Pre-Review Process – DS/CN Specific

January 7, 2013 by Leave a comment

Time to completion

Maximum 7 days from acknowledgement of receipt.

Responsibility

Managing editor and Editorial Team

Action required by Managing Editor

Review article to check that it is broadly appropriate for the journal and mechanically ready for review.

This involves:

  1. Reviewing the abstract (if any) and contents for broad relevance to the journal’s subject area and approach.
  2. Reviewing the article as a whole for completeness, lack of typographical errors, and broad adherence to the journal’s preferred submission style. This includes being in Chicago author-date format and an appropriate bibliography.
  3. Writing to the editor/editorial team with a quick summary of the article’s content and your opinion as to whether it is broadly on topic and mechanically ready for review. If there is an abstract, and this is a suitable summary, you can include that. If there is no abstract or the abstract does not not adequately represent the content of the submission, summarise the article in no more than two or three sentences (e.g. “This article is about the use of gaming and the techniques of gaming in libraries and art galleries”; “this article is about the participation of Canadian settlers, as opposed to professional British soldiers, in combat in the war of 1812. it argues that ‘Canadians’ played a relatively insignificant part”). Make sure to say specifically whether or not the article has a lot of typos, and (broadly speaking) whether it conforms to the journal’s expectations for format and style (especially bibliographic style, since this is often the most expensive to fix). {{Link to sample emails}}.

The final responsibility for determining suitability for review is the editors’. Because this is primarily a mechanical decision (manuscripts that are off topic or full of typos rarely do well and can usually be sent back to the authors), your recommendation and evidence will be extremely helpful to them, however.

Although your comments will be helpful to the editors, you should not spend too much time on them: if the article appears to be unsuitable, your effort is wasted; if it appears to be suitable, the appropriate time for detailed comment comes after the referees have reviewed the piece. A quick read, impressionistic response, and brief statement of your opinion is all that is necessary at this point.

Action required by Editorial Team

Once your recommendation is sent to the Editorial team, the action will take place depending on your suggestions.
Importantly, if you suggest that the article is appropriate and “ready” for review, one or two members of the editorial team are responsible for reading through the article to ultimately determine if the piece is ready to be sent out for review.

  1. It will be sent to one editorial reader for initial approval. If the first reader believes it is ready for review, then it will be sent out for review.
  2. If the first reader is unsure if the article is ready or not, it will be passed on to a second reader for further determination.
  3. If the editors approve the article then it it will be sent out for review.
  4. If the article does not pass approval from both editors, then it will not be sent out for review.

If the article is rejected, it may be sent back to the author with comments and suggestions for changes and recommended for resubmission, or submission to a more appropriate journal. However, it may be rejected until substantial changes are made, at which point the article can be resubmitted at a later date.

Background and further details

Each Journal in the incubator has a different submission procedure. Typical procedure for DS/CN requires the authors to register and submit via an on-line form in OJS at www.digitalstudies.org.

Acknowledging receipt in a timely manner and introducing yourself is very important in establishing your (and the journal’s) professionalism. Editorial processes can be very opaque to outsiders, and anything that can reduce this makes subsequent steps easier.

If you are upfront with people about processes and deadlines (and stick to them), you’ll find that things go much easier later in the process.

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Email Templates

September 3, 2012 by Leave a comment

Acknowledgement of Submitted Article

Dear Professor [Name],

Thank you for your submission to [Journal Title]. I am the managing editor and will be shepherding your article through the review process.

In the course of the next two to four weeks, I and the editors will review your submission to ensure it is ready and suitable to be sent to referees. At that point we will either return it to you with suggestions for revision or begin contacting suitable referees. Once the submission is ready for review, we will begin contacting potential referees.

The whole process tends to require a minimum of 12 weeks, but varies considerably depending on the availability of referees.

Thank you very much for your submission to [Journal Title] and you will be hearing from me soon.

[Signature]

Managing Editor
[Journal Title]

Request for Peer Review

Dear Professor [Name]:
My name is [your name] and I am managing editor at [journal name]. [Editor name] has recommended that you would serve as an excellent reviewer of the manuscript, [manuscript title], which has been submitted to us, or possibly recommend someone else if you cannot undertake a review at this time. The submission’s abstract is inserted below, and I hope that you will consider undertaking this important task for us. If you do decide to review this manuscript, please be advised that we now publish our peer reviewers’ names on the final article. For your reference, the recommendation options are listed below.

The review itself is due [deadline], although we are able to provide some flexibility should you require it.

