Terminate Reviewer and Editor

An Editor can make a decision without waiting for the subordinate Editor to submit his decision, and without waiting for outstanding review assignments to be completed.  The Editor ‘terminates’ these parties by clicking the ‘Terminate Outstanding Assignments and Proceed’ button on the ‘Submit Editor’s Decision and Comments’ page. 

 

Terminated parties are not notified by the system, and are often not aware that they have been terminated.  A Reviewer might log in to submit his recommendation, or an Editor might log in to submit his decision, and discover that the assignment has ‘vanished’ from his folders.

 

Note:  It is important for journals to understand the difference between un-inviting a Reviewer, and terminating a Reviewer from a review assignment.  The system maintains separate statistics for ‘un-invitations’ and ‘terminations’.  These statistics are captured for every assignment for which a Reviewer is invited, and are visible on the person’s people record and in reports permanently

 

In general, it is recommended that an Editor trying to make a decision (while a Reviewer still has an outstanding assignment) should un-invite the Reviewer first.  This ‘closes out’ the open review assignment, and the un-invited statistic is captured in the database.  Journals would likely want to un-invite a Reviewer who is taking too long to complete an assignment, and it is generally deemed ‘friendlier’ than terminating a review assignment.

 

Terminate represents a ‘harsher’ termination method, as opposed to un-inviting.  In either case, journal staff should be aware that the statistics are captured, and are used to calculate performance statistics for individual Reviewers and the overall journal.

 

A RoleManager permission allows journals to control which Editor Roles have permission to terminate outstanding Reviewer and Editor assignments.  When an Editor attempts to terminate an assignment with a Partial Review Saved or a Partial Decision Saved, an alert will be displayed, further noting that the Editor should seriously consider whether or not he wants to terminate a recommendation or decision that has already been started.

 

Note:  The Editor is not prohibited from terminating a Reviewer or Editor assignment, even if the person has a Partial Review Saved or a Partial Decision Saved; there is simply a warning 

 

If the Editor decides to proceed with the termination, he is prompted to send a letter to the Reviewer(s) and/or Editor being terminated.  He can personalize the letter(s) by clicking the ‘Customize’ link for a particular letter, or simply send the default letter. 

 

The Editor may also decide to terminate the outstanding assignments without sending any letters, by clicking the ‘Terminate without Sending Letters’ button.

 

Note:  If the journal has not created/modified any letters in the Terminate Assignments letter family in PolicyManager, this entire page is skipped (no letters will be sent) and the Editor will proceed with his decision

 

To Configure:  To grant an Editor with decision-making privileges permission to terminate outstanding assignments, go to Editor RoleManager and check the box ‘Terminate Outstanding Reviewer and Editor Assignments when Making a Decision’.

 

Note:  This checkbox is disabled unless the ‘Make a Decision’ box is checked

 

The journal may opt to modify or create new letters applicable to termination.  To do this, go to the 'E-mail and Letter Policies' section of PolicyManager, and click the ‘Edit Letters’ link.  You can create a new letter(s), or change existing letters to be associated with the new ‘Terminate Assignments’ letter family. 

 

Note:  If you do not have any letters associated with the ‘Terminate Assignments’ letter family, the Editor will not be able to send any letters when terminating outstanding assignments