At Scholastica, we regularly add new features to our law review system to help e-boards optimize their workflows and communicate more effectively with authors. We also continue to enhance our article production service and journal hosting platform, which various law reviews use to publish beautiful, search-optimized online articles and issues with ease.
Whenever we release software improvements that law editors should be aware of, we send out announcements — but, in the mayhem of board transitions and submission seasons, we realize it can be easy to miss updates.
Not to worry, we have you covered! To help you get acquainted with Scholastica’s latest and most popular law review system features, we’re rounding up highlights in this blog post. You can use the links below to jump to specific sections. Let’s get to it!
Quick Links
- NEW features to streamline article decision-making
- NEW Technical checklist option
- Advanced Manuscripts Table filters (including NEW Quick View)
- Ability to require anonymized submissions
- Individual editor logins and easy task assignments
- Easy bulk actions to save you time
- Communicate faster with built-in email and time-saving templates
- Easily move Discussion attachments to the files table
- Customizable notifications for publication offer responses
- Instant analytics to track your law review’s submissions data
- Easy-to-integrate publishing solutions for optimal online reading
- Track readership analytics when you use Scholastica for hosting
- Support to spread the word about your call for papers
NEW features to streamline article decision-making
At Scholastica, we know how critical it is for submission decisions to incorporate the input of all necessary stakeholders and that time is always of the essence, so we’ve released two new features to help streamline the process:
Internal decision recommendations:
Admins can now enable editors to share internal decision recommendations for pending submissions (by following the steps in this help doc), so all necessary stakeholders can quickly provide input. Internal decision recommendations are only visible to your journal editors, not authors or external reviewers.
During setup, your admin will be able to specify which editorial team members can submit decision recommendations and/or read those submitted by other editors. Admins can also set default email notifications for decision recommendations to be sent to designated editors, so those who need to review recommendations know when they’re ready! Editors with appropriate permissions can write and view internal decision recommendations from the Decisions tab of the manuscript work area. Learn more in this help document.
Shared decision draft:
When preparing a decision letter for a manuscript, your editors may want to save in-progress work and return to it later or share a draft with team stakeholders to review. We’ve just released a handy new feature to help — Decision Draft!
When your journal admin adds new editors to your account, they will set granular permissions to allow individual editors to both draft and send decisions, only draft decisions, or neither. Admins can also adjust editors’ decision-related permissions from your journal settings at any time.
To prevent duplicative work, there can only be one decision draft per manuscript. Editors with proper permissions to initiate/edit the decision draft for a manuscript can set its status to “in progress,” “needs review,” or “ready to send,” and notify team members about changes. Editors can also configure their Manuscript Table to include a “Decision draft” column, enabling them to proactively track when drafts are started and their progress.
You can learn more about configuring decision draft permissions and how the feature works in this help document.
Once a decision draft is complete, any editor with permission to issue decisions can send the final letter to the author. Learn how admins can configure who is allowed to issue decisions in this help document.
NEW Technical checklist option
The key to a smooth article vetting process is for all editors to ensure that submissions meet their journal’s publication requirements before sending them out for formal board review. So, we’ve released a new feature to make that easier!
Law reviews using Scholastica’s article selection system now have the option to create a custom technical checklist (a.k.a. quality checklist) for their incoming submissions, which they may choose to require editors to complete.
For example, a law review technical checklist might include steps to check each submission for:
- A clear thesis that is topically relevant
- Full author details (i.e., confirmation of author identity and a signed copyright statement if applicable)
- Adherence to journal policies (e.g., meets word limit)
- Accurate and consistent citations
Admin editors can set up a technical checklist for their law review by following the steps in this help document. When the feature is enabled, editors can easily track the status of technical checks for articles from the “Activity History” thread in the manuscript work area of each paper, as well as the Manuscripts Table.
Advanced Manuscripts Table filters (including NEW Quick View)
We’ve also enhanced the Scholastica Manuscripts Table to support smarter and speedier article selection workflows, including a handy new “Quick View” option, which you can click for any submission to get an overview of its status without having to leave the table. Learn more here.
