ESSENTIAL FEATURES FOR AUTHORS

Writing a textbook holds many rewards, but it's harder than newcomers imagine.  You're expecting the text, but not the hair-pulling complexity of choosing photos and illustrations: seeing eye-to-eye with researchers and artists, reviewing myriad possibilities, knowing how copyright affects the process, and locking in selections for every figure. (We'll just refer to photo research from now on, since the art tasks are very similar.)

Even seasoned authors find photos draining. Chem texts may be up-to-date, but lab images don't age well... PoliSci images become obsolete as regimes and societies change... a pop culture shot grabs Psych students one year, but is eyerollingly obsolete the next. And so on.

It's a constant collaboration — you review fresh photo submissions, researchers act on your comments, editors make recommendations and measure rejections and approvals — but with everything set to RUSH in publishing, people easily get out of step.

You need technology to make this work, and FigureOne is how it's done. We're the web site built to manage photo research projects.  You log in, your researcher logs in, your editor logs in, and you start communicating.

Photos are posted for your review in easily navigated views. Our commenting system is always at hand, allowing you to start discussions about a particular spec and/or about individual images the researcher has posted.  Give constructive criticism when an image doesn't work for you, and know when there are permission problems making taking an image out of the loop. You can get instant notification of new images and new comments using our TeamTicker feature, including popups on your desktop so there's no longer any need to cross paths with endless e-mails (you don't even need your browser open to get popups).

Your options go well beyond commenting, of course.  Tag an image as your final Selection by pressing a simple workflow button.  Or, if your editor is making selections, tag one or more as your Suggested favorites.  Consult Reference images (guides for research, perhaps from a previous edition) to see how the researcher's submissions match up. You might not want to use the fullsize original, and you can crop the image before tagging it.

And giving clear and constructive negative feedback is another reality of photo research. Tag images as Rejected, giving researchers an easy-to-track measure of their success rate, rather than needing to read deeper into freeform comments.

Do all this from any Mac or PC browser, tablet, or smartphone. (No prohibitive technologies that say "You can't use this site from that device.")

And don't worry, we're proud of our technology, but we don't expect you to be a computer geek.  FigureOne is universally praised for ease-of-use by both power users and near-technophobes. We're not interested in looking like a hot iPhone app (though we work fine on an iPhone).  At root, we're just a web-based application with a specific focus built by people who know the field. As webmail is to e-mail, FigureOne is to photo research.

Please contact your publisher so we can give you a  DEMO »  to learn more -- and feel free to check out the features aimed at  RESEARCHERS »  and  EDITORS »  too.