Selecting Reviewers and Alternate Reviewers

The EM system will allow Editors and journal staff to MANUALLY manage the Reviewer selection process, or AUTOMATE the Reviewer selection process.

In the EM system, Reviewers are invited to review submissions, and may ‘Agree’ to do the review, or they may ‘Decline’ the invitation. If the Reviewer declines the invitation, the Editor and/or journal staff will receive an e-mail notification and must go back and select an additional Reviewer(s), and start the process over again. In other cases, the Reviewer may not respond to the request at all, and the journal staff and/or Editor must use the report called ‘Reviewers Invited – No Response’ to track down outstanding review requests and, after some pre-determined length of time, assume the Reviewer is not going to perform the review. At this point the journal staff would notify the Editor to select more Reviewers, or the journal staff would do so themselves. Reviewers can be un-invited, and new Reviewers can be selected.

Note: Editors have a folder called ‘Submissions Requiring Additional Reviewers’ that displays all submissions that have fewer Reviewers, either invited or ‘agreed’, than the ‘Required Number of Reviewers’ setting

The process described above can be automated if the Editor or journal staff also selects Alternate Reviewers when they are inviting first-choice Reviewers to review a submission. The Alternate Reviewer will be automatically promoted to take the place of a Reviewer who declines to do the review, or if the invitation to review expires (see below). This means that Editors and journal staff do not have to intervene whenever a Reviewer either declines the invitation or is non-responsive.

1) Reviewer Initiated - if a Reviewer declines an invitation, an Alternate Reviewer (with the same Reviewer Role) is automatically promoted as a replacement.

2) Time Initiated - if the Reviewer does not respond to the invitation within ‘X’ days (as defined by the journal), the Reviewer will automatically be un-invited and an Alternate will automatically be promoted as a replacement. The automatic un-invite and promotion takes place at midnight, US Eastern time.

3) Editor Initiated - the journal staff or an Editor with permission can 'un-invite' a Reviewer by clicking ‘Un-invite’ on the ‘Reviewer Selection Summary’ screen. Reviewers are un-invited by users on the new ‘Reviewer Selection Summary’ screen. Any Alternates in the queue (with the same Reviewer Role as the un-invited Reviewer) are automatically promoted as a replacement.

4) Manual Promotion - the Editor manually promotes an Alternate Reviewer by clicking ‘Promote’ on the ‘Reviewer Selection Summary’ screen.

Automatic promotion relies on the setting of Reviewer Invitation Deadlines. By identifying a number of days that a Reviewer has to respond to an invitation, the system will automatically un-invite Reviewers who do not respond in time. E-mail notifications are sent to un-invited Reviewers, and any Alternates are promoted.

For automatic un-inviting and promoting of Reviewers, a nightly batch process (at midnight, US Eastern time) will un-invite Reviewers who did not respond in time, and promote Alternates to Reviewer status. The batch process will send the default Un-invite Reviewer letter to the non-responsive Reviewer notifying them that their services are no longer needed. The batch process will send the default Reviewer Invitation letter to the promoted Reviewer notifying them of the invitation.

Note: Reviewers are not given any indication by Editorial Manager that they are or were originally an Alternate Reviewer

Note: Journals may effectively 'turn off' various pieces of Alternate Reviewer functionality through various settings in RoleManager and PolicyManager

1) Select Alternate Reviewers (Editor RoleManager) - If this option is disabled, the ‘Select Alternate Reviewers’ capability is suppressed on Editor screens.

2) Un-invite Reviewers (Editor RoleManager) - If this option is disabled, the ‘Un-invite’ link is suppressed on the ‘Reviewer Selection Summary’.

3) Number of Days Reviewer has to Respond to Invitation (PolicyManager - Edit Article Type) - If this value is set to 0, the automatic 'un-invite' of Reviewers does not take place.

4) Promote Reviewer (Editor RoleManager) - If this option is disabled, the ‘Promote’ link is suppressed on the ‘Reviewer Selection Summary’ and Alternates cannot be manually promoted, though they will be automatically promoted, unless the ‘Number of Days Reviewer has to Respond to Invitation’ setting is ‘0’.

