You asked, we answered!
Today, Scholastica announces support for transferring submissions between journals within a publisher portfolio, for cases where a manuscript seems better suited to a sister journal of the one it was originally sent to (a.k.a. cascading submissions or journal cascading).
The new manuscript transfer feature is available to publishers using the Scholastica Peer Review System for two or more related journals.
Read on to learn more!
Or check out this help document if you’re a Scholastica user who wants the nuts and bolts of how to set up this feature.
Why support manuscript transfers (a.k.a. cascading submissions)?
Sometimes editors working with publishers of multi-journal portfolios receive quality manuscripts that aren’t quite right for the title they were first submitted to, but could be a great fit for another journal in the publisher family. In such cases, offering authors the opportunity to transfer their manuscript and reviewer comments, as applicable, to a more appropriate journal within the portfolio can benefit all parties involved. The corresponding author gets another chance at acceptance without having to prepare a new submission, and the work of the editors and applicable reviewers who assessed the initial submission gets carried over.
We’ve heard requests for Scholastica to support manuscript transfers. We’ve also heard that options to automate the process in legacy software systems aren’t always super intuitive, and we were determined to provide a seamless user experience for editors, authors, and reviewers.
How does Scholastica’s new Manuscript Transfer feature work?
Setup and activation: Publishers using the Scholastica Peer Review System can reach out to our support team to start using the Manuscript Transfer feature. Just let us know the specifics of which journals using Scholastica should be able to transfer manuscripts and your desired direction of transfer. We’ll get everything set up! From there, your admin is in control of creating a custom decision type for manuscript transfer offers and allowing editors to issue transfer offers within the Scholastica Peer Review System.
We explain the Manuscript Transfer setup process in more detail in this help document.
Editor experience: Once an admin enables Manuscript Transfers, editors at eligible journals will be able to issue transfer offers and set author deadlines from the usual decision page. Transfer offers can be issued before or after a paper has been sent out for review.
Transferred submissions will include all metadata from the original submission, the author’s original submission form inputs, any new submission form fields the transfer journal requires, the decision type and decision letter issued by the transferring journal, and applicable peer review details (depending on whether the manuscript was sent out for external review and the permissions the reviewers specified). All that information will be sent to the destination transfer journal and appear in the Manuscript Work Area for the original submission, so the transfer details are recorded.
Reviewer permissions: Peer reviewers for journals that have enabled manuscript transfer will be asked to indicate their Review Transfer Permissions at the end of review forms they complete. Specifically, they will be asked two questions: whether they consent to having their comments transferred to another journal and if they consent to having their identity disclosed to the transfer journal. So reviewers will be aware when journals offer the benefit of manuscript transfers, and only information they consent to will be shared between those titles.
Author experience: Authors will receive the decision letter from the editor with the transfer option and be prompted to accept or decline. If they decline, the submission will be closed. If they accept, they’ll be prompted to provide permission to transfer their submission to the destination journal (with a dropdown if the editor provided more than one journal option). Authors who accept transfers will then see a record of the transferred paper as well as a new submission to the transfer journal in their Scholastica account.
From there, the journal receiving the transfer will take the reins, per its editorial processes — with the benefits of time saved from receiving the details of the original submission!
Because manuscript transfers should be seamless
We designed Scholastica’s manuscript transfer functionality to be as intuitive and frictionless as possible. We know editors, authors, and reviewers need solutions that make their lives easier, and we’re committed to developing user-friendly software for all.
Ready to get started? The new Manuscript Transfer feature is available to publishers using the Scholastica Peer Review System for two or more related journals at no additional cost. For more details on how manuscript transfers work and how to get set up, check out this help document.
We hope you found this feature overview helpful! As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us. If you’re not using Scholastica for peer review management and want to learn more about our software, you can request a demo with a member of our team.
