Aries Systems Corporation

It is critical to maintain efficient and clear communications throughout the editorial workflow. As such, Editors often want to consult with each other about a particular manuscript, but don’t necessarily want to change the formal workflow responsibilities. Similarly, Editors may also wish to confer with Reviewers beyond standard commentary received through the Reviewer form. To support these sidebar conversations, Editorial Manager® (PM) and ProduXion Manager® (PM) include a convenient and easy-to-use Discussion Forms feature.

Publications can take advantage of Discussion Forums for both Editor and Reviewer Consultations. Journals can grant Editors role permissions that enable access to view all discussions, the ability to initiate a new discussion, and the power to either manage only the discussion forums they personally initiated or any discussion forum within the system. Discussion Forum templates can be configured by the journal on specific topics to save time initiating a conversation. Discussion threads can be accessed at any time, and handy indicators appear to alert the Editor to the number of new comments posted.

Discussion Forums amongst Editors can be opened manually, or journals can configure these threads to initiate automatically – either when an invited Editor accepts an invitation or when the first Editor is assigned to handle a submission – by Article Type. Reviewer Consultations, however, are automatically initiated once the Reviewer has completed a review. Only one discussion forum with Reviewers may be opened per submission, and the discussion remains open through all revisions unless the Editor closes it or it is automatically closed when final disposition is set. Depending on journal policy and configuration, Reviewers in the discussion may be identified by name and number, or by number alone.

Discussion forums allow Editors to pose questions and post comments without delaying the editorial or production process. However, if a publication wants to effectively freeze the editorial process on a submission while an informal discussion takes place, this can be done by not assigning Editors or inviting Reviewers until the discussion topic is closed. The content remains available in the system for future reference after threads are closed.

To see this handy feature in action and a step-by-step guide of related configurations, check out the video tutorial below. For support, contact your Aries Account Coordinator (AC).