Additionally, we added advanced Manuscripts Table configuration options, including:
- Powerful enhanced filtering to help you search and sort manuscripts in new ways (with the ability to see manuscripts assigned to multiple selected editors at once!)
- Option to save filtered views at the individual user level, so each editor can access the information they need fast without having to reconfigure the Table
- Easier expedite tracking: When you sort by “expedite by” and click a manuscript with an expedite request, you’ll see overview details about the request right in the Manuscripts Table with the option to visit the expedite page for more information
To learn more about all of the features available in the Manuscripts Table, check out this help document.
Ability to require anonymized submissions
Does your law review follow an anonymized article selection process (i.e., where you ask authors to remove identifying information from manuscript files)? Or are you thinking about implementing one?
Scholastica can help make that process more efficient! We offer the option for law reviews in the pool to require authors to make anonymized submissions. Admins can enable that configuration by following the steps here.
If your law review chooses to require anonymized submissions, we will reflect that in its submission pool listing via a banner that says “Anonymized Manuscripts Only.” When authors add your law review to a pool submission, the form will include fields for uploading anonymized manuscript files, which will be required to submit.
Individual editor logins and easy task assignments
Forgetting a shared law review password or missing article assignments (eek!) — we know those are two of the biggest fears among editorial teams. Submission season is a crazy time, and a lot can fall through the cracks if everyone isn’t on the same page. That’s why Scholastica has features to help you easily track work and delegate tasks among team members.
It starts with all your editors creating individual logins to access your Scholastica account. So, there’s no need to worry about remembering a shared password! Your admin can invite all your e-board members to set up a login by following the steps here. They will set manuscript permissions for each editor (so everyone can only see articles applicable to them).
Once all editors have been added to your Scholastica account, delegating article assignments is easy. Those with permissions can assign articles to fellow editors individually or via bulk actions from the Scholastica Manuscripts Table.
Your law review’s admin can also enable “auto assign” in your journal configuration options (by following the steps here) so your editors don’t have to worry about manually assigning papers to team members. If your admin enables this option, as manuscripts are submitted, they will be evenly assigned to selected editors.
All editors will also see a To-do Dashboard upon logging into their Scholastica account, where they can assign tasks to themselves or others and track their progress. You can filter to-dos by task assigner, task assignee, and work state (Pending, Late, or Completed).
Easy bulk actions to save you time
Over the years, we’ve bulked up Scholastica’s features (pun intended!) to help law editors and authors tackle the heavy lifting of manuscript management more efficiently. Among bulk actions you should know about are:
- Bulk assign manuscripts to editors: Use the “bulk assign” feature to assign multiple manuscripts to individual editors at one time from the Manuscripts Table
- Bulk assign tags to manuscripts: You can also bulk assign tags to multiple articles at one time from the Manuscripts Table.
- Bulk reject submissions: Use the Quick Reject feature to reject multiple articles simultaneously from the Manuscripts Table after review. This will help you work more efficiently and ensure you’re giving all authors a decision (which they’ll appreciate!).
Learn how to start using all of the above bulk actions in this help doc.
Communicate faster with built-in email and time-saving templates
Communication is a cornerstone of law review management. For every article submitted, editors must provide authors with adequate status updates. We know this often means typing out nearly identical messages multiple times, which can be tedious. That’s why we’ve developed features to help.
In addition to setting up decision letter templates, your law review can create templates for Discussion messages (Scholastica’s integrated email feature). Learn how to create Discussion templates in this help document.
Law reviews can create Discussion templates for any kind of recurring communication such as to:
- Send acknowledgment of an expedite request
- Send manuscript status updates (i.e., “Your manuscript is in the final stages of review”)
- Respond to an author asking for a deadline extension on an offer
Easily move Discussion attachments to the files table
If an author or fellow editor sends a file through Discussions that you want to save alongside an article, you can easily do so by moving it to the Manuscript Work Area files table. And you can even replace existing submission files with new ones. When moving Discussion attachments, you’ll be able to select among the following options:
- Move to files table as a new file
- Replace Manuscript file as newest version
- Replace a specific supplementary file as newest version (dropdown will display applicable supplementary file options)
To learn more, visit this help document.
