Mar 14, 2022 | Scholarly publishing
Absolutely everything is done online these days and peer review is no different. If you’ve ever written a journal article, or been asked to review one, then you will no doubt be familiar with online submission systems.
They generally involve filling out a lengthy form, inputting a lot of information, and then attempting to persuade your manuscript files to upload. It probably won’t be surprising to hear, then, that a question all peer-review administrators will have heard at some point or other is:
Wouldn’t it be easier to just email it?
Online submission systems are used for a reason (and we promise said reason isn’t just to annoy researchers).
Tedious as it is to have to fill out all that information during submission, it is all information that we need. If you were to just email it, we would simply have to go back and forth via email until all the information had been supplied. Trust us when we tell you that it is actually much quicker to just fill in the form.
With the pressure for academics and researchers to publish more and more of their research, journals are receiving more and more submissions. Online submission systems which house all the information pertaining to each individual manuscript and automatically record when reviews and revised versions come in are an invaluable tool when trying to keep up with this demand for publication.
Successful journals these days are global enterprises with Editors and Associate Editors based all over the world. Having a system where everyone can just log in and see what manuscripts are assigned to them, what stage they’re all at, and whether any action needs to be taken makes this process far easier to manage.
Yes, but surely this could all be managed on a spreadsheet?
Those of us who’ve been in this game long enough will remember the days of running journals using emails and spreadsheets. This is a perfectly reasonable system in principle, however all it takes is for one email to go astray or for one piece of progress not to be recorded on the spreadsheet (easy to do, especially when working on a busy journal) and the peer-review process stalls. Online systems are designed to make sure that manuscripts can’t “fall through the cracks”.
The other great feature of online submission systems is that they automatically remind people when they need to be doing something. If you’ve used an online submission system as a reviewer, then you’ll no doubt have received reminders sent from the system when your comments are due to be submitted. What you may not realise is that the editorial team also receive automated notifications – a new manuscript’s been submitted and needs to be checked over, more potential reviewers need to be assigned as none of those already invited is available, a decision needs to be taken, etc.
The other (and arguably the most important) thing that the online submission systems have over spreadsheets is good old-fashioned layout. When we log into the system as administrators, we get an overview of how many manuscripts are in each stage. We can then check each stage and see how long each manuscript has been there and whether any action is overdue. We can then go into that individual manuscript and see who’s done what and when they did it.
But I’m really struggling with uploading my files and it just won’t let me submit.
Please send the Administrator an email and ask for help. Just because the majority of journals don’t accept submissions via email these days doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to email us. We are here to help and to do everything we can to make sure the peer-review process runs smoothly – most of us are more than happy to help you submit your article, advise you how to prevent the problem from occurring in future, and even to upload your files if you’re having connection problems.
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Feb 20, 2022 | Company information and news, Scholarly publishing
Welcome to The Editorial Hub Ltd’s new home, a website that reflects the organisation we are today: flexible, dynamic, and globally recognised.
The Editorial Hub Ltd as a company is constantly growing in terms of our portfolio, which currently stands at over 200 journals; our client base, which encompasses a wide range of publishers, institutions, and societies; our team of highly-skilled freelance publishing professionals who make up our Hub of Excellence; and the range of services we are pleased to provide.
New Services
We are delighted to now be offering both copy-editing and proofreading services to our existing and future clients.
Our team of highly-skilled copy-editors are standing by to offer you:
- Light touch copy-editing – correcting spelling, punctuation, and grammar as well as checking referencing and style consistency.
- Standard copy-editing – as above, plus checking consistency of style and tone as well as key terms used, and also ensuring that glossaries and indexes are in line with the publication’s protocols.
- Substantive editing – as above, but with suggestions of more substantial additions/deletions be made to both the text and structure to ensure clarity and readability.
- Proofreading – ensuring no errors remain in the spelling, punctuation, grammar and formatting of manuscripts before publication.
More information on all of the services we offer can be found on our Services page.
New Faces
Many of our fantastic team have been part of The Editorial Hub Ltd family for years, however we are always delighted to welcome talented new freelancers into our Hub of Excellence. Our most recent recruits boast a wealth of publishing experience, a range of academic backgrounds, and are based all over the world.
