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Personal Correspondence History

Users of a peer review system need to be able to quickly surface communications. In the past, if a user wanted to view correspondence specific to an individual, they needed to search across multiple databases tables using reporting functionality. This problem is solved with the addition of Personal Correspondence History in Editorial Manager version 16.0.

Now, Editors and journal staff can quickly access all emails related to a particular person directly from that individual’s people record. Let’s take a look.

Logged in to my Editorial Manager account, if I would like to view my own correspondence history, I can easily do so from the “Update My Information” page. I click on the button labeled “Correspondence History” on the left side of the screen.

Now I can see my entire correspondence history in one place. I can enter date range parameters if I choose. I can customize my grid display options to make certain headers fixed or hidden.

Editors may also be granted access to view user correspondence history. Here, I’m logged in as a system administrator. I visit Role Manager, where I select the appropriate Editor role then under “Viewing and Editing People Data”, I click the checkbox “View Personal Correspondence History.”

Now, logged in as an Editor, I am able to view correspondence history for each individual from the Search People page, where a new column, “View Correspondence History”, appears. I can also see the correspondence history once I click into a user profile. For example, if I search for Zadie Jones and click to update her information, the “Correspondence History” link appears under User Information. Editor permissions will govern which types of correspondence an Editor is able to view here and what actions they are able to take, for example, if they are able to edit a letter before resending.

This helpful change empowers all Editorial Manager users with the ability to quickly surface communications in just a few clicks! Don’t hesitate to contact your Aries account coordinator if you have any questions.

Task Manager Overview

Editorial offices often need to assign and complete tasks associated with submissions while they are still in the editorial process and have not yet moved to production. Task Manager is a new product from Aries Systems that works seamlessly with Editorial Manager to enable editorial task workflows for EM users, without sending a paper into production.

Prior to the launch of Task Manager in Editorial Manager version 15.1, journal offices wishing to assign tasks to a submission had to initiate production on a submission to use task functionality. Now, users of Task Manager can undertake important editorial tasks without the use of ProduXion Manager and at any time in the Editorial Workflow, such as: language edits, artwork quality check, copyright check, conflict of interest deposit, preprint server deposit, and more. These tasks can be completed in parallel and can be assigned only as relevant.

If your journal already uses ProduXion Manager, your staff has immediate access to Task Manager functionality! If you are an Editorial Manager user, the first step is to contact your Aries Account Coordinator to inquire about enabling Task Manager for your journal.

Once Task Manager is enabled for your journal, configuration takes just minutes. Let’s take a look from the System Administrator’s point of view.

The first step is to grant appropriate permissions to relevant users in Role Manager.

Next, I visit Policy Manager, where I can choose to end Task Manager automatically, either when Production is initiated or when the Final Disposition is set.

Once these options are selected, I can begin setting up my task workflow. I visit “Configure Submission Workflows and Tasks” in Policy Manager. I create a new workflow and name it “Task Manager Workflow.”

In this case, I wish to create a new task which is the collection of a conflict of interest form. I can choose my assignment options here–for example, if I wish to assign this task automatically at submission or revision, I may be able to select these options. I can also make other selections such as custom questionnaire to be used, scheduling/due date options, letter options, etc. Once I click submit, the Task appears in my workflow and I can reorder as necessary.

I must now assign this task to an article type. I visit “Edit Article Types” in Policy Manager. I select the article type I wish to edit, then scroll to “Production Tracking Parameters”, where I select the Workflow I just edited under Task Manager Workflow.

Now that configuration is complete, let’s see how this looks from the Editor View. Logged in as an Editor with Task Manager permissions, I can see a new option on my action link menu to “Assign Editorial Task.” Here I can select from a dropdown list of tasks. I select “Conflict of Interest Form Collection.” The form has automatically populated with the corresponding Author’s name, because of my configuration choices. The letter body has also pre-populated based on the letter I selected, but I can make on-the-fly changes here before sending. I click to assign task and send letter.

Back on my Editor main menu, a new menu called “Tasks” is now available. Here I can see “Submission Tasks Assigned to Me” as well as “View All Submissions in Task Manager”. On this screen, I can see that the task I created “Conflict of interest form collection” has been assigned. On my action link menu, I can assign further editorial tasks if I so choose. If I have setup an automated workflow, my next task will kick off once the conflict of interest form collection is completed.

As you can see, Task Manager makes it easy for journal offices to complete editorial tasks without disturbing your journal’s workflow. Submission related tasks can be completed by the editorial team, avoiding confusion between editorial and production staff. Tasks can be assigned automatically upon submission and can be setup to progress based on key workflow events, without initiating production. Finally, an easy, straightforward way to add tasks to your editorial workflow! Contact your Account Coordinator today to get started with Task Manager.

Identity Confidence Checking in EM

Modern journal offices face growing challenges verifying Author and Reviewer identities. Editors often rely only on their personal knowledge and intuition to verify identity. This process can be time-consuming and unreliable.

Identity Confidence Check, or ICC, is one of Editorial Manager’s many Editor decision support tools. Identity Confidence Check helps Editors evaluate unknown researchers by conveniently displaying relevant metadata and confidence indicators.

Let’s take a look at what the Editor sees.

At relevant points in the workflow, including the new assignments folder, the appropriate confidence check icon appears next to the author’s name. As shown, the icon displayed is determined by the degree of confidence calculated by the system.So how does the system know which icon to display? This is determined by journal office configuration. The ICC rating system is highly configurable by the journal office. ICC can be calculated based on email domain, institution, country/region, EM activity, and ORCID activity and these categories are assigned levels of importance by the journal office. System administrators can also choose to display ICC only for select Editor roles, and the ICC is automatically updated whenever relevant user data changes. Identity Confidence Check is a great way to help verify identities in EM. Journal offices have total, transparent control of how the confidence score is calculated. ICC saves journal office staff the hassle of manually researching individuals and helps safeguard publications against fraudulent activity. To learn more or if you have any questions, contact your Aries account coordinator today!

