On the Editor Home page under the Submissions section you will see links to Unassigned, In Review, In Editing and Archives. We will look first at Unassigned Submissions. The submission record appears after clicking on a single submission in any of the submission categories.
When an author completes a submission it automatically arrives in the Editor’s Unassigned queue, available from the Editor’s User Home page. If the submission was made to a journal section with an assigned Section Editor, however, the submission will go directly to the In Review queue for that Section Editor (see the configuration option for Journal Sections for details). Click the Unassigned link to go to the Unassigned queue.
The Unassigned page contains links to the other queues (In Review, In Editing, Archives), a search function, and the list of submissions awaiting assignment to an Editor or Section Editor. Although the example below has only one unassigned submission, your journal may have hundreds, and the search feature will help you find the one you are looking for. To assign a submission, you must click the submission title. This will take you to the submission record.
Each submission has a submission record of four pages: Summary, Review, Editing, and History. Complete details on the Review and Editing pages are covered in Chapter 8: Section Editors in this manual.
The Summary page includes basic submission details.
In addition to details about the submission (author, title, original files, etc.), you have the option to upload any additional supplementary files using the Add A Supplementary File link. You can also see the section selected by the Author, and change it if necessary using the dropdown “Change To” menu and the Record button. You can also see any comments the author has made for you when the submission was originally made.
The Summary page also lists Author Fees. If your journal does not charge fees, this section will not appear. From here you can note if the fees have been paid, or you can choose to waive fees.
Next, from the Editors section you can assign either a Section Editor, another Editor, or yourself to guide this submission through the review and editing process. Clicking the Add Section Editor (or Add Editor) link will bring up a selection page. (Clicking the Add Self link will assign yourself to the submission and bring you to the submission’s Review page.)
From here, use the Assign link to assign this user to the submission.
An email box will appear, addressed the assignee, from you, with text pulled from the appropriate email template.
At this point, you can add email addresses to the TO, CC or BCC fields, upload an attachment, and change the Subject or Body text.
Once the message is ready to go, use the Send button to deliver it. The Cancel button does not send the message and cancels the assignment. The Skip Email button does not send the message but does complete the assignment.
Once the message is sent, cancelled, or skipped, you will be returned to the Summary page. If you have completed the assignment, the assigned user’s name will appear. By default, they will be given the responsibility to guide the submission through both the review and editing process, but this can be limited by unchecking either of the Review or Editing boxes. Be sure to use the Record button after making a change.
From here, you can also use the Delete link to reverse the assignment and also assign another Section Editor, Editor, or yourself.
Next, you can see the Status of the submission. If a Section Editor has been assigned, the submission will be listed as “In Review”. If the submission is clearly unsuitable and should not be sent through peer review, you can use the Reject and Archive Submission link to send it immediately to the Archives (where it will be listed as Rejected).
This will generate an email (based on an existing email template) to the author.
The final section of the Summary page contains the submissions’ Metadata. From here, you can review the metadata and make any changes using the Edit Metadata link.
Using the Edit Metadata link allows you to make any necessary changes to the information supplied by the Author, including author information. You can add any additional authors using the Add Author button.
You can also modify the title and abstract.
The next section allows you to upload a small Article Cover image for the submission. This would appear with the article in the Table of Contents (and in the abstract view page) upon publication. This is an optional feature, but can serve to add some visual interest to your journal design.
You can also modify the Indexing information supplied by the author.
Next, you can modify the supporting agencies included by the author.
If the author did not include a formatted list of references for works cited during the submission process, references can be copy and pasted here.
Finally, you can determine whether or not the author names should display in the Table of Contents. This is typically controlled by the Journal Section policy, but it can be overridden here. For example, you may have set your Editorial section to not display author names, but one issue will have a special editor and you do want their name to appear. Also, the agreed upon permissions are displayed here.
Remember to hit the Save Metadata button. For further information on working with submissions, see Section Editor.