Customizable notifications for publication offer responses
We know every second counts for law reviews racing to fill their books. So, we’ve made finding out when an author responds to a publication offer even faster.
The journal Configuration Page now includes the option to have notification emails sent to selected editors when an author confirms, declines, or expires a publication offer, as pictured above. Admins can update this setting at any time.
Instant analytics to track your law review’s submissions data
Are you wondering when your law review tends to receive the most submissions? Or what your article acceptance and rejection rates have historically been?
With Scholastica, there’s no need to manually maintain spreadsheets to gather submission data insights because our software tracks core stats for you. The “Analytics“ tab of your Scholastica account includes a whole suite of journal-level insights, like:
- Average time to manuscript decision
- Average acceptance rate and rejection rate
- Frequency of submissions over time
You can also drill down into editor-level stats to see the average number of manuscripts assigned to each of your team members and the average number of days each editor takes to make a manuscript decision.
With easy access to article selection data in your Scholastica account, you’ll be able to track trends in the ebb and flow of submissions to your law review and spot potential workflow bottlenecks before they occur.
Easy-to-integrate publishing solutions for optimal online reading
Did you know law reviews using Scholastica for article selection can also integrate with our online publishing solutions to enhance their article reading experience and discoverability?
Scholastica offers an online journal hosting platform with a search-optimized website template that can easily be updated by your editors (no coding required). Your team can also add custom pages to your Scholastica-hosted law review website as needed and even set up a blog in a matter of minutes using our built-in blogging functionality. Scholastica journal websites are:
- Optimized for search engines with mobile-friendly pages and rich machine-readable metadata
- Structured to meet Google Scholar’s indexing criteria
- Easy to navigate with an intuitive, user-friendly design, including article categorization and site-wide search (with advanced search options)
Law reviews that want to save time manually formatting articles can also sign up for Scholastica’s article production service. Scholastica offers an end-to-end production solution that creates beautiful PDF articles, with HTML versions included when combined with Scholastica’s hosting platform. And our US-based production team manages the entire production process for you from the time we receive your copyedited article files, from layout to typesetting to proof review.
Using Scholastica’s production and/or hosting solutions, your law review can create beautiful articles and issues online without technical hassles. You can learn more about our publishing solutions by scheduling a personal demo with a member of our team here.
Track readership analytics when you use Scholastica for hosting
Is your e-board wondering which of your articles are attracting the most readers? Or what countries or referring websites readers are coming from? Or which of your social media platforms is best for article promotion?
Scholastica’s journal hosting platform features a built-in analytics suite to help you answer the above questions and more. When you host your law review via Scholastica, you can easily view readership analytics by following the steps in this help document.
From the analytics page, your e-board can see readership metrics for a particular day or timeframe using a calendar date picker tool. All journal websites hosted via Scholastica also include public-facing metrics pages for articles, including article pageview/download counts and readers by country, to provide authors and readers insights into article usage and impact.
Support to spread the word about your call for papers
We know most law reviews have tight timelines to fill their volumes and are looking for ways to attract quality submissions. So, we’ve also taken steps to help you get the word out about your latest calls for papers.
There are a few ways you can use Scholastica to promote calls for submissions:
- Post calls for papers on social media with #LRSubmissions — authors know to follow it for Scholastica openings on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter), and Mastodon
- Post your calls for papers in The Conversation — legal scholars know to follow it for law review updates
- Request to have your law review included in “last calls for submissions” emails that we send to authors towards the end of the spring and fall submission seasons (we’ll email you about it when it’s time!)
Have another idea for how we can help promote law review calls for papers? Let us know!
We hope you found this feature roundup helpful! Be sure to pass this along to your newest e-board members so they can start leveraging the full power of Scholastica. As always, if you have any questions about Scholastica or ideas for new features, feel free to contact us!
Update note: This blog post was originally published on the 30th of July 2018 and updated and republished on the 28th of January 2026.
