Advanced reviewing tools
Merops output documents are reviewed using Microsoft Word. This means:
Merops leverages the power of the Merops correction and XML markup capability into Microsoft Word, the most familiar editing and authoring environment.
Merops is compatible with all versions of Microsoft Word from 2000 to 2013.
When Merops changes the formatting or text of a document, it uses ‘tracked changes’.
Tracked changes are a feature of Microsoft Word that enable you to see and revert individual changes to their original text.
Rather than need to accept all Merops changes individually, the user can simply read through the document, rejecting any errors, then accept all remaining changes.
Merops comes with a number of useful tools to help simplify and speed up this process, such as a tool to reject all identical changes in the document.
You can learn more about Microsoft Word tracked changes here.
Sometimes Merops will not be able to automatically standardize a term, because there is information missing, some information is ambiguous, or something may need to be rewritten.
In these cases, Merops can alert the user with a comment, so they can address the problem.
Examples of alerts include:
Merops comes with a number of useful tools to interact with comments, such as a tool to delete all identical comments in the document.
Merops also includes tools to allow the user to quickly add preset comments, e.g. to query an author about a missing citation.
You can learn more about Microsoft Word comments here.
Merops uses coloured character styles in Microsoft Word to show the user how the text has been identified.
Merops presents complex structures in an immediately intuitive way. The colour markup makes it easy for the user to determine that the text has been correctly identified.
This is particularly useful where a series of different elements are found close together. References are an obvious example:
Green, F., Machin, S. and Wilkinson, D. 1999: Trade unions and training practices in British workplaces. Industrial and Labor Relations Review 52, 179–93.
Guest, D. and Hoque, K. 1994 Employment relations in new non-union workplaces. Human Resource Management Journal 5, 1–13.
Merops colour markup corresponds directly with the underlying XML. Corrections can be made by the user to the output Word document by applying character styles manually, and this can then be used to update the output XML file.
This means users don’t need to retrain extensively to become familiar with XML.
At the end of the reviewing process, the user can remove all the coloured styles, using the Merops Finish Document tool.