<!– Included for DS/CN only: Additionally, if you do agree to do the review, I will enroll you as a reviewer in OJS, our workflow management system, which is where you will access the manuscript and log your recommendation. –>

Although a form is available, we find that most referees prefer a more free-form or narrative approach to discussing a contribution’s strengths and weaknesses. If you too prefer this format, we ask you to provide both a general sense of the submission’s strengths and weaknesses, any more specific comments you feel might help the editors or the author(s), and a publication recommendation:

<!– The below is tailored to DS/CN but can easily be re-worded for DM or CJNS –>
1) Accept (with at most minor stylistic or typographical corrections)
2) Accept pending revision (i.e. paper is more or less publishable, but needs some clarification, a few additional citations, some extra examples or data, etc.).
3) Revise and resubmit (i.e. the paper contains publishable material and is suitable for DSCN, but requires substantial revision, reworking, expansion or contraction, or significant amounts of extra work).
4) Reject (i.e. the paper is unsuitable for publication or unsuitable for publication in DSCN).

Options 1 and 2 are recommendations to publish. Options 3 and 4 are recommendations to reject. If you recommend options 1 or 2, the editors will make sure that any suggested revisions or corrections are addressed by the author(s). If you recommend options 3 and 4, the article will be required to undergo further review before it can be considered for publication.

Finally, if you recommend options 1 or 2 (i.e. a recommendation to publish), we would also like you to give us permission to publish your name on the article colophon (i.e. below the author information) as a “recommending referee.” DSCN uses a modifed version of the refereeing system recommended by Geoffrey K. Pullum, “Stalking the Perfect Journal,” Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 2.2 (1984): 266–67. Referees who recommend rejection (i.e. either “revise and resubmit” or “reject”) are and will remain anonymous. Referees who recommend publication, however, will be identified on the colophon of all articles published in DSCN as a “Recommending Referee” (the editor who acts as the “Accepting Editor” will also be named in this fashion). This is to acknowledge the efforts of our referees in a public way, demonstrate the quality and rigour of the DSCN review process, and ensure transparency (for an example of how this approach works, please see the online journal Digital Medievalist).

Unless we hear otherwise, we will assume a positive recommendation will grant us this permission. Because this method ensures that our review process is transparent, we cannot act on a recommendation to publish if we are not granted permission to publish an accepting referee’s name.

Thank you for considering this review and do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions!

[Your name]
Managing Editor
[Journal title]

*****
[Manuscript Title]

[Abstract]

Recommendation Options:

  1. Accept
  2. Accept with revisions
  3. Revise and resubmit
  4. Reject

*For DSCN and DM; omit for CJNS.

**For DSCN only; omit for other journals.

 

Revision Email to Authors after Peer Review

Dear Professor [Name],

Congratulations! Your submission to [Journal Title] has been accepted with revisions for publication in our [season] issue. Because the this issue is set for publication in [month], we hope to receive your revisions by [deadline date].

Included below are the reviewer comments and we hope you find them useful in your revision. In addition to the revisions, please provide us with [anything else required from author, i.e. abstract, keywords, author details, etc.].

When you submit your revised text, we would appreciate it if you could indicate in the accompanying email or other form whether there are any suggestions you decided against adopting, especially if this means you have not made any corrections or revisions at the point in question. We can track minor changes using the track-changes function.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Thank you for your submission to [Journal Title]!

[Signature]

[Journal Title]

Review Reminder

[Journal Title]
Dear Professor [Name],

This is just a gentle reminder that your review of the submission, “[Title],” for [Journal Title] is due in [number of days], on [Date].

Please let me know if you require additional time to complete your review. Otherwise, I look forward to hearing from you!

Thank you,
[Signature]

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Copy-editing

August 13, 2012 by Leave a comment

Time to completion

Two to  six weeks after a positive publication decision.

Responsibility

Managing editor with the assistance of the Academic editors

Action required

  1. Suggest improvements for purposes of style and clarity
  2. Ensure submission conforms to journal style in every detail.

Background and further details

Copy-editing happens after an article has been accepted finally by the editorial team for publication. This means after all substantive, domain-specific revisions requested by the editors and referees have been made and approved by the editors.

Copy-editing has two goals:

  1. Ensure the article is as clear as possible in its argument and language.
  2. Prepare the article typographically and structurally for proofing and final publication.

Both of these processes usually involve the copy-editor proposing changes and the author approving, rejecting, or proposing alternate copy. Generally we accept the author’s approval, rejection, or modification of our copy-edits, unless they

  • change the intellectual nature of the argument or evidence of the article significantly from that the editorial team approved for publication (authorial modifications that change a negative argument into a positive one).
  • significantly violate the journal’s preferred style (e.g. by rejecting author-year citation styles for a journal that requires this format).
  • significantly worsen the clarity or coherence of the article.

