from another text processing software (e.g., Word), however, you will not always get what you see…
If you prefer to format your text using HTML, you can deactivate the WYSIWYG editor by clicking the link "disable rich text" under the editor. You will find more information about using HTML under the link "Compose tips".
If you format your headlines using “Heading 2”, “Heading 3” etc. (in the paragraph field of the WYSIWYG editor) or <h2>, <h3> etc. (HTML), a collapsible mediawiki-style table of contents is automatically generated. Please note that "Heading 1" or <h1> is reserved for the title of the article, so your main text headlines will have to be formatted with "Heading 2" or <h2>.
It is important that you save your changes (button at the end of the page) before you close the editor, otherwise your work will be lost! Before you save your text, you can preview your changes (button at the end of the page).
Under File attachments you can upload additional files such as images, pdf or Powerpoint files (allowed file types are: jpg, jpeg, gif, png, txt, doc, xls, pdf, ppt, pps, odt, ods, odp). The upload is restricted to 2 MB.
Important: After you have saved your article you can set up the access permissions for it. For this, go to Access control (right tab). The changes you make here will only apply to this article! By default, users are allowed to read your content, but not to edit or delete it. If you wish not to publish your article for now, go to View any content and uncheck anonymous user and authenticated user. This will ensure that only you have access to your article (at “My account/track”). Handle the settings of Edit any content and Delete any content with care, because this will eventually grant other user roles the permission to edit or delete your content! Also, do not change the settings of View/Edit/Delete own content, otherwise you might lose access to your own article!
2.4. Contents types
You can provide different types of content, dependant on the user role you are assigned. Click „Create content“ to begin.
Community content:
This is the standard content type for authors. Community content can be structured hierarchically like a real book, i.e. you may begin with a parent page (i.e. an introduction to your subject) and later on you can add further child pages, which can be nested arbitrarily. This is especially useful if you are part of an author's team where each author edits another chapter of the same “book”. For further information click "Create content".
You can access community content in the column "BrehmSpace Community".
NBB author content:
Only accessible for the user role "NBB author". If you are a NBB author you can provide content that adds to your printed books (see above). For further information click "Create content".
Image:
You can submit images and assign them different categories. You can specify in which image gallery your image should appear. For further information click "Create content".
And now enjoy discovering BrehmSpace!
The editor
I you have questions or need help, please write us.
