Editor onboarding

Roles in this journal#

Roles are held per journal, not per account — the same person can be an author in one journal and an editor in another. Within the editorial workspace:

Section editor handles submissions in the sections assigned to them: sending to review, assigning reviewers, and recording decisions. Editor has the same reach across every section and additionally can decline a submission outright. Journal manager has full editorial reach plus configuration — sections, issues, review forms, email templates, users. Copyeditor and layout editor pick up an accepted manuscript once it reaches copyediting and production; they do not see the review workspace or the reviewers' identities. A reviewer is not part of this list — reviewers see only their own assignments, never the queue.

Assigning a handling editor#

A new submission arrives unassigned. Claiming it, or assigning a colleague, marks that person the handling editor of record for the audit trail and for the emails the author receives. A submission can be reassigned at any point before a final decision; the previous handling editor's actions stay in the audit trail regardless.

Assigning reviewers#

The reviewer picker ranks candidates by two signals: how closely their declared keywords overlap with the submission's, and how light their current load is — a reviewer already carrying several open assignments ranks below one with none, even at equal keyword match. The ranking is a suggestion, not a restriction; you can invite anyone who holds the reviewer role in this journal. Invite more than the minimum you need, since not everyone accepts.

The blinded copy#

Before inviting reviewers, upload a blinded copy of the manuscript if the author's own file still carries identifying detail — a title page, a named acknowledgement, a filename with the authors' names in it. Reviewers are served the blinded copy when one exists and the original only as a fallback, which the workspace flags. Checking this before the first invitation goes out is the single most effective thing an editor does to keep the review actually blind.

Recording a decision#

An editor records one of five decisions: accept, minor revisions, major revisions, resubmit, or decline. These are not the same set a reviewer chooses from. A reviewer makes a recommendation, and has a sixth option, see comments, for the case where no single label fits what they want to say. The recommendation informs the decision; it does not make it.

A note to the author is required whenever the decision is anything other than accept — the system will not let you submit a revisions-requested, resubmit or decline decision with an empty note, since that is precisely the case where the author most needs to know why.

Email templates#

Each decision and each stage change that reaches the author or a reviewer fires a stored template — decision_accept, decision_revisions, decision_resubmit, decision_decline, revision_submitted, article_published, review_invitation, review_reminder and review_thanks — filled in with the submission's own details. Every send is logged whether or not the outgoing mail server is reachable, so a delivery failure never hides the fact that a notification was due.