Taking Advantage of Early Editor Decision

With an increasing influx of submissions every year, journals often struggle to manage the high volume against their current Editor capacity. Additionally, many manuscripts do not meet the journal’s quality standards, criteria, or scope. This makes proactive and swift decisions upfront necessary to ensure resources are dedicated to submissions most suitable for peer review. As such, early Editor decision workflows are instrumental to journals’ daily operations. Editorial Manager® (EM), the leading manuscript submission and peer review tracking system, can be configured to support these workflow needs.

While ideal for desk rejections, in which there is no need to assign the manuscript to an Editor, early decision workflows are also helpful at other stages. It is very handy at initial triage for workflows with alternative uses for Revise decisions. For example, an Author submits an abstract to a Call for Papers and the receiving Editor enters a Revise decision directly as a mean of giving the Author the green light promptly. Early decision can also be used for immediate disposition submitted on behalf of other Editors. Early decision expedites the publication lifecycle by bypassing Editor assignment and the peer review workflow, saving journals and their staff valuable time. It can also improve the Author experience by being transparent in regard to their submission upfront, supporting their work through immediate feedback and/or referring to a more suitable journal if the Reject and Transfer decision is made.

Authorized Editors can submit early decisions in EM if proper role permissions for new submissions and the parent permission to receive new and revised submissions are enabled. Early decision can be configured for decision terms in any decision family, and custom decision phrases and comments to the Author may also be incorporated if desired. Once enabled, the “Submit Early Decision” action link is available in the following folders from the Editor Main Menu:

  • New Submissions
  • New Submissions Requiring Assignment
  • Direct-to-Editor New Submissions
  • Search Submissions – Search Results

For support on how to leverage early decision workflows in Editorial Manager, contact your Aries Account Coordinator (AC).