When the author’s rejection or modification of a proposed copy edit fall into one of these three categories, the journal’s editorial team should be contacts.

How to copy edit

Individual copy-editors will work in different ways. You will need to find your own way of working.

If you do not already have a preferred way of working, the following may represent a useful start:

  1. Read the article through once, focussing on content, argument, and clarity: where do you find things difficult to follow? Can you think of better ways of saying the same thing? Are there structural issues you might be able to improve? Do you see obvious formatting errors or problems? Typos? Keep notes, but try to avoid rewriting or commenting heavily on the text at this point.
  2. Turn on “record changes” (or similar”) in your work processor of choice and go through the article again, correcting typos and formatting errors, making queries about things you don’t understand and attempting to improve syntax, word choice, and organisation wherever you can.
  3. When you are copy-editing, you job is not to substitute your own voice for that of the author, but to instead help the author write the very best paper they can. You are being helpful if you are being concrete, but you should always be aware that you may not have understood things correctly and your way of doing things may not be best or to the author’s taste. When making queries about passages you don’t understand or find unclear, for example, try to be concrete about what you think the author means by proposing specific language (e.g. “I don’t understand this passage. When you write “the text you don’t understand” Do you mean “some text that could be dropped in exactly if your correction is accepted”?”) That being said, don’t be too bashful: if you think you can improve something, make a suggestion to the author by typing it in: the author can reject things he or she doesn’t like.
  4. If you are proposing major changes or a lot of substantive changes, you may want to pass the submission on to the author for answers, suggestions, and approvals; in this case, you will probably need a second round as you refine the author’s suggestions and to make more typographical queries and suggestions.
  5. Once there are no real substantive edits remaining, read through the submission extremely carefully with an idea to finalising the typographic and style details:
    1. Check that the work cited list is formatted and punctuated consistently and in conformance to your journals stylesheet. Pay particular attention to punctuation (especially the use of periods and commas), capitalisation (especially sentence vs. title case), and the use of italics vs. roman slants.
    2. Check that the headings throughout the list are consistently capitalised and in accordance with the journal style. Again, pay attention to consistency of capitalisation and punctuation (final period? No final punctuation?)
    3. Check that book titles, foreign languages, URLs, code snippets, quotations are presented/encoded consistently throughout the submission.
    4. Check that quotation marks and apostrophes are used consistently throughout the submission. Pay especial attention to “smart” vs. “dumb” quotation marks and apostrophes (i.e. check that you are consistent in your use either of “inverted comma” type quotation marks and apostrophes or “straight” quotation marks and apostrophes. Also check that you are consistent in your use of single vs. double quotation marks. Quotation marks usually alternate with depth: double quotation marks are used to begin; quotations within quotations are single quoted; quotations within quotations within quotations are single; and so on. Also be careful that the same quotation pattern is used for quotations, “scare quotes,” and all other circumstances.
    5. Formatting: make sure all paragraphs are formatted the same way, that there are no extra lines or double spaces.
  6. Remember especially that when this process is over, you should understand everything in the submission and you should have no queries for the author remaining. If you have any doubt about anything in the submission, you should not be afraid to ask now.

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Publication Decision

August 13, 2012 by Leave a comment

Time to completion

Next editorial meeting after completion of review process.

Responsibility

Academic editors

Action required

  1. Deciding whether or not submission is to be accepted, rejected, provisionally accepted pending revision, or invited to resubmit after significant revision
  2. Deciding on what revisions (if any will be required)
  3. Deciding on comments to be sent to author.

Background and further details

This is the defining operation of a journal. Every editorial team come up with their own sense of what is acceptable, how rejections and requests for revision are to be handled, and so on.

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Review Process

August 13, 2012 by Leave a comment

Time to completion

Six to eight weeks after positive review decision.

Responsibility

Managing editor with the assistance of the Academic editors

Action required

  1. Ask for nomination of Academic editorial team member to oversee article’s review
  2. Ask for a list of 4 potential reviewers (to be supplemented as required) from this nominee
  3. Prepare article for review (e.g. by anonymising if required)
  4. Contact proposed referees until 2 have agreed to review
  5. Distribute paper, set deadlines, and send reminders and followups
  6. Summarise reviewers comments and recommendations, emailing them to editors
  7. Alert Academic editors when review process is completed.

