The idea for a 'living' review journal was conceived by
Bernard F. Schutz in 1994. For helping
to develop this idea two years later into a deliberate concept and
creating a design for an actual publication that went online on 26
January 1998, Living Reviews in Relativity
is indebted to its first Managing Editor,
Jennifer Wheary
.
Theresa Velden
, second ME of the
journal from 1998 to 2001, refined and standardized the editorial
workflow. Thanks to her promotional commitment,
Living Reviews in Relativity
has been established among the scientific community as a primary
resource for high-quality reviews in relativity. Moreover, the
editorial concept of the journal attracted attention within
the Electronic Publishing community.
From 2001 to 2010, Christina Weyher led the project as Managing Editor of the BackOffice and later Project Manager at the MPDL. During these years, Living Reviews was expanded to a successful journal family in collaboration with other Max Planck institutes and external partners.
The journal's original web interface had been designed by Lee Wild, Jennifer Wheary, and Christina Weyher. The Living Reviews in Relativity logo was commissioned from stills, UK.
In 2001, the internal web-based documentation and information pages have been revised and graphically improved by Living Reviews in Relativity's interns Rachel Clements and Denis Vogt.
Frank Schulz and
Beatrice Anghelache
launched a new web design
for Living Reviews in Relativity in December
2002, improving the site's maintainance and usabilty. The
currentjournal interface is based on Ruthsarian Layouts.
Technical advise in the early phase of the journal's creation was given by Steve Brandt and Paul Walker.
Essential in offering a journal like Living Reviews in Relativity for free on the web is a highly automated software package for processing articles and publishing them online. The first, highly functional fleet of Living Reviews scripts was developed by Lee Wild in 1997 and 1998.
Support and guidance in the maintenance and further development of the journal software provided by Gabrielle Allen and Tom Goodale between 1998 and 2000 has been greatly appreciated.
From 1999 to 2000, Andreas Wilde, diploma student of the FH Brandenburg, programmed the editorial database for his diploma project in close interaction with the editorial team.
Until 2003,
Ian Kelley
supported the team with his technical advice and programming skills.
Romeo Anghelache
was affiliated with Living Reviews in Relativity from 2002
to 2005 in the EU funded MoWGLI project and
contributed also to the journal's software development.
Robert Forkel started to develop a whole new software suite for the Living Reviews publication process in 2003. The ePublishing Toolkit includes article conversion tools, a bibliographic database, a web site builder, and a web based editorial information management system (EIMS). The conceptual design for EIMS was primarily developed by Vera Osswald and Robert Forkel.
Software maintenance, further development, and server
administration have been done jointly by
André Wobst
(since 2005) and Robert Forkel until
2010.
Dieter Schmitt
was essential in adapting LaTeX and BibTeX styles for the new
journals of the Living Reviews family.