Note: Automatic un-inviting and promotion of Alternates can be turned off by setting the ‘Number of Days Reviewer has to Respond to Invitation’ to ‘0’. The Editor may still assign Alternates, but the un-invite and promotion process will have to be manual. The default setting for this is ‘0’, which means the automatic un-invite and promotion is turned off until you turn it on

Note: If Automatic un-invite and promotion is allowed, then Alternate Reviewers may only be promoted as a replacement for someone with the same Reviewer Role (e.g. a Biostat Reviewer cannot replace a 'regular' Reviewer)

Note: If an Editor manually un-invites a Reviewer, an Alternate will always get promoted immediately. The only way to un-invite without promoting an Alternate is to have no Alternates selected

Note: If a Reviewer is manually un-invited, the Editor has the option of customizing the e-mail before it goes out. If a Reviewer is automatically un-invited, because the invitation deadline has expired, the default e-mail will be sent

Note: This feature allows the Editor to un-invite Reviewers before they respond to an invitation and after they respond to an invitation. In both cases the Reviewer can receive an e-mail notification

Note: Alternate Reviewers will be displayed in a list on the Manuscript Details screen. Only the names will be displayed, since no other statistics are relevant until the Alternate is promoted

To Configure PolicyManager: ‘Number of Days Reviewer has to Respond to an Invitation’

Go to PolicyManager, then to 'Edit Article Type', and then choose an Article Type. Find the item that says, ‘Number of Days Reviewer has to Respond to Invitation’. Enter the number of days that a review invitation is allowed to be outstanding.

Note: Set this value to zero if you want to turn off the batch process that automatically promotes Alternate Reviewers after a Reviewer's invitation has expired

To Configure RoleManager: An Editor's ability to Un-invite Reviewers, Select Alternate Reviewers, Promote Alternate Reviewers and Remove Alternate Reviewers is controlled in Editor RoleManager.

Go to RoleManager, Editor Role, and choose the Editor roles that require these permissions. Click the checkbox next to each of the following actions that the Editor role will be able to perform: 1) 'Un-invite Reviewers' will allow the Editor to un-invite a Reviewer before or after they have agreed to do the review; 2) 'Select Alternate Reviewers' will allow the Editor to access the Alternate Reviewer selection screens and select Alternates; 3) 'Promote Alternate Reviewers' will allow the Editor to promote Alternate Reviewers manually; 4) 'Remove Alternate Reviewers' will allow the Editor to remove Alternate Reviewers from the list of selected Alternates.

To Configure Letters: Letters (e-mail notifications) should be set up to go to all Reviewer roles for the 'Un-invite Reviewers' event, and for the ‘Promote Reviewers’ event.

You should create a letter for the 'Un-invite Reviewer' event. To create a new letter, go to System Administration, to PolicyManager, then click ‘Edit Letters’, and then click the ‘Add New Letter’ button.

For the ‘Promote Alternate Reviewers’ event, you should configure the same letter that is configured in the ‘Invite Reviewer’ event.

Note: For the ‘Un-invite Reviewers’ event, notification is sent to the Reviewer who was un-invited, as long as that Reviewer has a letter assigned to his/her role in ActionManager

Note: For the ‘Un-invite Reviewers’ event, notification can be sent to the Editor who is currently assigned to the manuscript and the Editor (journal staff person) who assigned the first Editor, as long as those Editors have letters assigned to their roles in ActionManager

Note: For the ‘Promote Alternate Reviewer’ event, notification is sent to all Reviewers who were promoted or invited at the same time, as long as those Reviewers have letters assigned to their roles in ActionManager

Note: For the ‘Promote Alternate Reviewer’ event, notification can be sent to the Editor who is currently assigned to the manuscript and the Editor (journal staff person) who assigned the first editor, as long as those Editors have letters assigned to their roles in ActionManager