Using a Task to Transfer Metadata and Files from Journals to Preprint Servers

Scholarly journals interact with Preprint Server in two ways.

In some cases, journals want to automatically receive manuscripts that were previously submitted to preprint servers. This workflow is facilitated by EM Ingest, and is discussed in another video.

However, in this video, we will discuss how journals can push submitted manuscripts from Editorial Manager directly to preprint servers.

This workflow is supported for journals using Editorial Manager.
From the corresponding author point of view, they are prompted to respond to an appropriate question asking whether they want their manuscript automatically posted to a selected preprint server at submission.
Manuscripts are transferred from Editorial Manager to designated Preprint Servers using a workflow task.
Typically, the journal office will undertake a preliminary quality evaluation of the manuscript before triggering such a task. Once triggered, the task automatically transfers the manuscript and associated metadata to the designated preprint server. The transfer can be undertaken in standard formats including JATS and MECA.
In some cases the journal may use an additional author task to request further information from the author pertinent to the preprint server.
It only takes a few minutes to configure additional tasks and transfers in the system, so feel free to contact your Aries Account Coordinator for help.

Use your ORCID credentials to promote your publisher brand identity

ORCID is an independent, not-for-profit organization that issues unique identifiers (ORCID iDs) for scholarly researchers, and validates those identifiers through APIs. More than 5 million ORCID IDs have been issued, and ORCID has been successfully adopted by research funders, research institutions, publishers and other workflow systems.

ORCID is fully integrated with Editorial Manager and ProduXion Manger. It is used for a wide range of applications including: registration, log-in, author attribution, co-author attribution, and reviewer recognition. There are individual videos on each of these topics in our video library.

Journals do not need to be a member of ORCID to benefit from these Editorial Manager integration points, and the functionality can be activated by journal administrators at any time for no additional charge. Because Aries is a member of ORCID, the Editorial Manager identity is displayed at each of these integration points by default.

However, if your organization is also an ORCID member, you should provide Aries with your ORCID credentials for input into Editorial Manager, so that it’s clear to your authors and reviewers that they are interacting with your organization or journal. The interactions between Editorial Manager and ORCID will subsequently reflect your institutional branding. For example, your organization or journal will appear as the source of the request for your authors to use their ORCDI iD.

To activate this functionality, ORCID members simply need to contact their Aries account coordinator and provide their ORCID credentials. If you are not yet an ORCID member organization, we encourage you to consider joining ORCID so that you can fully benefit from the functionality that membership offers, including the ability to update and edit peer review activity (which is discussed in another video).

Feel free to contact your Aries account coordinator if you have any questions.

Associating Flags with Submission Questions

During manuscript submission authors are frequently asked questions about their manuscript. For example, “Did this research involve human subjects”?

Depending on configuration, the authors’ responses are stored and available to editors on the manuscript details page or the PDF cover page. However, in some cases it may also be useful to visually flag the response in the editor interface.

In this example the author has responded “yes” to the question: “Did this research involve human subjects?” – because of this response the journal configured flag is automatically displayed in the editor interface.

ORCID Reviewer Recognition

Recognizing and acknowleding Reviewer activity is key to maintaining talent and improving scholarly research.

For this reason, Editorial Manager provides a way for journals to conveniently recognize reviewer activity in a researcher’s ORCID record

Naturally, journals want a high degree of control over how and when reviewers are recognized, so this video provides an overview of the available options in Editorial Manager.

The first step is for you to notify Aries of your ORCID account credentials so that your organization name will appear as the convening organization rather than Aries.

Now let’s look at Editorial Manager’s configuration options.

Reviewer acknowledgement may not be appropriate for all the article types published by your journal, so the first step is to identify the relevant reviewer forms for the desired article types. For example, I may only want to acknowledge reviewers who work on Original Research articles. Identifying, selecting, and editing this form is undertaken in PolicyManager. If you are not already familiar with this option, please review the video on reviewer form configuration.

I’m logged in as a system administrator. I visit Policy Manager and choose “Create/Edit Review Forms”. I choose the form I wish to edit, then I check the box to “Enable ORCID Review Deposit”. I also configure the authorization question that will be displayed to Reviewers, as well as any desired instructional text.

Email AutoFill for Ad Hoc Letters

As workflow participants working on behalf of journals using Editorial Manager know, it’s convenient to send ad hoc emails in workflow. For example, click the ‘letter’ icon next to a workflow participant’s name, and choose from the drop down menu of pre-configured ad-hoc letter options available to send. In this case, choose ‘Ad Hoc email from Journal A.’

Editor Experience: Decision Letter Editing

Before watching this video, we recommend you view the video about how editors make decisions.

In this video, you will see how to review and edit author decision letter content.

The version of the decision letter displayed will depend on which decision term was selected on the decision form. As you would expect, the default text for an “accept” decision will be different than that for a “revise” decision.

As you can see, the decision letter is pre-populated with editor comment text that was previously entered on the editor decision form, and the reviewer comments.

Similarly, if configured by your journal, any selected standard decision phrases will also be pre-populated into the decision letter.

Now, using Editorial Manager’s rich text editor, you can edit and modify the text, including format changes such as bold, underlining, italics, colored text, highlighting, and the inclusion of images and hyperlinks.