Background and further details

This is the core of the editorial process and the distinguishing feature of academic publication. It is also the place at which many journals have the greatest trouble staying on schedule. For this reason a managing editor who stays on top of things at this point can make a major difference in a journal’s success.

Nomination of Academic editor and reviewers

As soon as a positive review decision is made by the academic editors, the managing editor should ask for a nominee to over see the submission’s progress through the workflow. It is often useful if the managing editor is able to help determine this person, either by pointing to disciplinary affinities or discussing the relative workload of the editorial team members. The academic editor will be the person responsible for proposing potential referees and reviewing referees’ comments and making a recommendation for or against publication at the end of the review process.

Once an academic editor as been assigned, the managing editor should ask them for names of potential reviewers. Generally you should begin with 2x as many names as required opinions (so for a journal that requires the opinions of 2 referees, ask for 4).

Although it is always nice to have names and email addresses, insisting that the academic editor supply you with both often results in delay, as it usually requires the editor to look the person up. Since this is something you can do as well, it is enough to ask for the name and, if known, institutional affiliation: usually this is enough to find the person; if you can’t, you can always choose the next name on the list or go back to the academic editor for more details.

Preparing the article for review

Sometimes, some minor changes will need to happen before an article can go out for review. Depending on the journal’s policy, this may mean ensuring that the article is anonymous (i.e. that there are no identifying self-references) or converting to a standard format (e.g. Word 2003, Open Office, PDF, etc.)

Because the article has not been reviewed yet and this is not a publication format, you should spend no more time on this than is absolutely necessary to ensure that your work hasn’t harmed the article in some way–e.g. that your anonymisation hasn’t broken sense or that your file conversion hasn’t resulting in formatting problems, lost images, or the like.

 Contact the referees

Once the article is ready to go to referee, you should contact the people on the list provided to you by the academic editor responsible for the article.

Take the referees in turn starting at the top of the list (i.e. begin with the first two names and only move on to the third if you get no response to repeated attempts at contact or the proposed referee says they can’t or won’t do it.

In your email indicate the journal you work for, your position, the editor who recommended the person as a reviewer, and the title of the article (with an abstract if available or a very brief summary). Indicate the turnaround time for a review (usually 4 weeks after they agree to review it). As for a response. {{sample email}}

If the proposed referee agrees to review the article, send them the file with an email thanking them, establishing the actual deadline, and inviting them to contact you as soon as possible if they discover a conflict of interest or other problem or if they find themselves unable to complete the review on time for any other reason.

One week before the deadline, send a reminder attaching a copy of the article once again and inviting them to contact you if they anticipate any problems meeting this deadline. On the deadline, do the same again. And once again, a week later, if not review has been submitted. After two weeks, ask the editor or the incubator management what to do next.

If the proposed referee refuses to review the article, thank them, email the academic editor to let them know, and move on to the next name on the list.

If the proposed referee does not respond to your invitation within a week, forward the original message again after 7 days, asking them if they had received your initial request {{sample email}}; if there is still no answer after two weeks, treat the lack of response as a refusal, alerting the academic editor and moving to the next name on the list.

If you cannot get the required number of referees from the initial list, write to the editor assigned to oversee this article through the review process for an additional set of names. In general, you should always have 2x as many names as vacancies for reviewers.

Summarise and pass on referees comments as they come in

As soon as a referee’s comments come in, read them through, characterise the nature of the comments, and summarise the referee’s recommendation (usually reject, revise and resubmit, accept pending successful revision, accepts with (minor or no) revision.

Your characterisation should be very broad: e.g. “The referee seemed quite positive and recommended accepting with revision”; “The referee recommended rejection but said there was lots of promise”; “the referee recommended acceptance and had a lot of quite detailed suggestions for improvement.” The goal is to give the academic editor a “heads up” rather than do his or her job. {{sample email}}

Do this with each referee. After the last required referee has responded, inform the editor of this fact, summarising the readers’ recommendations (e.g. “the second referee has responded. She seemed quite positive and recommended acceptance. This means that both referees recommended acceptance”). {{sample email}}

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Review decision

August 13, 2012 by Leave a comment

Time to completion

Next editorial meeting after the pre-review recommendation.

Responsibility

Academic editor/Editorial team

Action required

  1. Decide whether article is ready for review
  2. (If yes) Assign a member of the Academic editorial team to oversee the article’s progress through the review process
  3. Provide an initial list of potential referees.

Background and further details

On the basis of the managing editors recommendation (and personal reading of the article if required), the academic editor(s) must decide whether a submission is ready to be sent out to review.

This decision should be largely mechanical. Articles that are obviously off topic or full of typos or badly formatted bibliography tend to do badly with referees and can also reflect poorly on the journal. In such cases, the submission should be rejected by the academic editors.

