How do I process revised files and make an editorial decision?
When an author uploads their revised version of the manuscript, the editor in charge of the submission will receive an email notification saying that a revised file has been uploaded. A notification will also appear beneath the submission in the list of articles on the OJS.
When you access the submission, the revised files will now appear in the ‘Revisions’ section of the current round of review on the ‘Review’ tab along with their designation, i.e. whether it is a revised version of the Manuscript or a Supplementary file.
You can download a copy of the revised file by clicking on the title of the file. Please note that only new files uploaded during the revisions will appear here, any unchanged files that are still part of the submission, such as supplementary files will not show here and will need including when you move the submission onto its next stage.
When you have viewed and accessed the revised files, you are now ready to make a decision on whether to send the submission back out for review, accept the submission for publication, or even return the submission for further revisions (in the case that the authors have not fully responded to the review comments). You can also reject the submission at this stage, but generally you would only reject a paper based on your initial assessment or on the comments from a round of review.
Sending a paper out for a new round of review
To send a paper out for another round of review, you will need to click on ‘New Review Round’ in the ‘Review’ tab. This can be found next to the sub-tab showing the current round of review.
This will bring up an overlay to select the file you would like to send out for review. Note that this overlay will only show the revised files that were uploaded during the most recent round of review.
This will open another sub-tab for the next round of review. Any files selected will now appear in the ‘Review Files’ section.
If you wish to include files from the previous rounds of review or from the original submission, you can add these to this round of review by clicking on ‘Upload/Select Files’ in the ‘Review Files’ section. This will bring up an overlay and you can make visible any files that were uploaded previously by ticking on the box ‘Show files from all accessible workflow stages’.
Accepting a paper for publication
To accept a submission after review, use the decision options on the right hand side of the page, click on ‘Accept Submission’.
This will bring up a two-stage overlay, the first step is the email notification to the author, telling them of your decision and depending on your journal, informing them of the next steps. You can share any files that you think are pertinent to this decision.
You can complete this step and start the next by clicking ‘Next: Select files for Copyediting’.
The next step is to select the files you wish to send onto typesetting for publication. Note that the only files available here are those that were uploaded as revisions. By clicking ‘Record Editorial Decision’, you will be accepting the submission and moving the submission onto the ‘Copyediting’ tab and stage. Doing so will not send the submission through to typesetting yet and you can also select the files you wish to choose for publication during this stage.
Any files that were selected will now appear in the ‘Draft Files’ section of the ‘Copyediting’ tab. If there are any files from either the original submission or a previous round of review that you wish to include in this selection, then you can add them by clicking on ‘Upload/Select Files’ in the ‘Draft Files’ section.
This will open an overlay in which you view and select files from earlier rounds by ticking on the box for ‘Show files from all accessible workflow stages’. If your journal does not use the copyediting stage on the OJS, then you can complete the process and send the submission onto typesetting and production by clicking on ‘Send to Production’ on the ‘Copyediting’ tab.