Under the guidance of our management team, our freelancers are able to take advantage of a flexible way of working which not only attracts highly-skilled and experienced publishing professionals, but ensures that we are able to offer our clients a reliable and continuous service 52 weeks a year.
If you are an experienced publishing professional looking for a new challenge, we would love to hear from you. Our ever-expanding client base means that we are always on the lookout for talented individuals based around the globe.
New Membership
The Editorial Hub Ltd has been an active member of UKSG, the International Society of Managing and Technical Editors (ISMTE), and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) for many years, and we are now delighted to be adding the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to this list.
COPE brings together all those involved in scholarly research and its publication with the aim of moving the culture of publishing towards one where ethical practices become a normal part of the publishing culture. Through our corporate membership of COPE, we demonstrate that The Editorial Hub Ltd, both on an organisational level and at the individual level of each of our team members, intends to follow the highest standards of publication ethics and to apply COPE principles of publication ethics. Through being fully informed by, and involved in, COPE’s activities, we apply best practice and advise our clients and their editors, referees and authors of optimal ethical peer-review practices.
New Website
We are therefore delighted to be bringing you this new website as a hub for all our activities. Our new online home will allow us to grow, evolve, and expand as we continue to find new ways to engage with the world of scholarly publishing and support each of our clients on their individual journeys.
Feb 18, 2022 | Scholarly publishing
There is something of an air of mystery as to what actually happens to your manuscript once you’ve pressed that “submit” button. It seemingly goes off into cyberspace and you are left playing the waiting game.
These days, if you’ve submitted to a journal via an online submission system, you will be able to track its progress to some extent as you will generally be able to see what stage it’s at. The names of these stages can, however, seem fairly vague and almost worse than no information at all.
So let’s translate them. There are many different submission systems and the stages a manuscript goes through during peer review does differ system to system (and, indeed, journal to journal), so for the purposes of this post we’re going to look at the most common stages of the most common submission site: ScholarOne (formally Manuscript Central).
First Steps
Initially your manuscript will go through stages such as “Awaiting Admin Checklist” and/or “Awaiting Editor Assignment” depending on how new submissions are initially checked on the journal. These stages tend to be moved through fairly swiftly as they are just the editorial team checking that your submission is suitable for peer review and then deciding which of the editors will be responsible for it during the process.
Awaiting Reviewer Selection
This is the first stage of the peer-review process and your manuscript will be here until the assigned Editor has selected some suitable experts to invite to review.
Once enough reviewers have been selected, the manuscript will move on to the next stage. If only one reviewer agrees to review and all the others decline the invitation, however, your manuscript may well return to this stage while the Editor selects more. So if you log in to check on progress several weeks after submission and find your manuscript at this stage, it doesn’t necessarily mean that no action has been taken.
Awaiting Reviewer Invitation
This means that potential reviewers have been selected, but have yet to be invited. Manuscripts quite often return to this stage if not enough of the invited reviewers accepted the invitation so further invitations need to be sent. It’s quite common for editors to select a lot of reviewers, but only invite a few at a time.
Awaiting Reviewer Assignment
This rather ambiguous stage is when reviewers have been invited, but we are waiting for the required number to agree to review. In other words, at this point, the ball is squarely in the reviewers’ court!
In an ideal world, enough of the invited reviewers will agree to review and your manuscript will move on to the next stage. In reality, however, it is quite normal for invited reviewers to be unavailable and for your manuscript to return to one of the earlier stages a couple of times.
Awaiting Reviewer Scores
This is the stage that the editorial team will be striving to get your manuscript to as swiftly as possible. If your manuscript is at this stage, then enough experts have agreed to read and evaluate it and we just need to wait for the reviewers to return their comments so that a decision can be taken.
Once through this stage, your manuscript will move on to a stage such as “Awaiting Recommendation” and/or “Awaiting Decision” and it generally won’t be long before a decision is sent to you.
So That’s It?
That’s it. There are, of course, many things that can cause delays to the process, but the majority of manuscripts move from one stage to the next fairly swiftly.
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