Whether or not the author is invited to resubmit is up to the editors: if the problem is largely one of style or typographical errors, it may make sense to invite resubmission (experience shows authors are generally pleased to have been spared the embarrassment of having a badly proofed submission sent out for review). Likewise, an off topic paper that has aspects that could be interesting to the journal may also be invited to resubmit.

In general, however, editors should not devote too much time to reading or commenting on papers at this point. The review decision is primarily one of mechanics and subject matter rather than an intellectual vetting. Articles that are on topic and mechanically sound should probably be sent out for review, even if the editors have some concerns about their argument or evidence. Articles that are off topic or mechanically unsound should be rejected/invited to resubmit with only the briefest of notes indicating the rationale: save your energy for articles that have passed review.

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Pre-review process

August 13, 2012 by Leave a comment

Time to completion

Maximum 7 days from acknowledgement of receipt.

Responsibility

Managing editor

Action required

Review article to check that it is broadly appropriate for the journal and mechanically ready for review.

This involves:

  1. Reviewing the abstract (if any) and contents for broad relevance to the journal’s subject area and approach
  2. Reviewing the article as a whole for completeness, lack of typographical errors, and broad adherence to the journal’s preferred submission style.
  3. Writing to the editor/editorial team with a quick summary of the article’s content and your opinion as to whether it is broadly on topic and mechanically ready for review. If there is an abstract, and this is a suitable summary, you can include that. If there is no abstract or the abstract does not not adequately represent the content of the submission, summarise the article in no more than two or three sentences (e.g. “This article is about the use of gaming and the techniques of gaming in libraries and art galleries”; “this article is about the participation of Canadian settlers, as opposed to professional British soldiers, in combat in the war of 1812. it argues that ‘Canadians’ played a relatively insignificant part”). Make sure to say specifically whether or not the article has a lot of typos, and (broadly speaking) whether it conforms to the journal’s expectations for format and style (especially bibliographic style, since this is often the most expensive to fix). {{Link to sample emails}}.

The final responsibility for determining suitability for review is the editors’. Because this is primarily a mechanical decision (manuscripts that are off topic or full of typos rarely do well and can usually be sent back to the authors), your recommendation and evidence will be extremely helpful to them, however.

Although your comments will be helpful to the editors, you should not spend too much time on them: if the article appears to be unsuitable, your effort is wasted; if it appears to be suitable, the appropriate time for detailed comment comes after the referees have reviewed the piece. A quick read, impressionistic response, and brief statement of your opinion is all that is necessary at this point.

Background and further details

Each Journal in the incubator has a different submission procedure. Typical procedures include

  • Authors must submit via an on-line form (e.g. in OJS run journals)
  • Authors submit by emailing a member of the editorial team directly
  • Authors submit by emailing a catchall address for the journal (e.g. info@example.com or editors@example.com).

Acknowledging receipt in a timely manner and introducing yourself is very important in establishing your (and the journal’s) professionalism. Editorial processes can be very opaque to outsiders, and anything that can reduce this makes subsequent steps easier.

If you are upfront with people about processes and deadlines (and stick to them), you’ll find that things go much easier later in the process.

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Receipt Process

August 13, 2012 by Leave a comment

Time to completion

Maximum 7 days from submission.

Responsibility

Managing editor

Action required

Email to author (cc’d to editor in chief)

  • Thanking author for submission
  • Introducing yourself as the journal’s managing editor (and your term of office)
  • Outlining the review process and broad timelines

{{Link to sample email}}

Background and further details

Each Journal in the incubator has a different submission procedure. Typical procedures include

  • Authors must submit via an on-line form (e.g. in OJS run journals)
  • Authors submit by emailing a member of the editorial team directly
  • Authors submit by emailing a catchall address for the journal (e.g. info@example.com or editors@example.com).

Acknowledging receipt in a timely manner and introducing yourself is very important in establishing your (and the journal’s) professionalism. Editorial processes can be very opaque to outsiders, and anything that can reduce this makes subsequent steps easier.

If you are upfront with people about processes and deadlines (and stick to them), you’ll find that things go much easier later in the process.

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The incubator workflow

July 9, 2012 by Leave a comment

This is an outline (seen from the point of view of the scientific editor of a journal) of our standard workflow.

This is the workflow used for all journals in the incubator.

Our standard workflow. Each journal in the incubator adapts the workflow to match their specific needs and existing processes. Sections in red are the responsibility of the scientific editors; sections in green the responsibility of the incubator.

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