In recent years, academic publishing has faced an insidious threat: the rise of paper mills. Paper mills – organizations or individuals that produce, facilitate, and profit off research fraud – come in various forms. These include papers that describe false research, papers that describe real (plagiarized) research but with sold authorship, and the manipulation ofRead More
Scholarly journals continue to experience a high volume of incoming submissions every year. It is common for Editors to receive submissions that are outside the journal’s scope, but still recognize their value. In these instances, journals reject the manuscript to then transfer it to a more appropriate journal, preferably within the publisher’s portfolio to avoidRead More
As publishing workflows become increasingly complex and overloaded to keep pace with the latest research and innovations, it is critical to maintain efficient, yet flexible operations. Publishers often shuffle content, data, and communications between key stakeholders across incompatible and disparate systems. As book publishers struggle to juggle multiple projects at once, traditional silos decrease visibilityRead More
Becoming a more pronounced practice in the mid-to-late 20th century, peer review remains the “golden standard” of evaluating knowledge. Effective and impartial peer review is essential to supporting quality scholarly research and lies at the core of the publishing process. Through the evolution of technologies, policies, and values overtime, emerging models of peer review haveRead More
With advancements in technology, the introduction of flexible business models, and the emergence of various fraud phenomena led by bad actors – maintaining integrity in scholarly publishing has never been more critical or more challenging. As scholarly journals continue to receive an ever-increasing influx of submissions, the more difficult it is for editorial teams toRead More
In a digital world, consumers are accustomed to instant gratification, accessible displays, intuitive user journeys, and immersive experiences as they interact with the various technologies and platforms in their lives. Prioritizing user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design, responsive design, and user support is imperative to achieving this level of customer satisfaction. In theRead More
As a key pillar to any business’s success, the importance of communication cannot be overstated – especially within the ever-evolving scholarly publishing landscape. With so many different players, priorities, and perspectives, it is critical for publishers and societies to optimize communication across global stakeholders to maximize engagement. Ineffective, non-transparent, or outdated communications (and its channels)Read More
Analytics, the systematic analysis of data and statistics to discover meaningful patterns, is essential for how businesses define and achieve success. Leveraging analytics can have a huge impact on publishers and their bottom line including optimized operations, increased revenue, reduced costs, improve quality of published works, enhanced experience for stakeholders, and greater competitive advantage. MostRead More
The publishing process sometimes includes expensive and time-consuming bottlenecks, such as lengthy peer review turnaround times, numerous Author revisions, and manual technical checks. Therefore, it is critical to streamline operations wherever possible to save time and reduce costs while maintaining content quality. Traditionally, scholarly journals conduct various tasks required for publication during production – oftenRead More
Scholarly journals are increasingly relying on external databases to locate peer review candidates as their legacy methods become stale, such as their overburdened Reviewer pool. These channels, which are frequently reused but rarely refreshed, also often lack diverse representation geographically, by age, gender, and discipline. This results in increased likelihood of mis-matched manuscript alignment toRead More
With millions of articles processed through Editorial Manager® (EM), it is critical for editorial staff to stay organized and informed on their assigned submissions to ensure tasks are completed and delays to publication are minimized. To support this, Editorial Manager comes equipped with a signposting feature that uses color-coded indicators on the Editor Main MenuRead More
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. AsRead More