So much of successful editorial management at scholarly journals hinges on keeping people on schedule. When delays occur at any point in peer review, from technical checks to referee assignments to revise-and-resubmit (R&R) requests, it can create a bottleneck effect, slowing the entire publishing process.
As a journal editor, staying on top of your own tasks is already a lot to juggle, let alone remembering to remind people to finish theirs. Thankfully, technology is here to help!
Scholastica’s Peer Review System includes a range of configurable automatic deadline notifications for editors, reviewers, and authors, along with convenient ways to track upcoming or missed due dates, so it’s easy for editors to know when someone may need an extra nudge to finish an assignment or respond to a decision.
In recent months, we’ve introduced enhancements to make managing time-sensitive tasks even simpler. In this blog post, we highlight new improvements to help editors ensure R&Rs come in on time, along with other automated reminder options you should know about to keep work moving. Let’s get to it!
Improved R&R deadline tracking
In our latest round of software updates, we introduced expanded R&R tracking functionality to help editors ensure revisions come in on time.
Now, when issuing R&Rs, editors can set due dates with automated reminders for authors and track R&R deadlines from their Manuscripts Table, in addition to the manuscript work area. Journal admins can activate R&R deadlines by following the steps here.
When journals enable the R&R deadline feature, editors with decision-making permission will see fields to set a due date/time and reminder email cadence for each R&R decision they issue (with the option to turn off deadlines for individual manuscripts if needed).
When a deadline is set for an R&R, the corresponding author will see it in the manuscript decision email, and they will receive automatic reminders at the frequency the editor chose (e.g., every 7 days). The R&R deadline will also be displayed in the author’s Scholastica account on their “My Manuscripts” page and the corresponding manuscript Decision page, as well as under their Notifications bell. So they’ll be sure to see it!
Editors can view the status of R&R assignments from their Manuscripts Table or the corresponding manuscript decision pages to quickly spot late revisions and decide whether to extend the deadline or withdraw the offer. If an editor decides to give an author more time to complete an R&R, they can edit the due date on the manuscript decision page. Easy peasy!
Set and track review reminders
Of course, before determining whether a manuscript will make it to the R&R stage, editors first have to shepherd it through an initial round of peer review. Sometimes that means wrangling late responses to referee invitations or late feedback.
Scholastica’s Peer Review System includes options to help editors automate much of this work, which admins can configure by following the steps here, including:
- Review invitation reminders: Admins can set a cadence for Scholastica to send automatic reminders to reviewers until they accept or decline an invitation (e.g., a reminder every 7 days).
- Review deadline reminders: By default, Scholastica automatically sends reviewers a reminder to submit their comments on the due date set by the editor. Admins can also set additional automatic deadline reminders to be sent at their desired frequency. For late assignments, admins can either set up automated past-due reminders or have Scholastica automatically revoke those invitations.
As with R&R due dates, editors can track the status of review assignments from their Manuscripts Table and individual manuscript work areas to spot late reviews and address them promptly.
Optional technical check requirements
We know many journals expect editors to complete certain technical checks before making the call on whether to desk-reject a submission or send it out for peer review, such as confirming the authors have no conflicts of interest and running the paper through a plagiarism checker. Scholastica’s Peer Review System also includes configuration options to ensure they don’t forget!
Admins can create a custom technical checklist for their journal to ensure all editors follow the same standard steps. Additionally, they can configure the system to require editors to complete all technical checklist steps before they can send reviewer invitations and/or issue decisions for manuscripts, so no one takes those steps prematurely.
To-dos for individual editor tasks
Scholastica’s Peer Review System also includes a handy feature to help editors keep track of due dates for their individual manuscript tasks and those they delegate to others, called To-dos. You can assign To-dos to yourself or team members for manuscripts within your remit from the Editor Work Area of those submissions.
As you assign To-dos to yourself, or others create them for you, you’ll see them listed on your Scholastica Journal Dashboard with the To-do title, the name of the manuscript it’s for, and the due date. You can also filter To-dos by assignor, assignee, and status from the To-dos table to quickly check on work you’re coordinating with specific people, spot upcoming or missed deadlines, and refer back to finished tasks as needed.
To-dos also include commenting functionality, so editors can respond to assignments if they need more information to start the task or if they want to share a status update.
Metrics to guide workflow optimization
Finally, it’s always helpful to get a bird’s-eye view of how editorial work is flowing to see whether late peer review or R&R assignments your editors are encountering are the exception, the rule, or somewhere in between.
Scholastica’s Peer Review System features built-in analytics you can set to specific date ranges to see how work is flowing and compare specific time periods, including:
- Journal-level reports: like your total submissions, manuscripts in progress, and overall average days to a first decision.
- Editor-level reports: like average manuscripts per editor and average days to an accept or reject decision by editor.
Your team can use those metrics to identify and mitigate sources of workflow friction, such as checking in with editors who aren’t making decisions in your journal’s expected timeframe and reallocating manuscript assignments if some editors appear to have imbalanced workloads. You can even download additional raw journal data to create your own reports.
By setting task reminders and tracking journal performance analytics, your team can proactively address workflow delays when they arise, ensuring everyone stays on schedule (or as close as possible, because life happens)!
We hope you found this feature overview helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us — we’re here to help!
