Q: I presently use an online manuscript tracking system. What is the best conversion strategy to transfer my data to Editorial Manager?

A: Editorial Manager has been designed to facilitate transfer of data from other environments into Editorial Manager. Because of feature differences between various systems, most journals will want to consider converting some, but not all, of their present online data to Editorial Manager.

Common demographic information about people (first name, last name, institution, address, city, country, phone number, email address) will result in a high degree of fidelity in conversion to Editorial Manager. Expertise or topical classification inventories can similarly be converted to the Editorial Manager environment. However, the substantially different ways in which online systems handle and record the manuscript and tracking information will make conversion of these data very difficult, if not impossible.

Accordingly, we recommend that journals consider the conversion of classification and people-related information, but take a "from this day forward" approach to handling manuscript content. The journal would operate both systems for a brief period, after which time any lingering manuscripts in the old system could be manually entered into Editorial Manager as the old system is retired. Of course, any one manuscript would be handled by only one of the systems, so that the journal would experience no increase in workload. In addition, this cut-over strategy assures no interruption in the handling of manuscripts being processed in the old system.