Archive:Tutorial:Updating the yearbook

Timing and procedure

As described in the document Doc. 811_2.1 from the Directors Meeting of 5.6.2013, the online Eurostat yearbook has rolling updates of its Statistics Explained articles. Each article will be updated according to its own (data release) calendar.

Production units within Eurostat have been asked to:

either make changes and updates in Statistics Explained directly;
or indicate by email to the functional mailbox ESTAT YEARBOOK (ESTAT-YEARBOOK@ec.europa.eu) any detailed changes to be implemented by the contractor of the Unit B4 Digital dissemination.

Equally production units were asked to indicate:

when they would be updating articles themselves or;
when data would be available on Eurobase for the contractor to make the updates.

Production units may extend their deadline by directly contacting

Pascal Wolff (Living conditions, Health, Education and training, and Environment) or
Jukka Piirto (Population, Labour market, Economy and finance, International trade, Agriculture, forestry and fisheries, Industry and services, Science, technology and digital society, Energy, and Transport).

Stage 1 of updating: drafting

For production units updating articles themselves

Please follow the guidance given below and in the tutorials of Statistics Explained.
Make sure that you approve the page when finished ("Director/Editor approval" on the bottom of the draft article, see the Tutorial:How to create an article - validation).
The article will then be reviewed by the Unit B4 Digital dissemination and its contractor to ensure the formatting and style of tables, figures and maps, and the presentation in Statistics Explained.

For production units producing new articles themselves

Please follow the same guidance as indicated above for updating articles.
Please pay particular attention to ensure that an Excel file containing the tables, figures (and data for the figures) and data for the maps is complete (containing also titles, subtitles, footnotes and sources) and attached (= uploaded) to the new article, see the Tutorial:How to create an article - insert links section Excel file.

For production units that have indicated that the contractor should update the articles

Please ensure that you have communicated to Pascal Wolff or Jukka Piirto:

a date on or after which extractions may be made from Eurobase for use in the article;
any changes you want to be implemented in your articles — these must be provided before the deadline for extraction that you have indicated; please be as precise as possible with any requested changes as the contractor will implement these directly in Statistics Explained.

As far as possible, all further communication should be done by emails, telephone conversations and face-to-face discussions when appropriate.

Stage 2 of updating: review by production units

Regardless of whether your article has been reviewed or updated by the contractor, production units will be contacted when work on an article by the contractor has been completed. By this stage

the text will have been reviewed/updated;
the Excel files will have been reviewed/updated and formatted and attached to the article — they will contain the English version of the tables and figures as well as German and French translations of labels in so far as they are available from previous editions or other available sources. You can have a look at the German and French terminolgy and any comments and improvement proposals are welcome; you are, however, not obliged to do so.
the images of the updated tables and figures in the articles will not have been created — this will only be done once the content has been finalised.

This stage is an opportunity for production units to review an article (text and Excel file). Text changes may be made directly to the draft page in Statistics Explained. Changes to the Excel files should be made directly in the Excel file and clearly identified through:

the use of coloured text (other than red which is reserved for missing translations);
and/or shading of cells;
and/or comment boxes describing clearly the changes.

Approval of the articles by the production units may be done by SIGHTING the DRAFT article in Statistics Explained, or exceptionally by informing Pascal Wolff or Jukka Piirto that the review has been completed.

Stage 3 of updating: finalisation of an article (English version)

Unit B4 and the contractor will review any feedback from production units. Any remaining issues will be addressed bilaterally between the production units and Pascal Wolff or Jukka Piirto.
The contractor will upload the final images for an article once the content has been finalised (final text in Statistics Explained and a final Excel file in English only attached to the article).
If needed, production units will be contacted a second time and asked to approve (=sight) again the draft article.
Pascal Wolff or Jukka Piirto will then perform the final checks from the point of view of the Disemination unit and if everything is OK he will validate (the update of) the article which thereby will become visible to the outside world.

Stage 4 of updating: translations of an article

This phase doesn't require any input from the production units.

After the update of an article has been finalised the translation input files will be prepared by the contractor: an English Word file containing the text of the article (in wiki format, i.e. with the mark-up code elements within the text) and the at least partly trilingual Excel file (together with the previus version's translation input files as reference files).
The Dissemination unit B4 will send the files to translation and agree with DG Translation on the translation deadlines.
All Eurostat yearbook articles are translated into German and French and a selection of them (17 articles) are translated in addition into all 19 other official EU languages than Irish and Maltese: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish.
The contractor will insert the translations into Statistics Explained.
The Dissemination unit will check and validate (--> publish) them.

Special notes for the updates or new articles

1) Reducing the presentation of data in tables and instead using more figures (graphs) and maps: Most users of the online Eurostat yearbook prefer information presented in visual rather than tabular form. Users who need precise numerical data related to the figures can get it either directly from the Excel file or by using the provided links to the freshest data on Eurostat website (= data codes given underneath the figures and maps as well as bookmarks given the Excel file to the specific, tailor-made extractions which were used to create each figure and map). Therefore the online Eurostat yearbook articles should have only a very reduced number of tables, if at all. Those articles which currently present data in several tables will be modified at the next update. This modification process is planned to be finalized by mid-2017. Each article will be discussed on a case-by-case basis with the production unit who owns the article. Sometimes presenting the data, which earlier has been presented in a table, in a nice visual form may require more the one figure or map.

2) Euro area aggregate: All new articles and updates of articles should present the EA-19 aggregate (Lithuania joined the euro area on 1.1.2015 as its 19th member), if available; data for EA-18 may also be published alongside the EA-19 data.

Help: Statistics Explained pages and contact persons

Overview of most important Statistics Explained tutorials

(or see complete alphabetical list)

General Statistics Explained help page

Editors of the online Eurostat yearbook: Pascal Wolff (tel. 33660) and Jukka Piirto (tel. 34251)
Statistics Explained: Louise Corselli-Nordblad (tel. 34088)

Statistics Explained courses can be organised on request. For individual specific questions please contact Louise Corselli-Nordblad.