Aries Systems Corporation

Identifying qualified Reviewers for incoming submissions is a common challenge for scholarly journals. Additionally, matching a submission to the most appropriate Editor and soliciting potential Authors for special issues can be difficult for journal staff without insights into their unique expertise. This can lead to mismatched submission assignments, confusion, and delays to publication. To help optimize submission matches, Editorial Manager® (EM) facilitates the collection and reference of keywords and classifications that reflect the subject matter of the manuscript and the expertise of registered users.

During the submission process, Authors may have the opportunity to enter keywords related to their manuscript’s content if enabled by the journal, which can then be used downstream to match the manuscript with a particular Editor or Reviewer. However, free-text keywords can be unreliable as Authors use different terms to describe the same concept, use acronyms, or enter misspellings. Therefore, it is recommended that journals create classifications to avoid free-text errors, ensure the terms are customized to the journal’s preference and scope, and support the standardization of terms in the system. The keywords and classifications steps within the submission process can be configured by Article Type. Editors with proper role permissions may modify the classifications selected by the Author after submission if needed, either adding classifications to the list or removing classifications that are not considered appropriate for the paper.

Beyond the Author workflow, publications can collect personal keywords and classification selections from their users proactively. Keyword and classification forms can be configured to display on the user registration page as an optional or required field, and journals can insert a deep-link into any letter via a merge field to prompt users to enter or update their classification selections and keywords under their EM account record. Depending on journal configuration, users can also be requested or required to rank their degrees of personal expertise for each classification they have selected – low, medium, or high. Editorial staff with proper role permissions can modify these rankings, and Reviewers and Editors of certain roles may be required to enter rankings for better matching downstream. Editorial staff may also use the classifications feature entirely on users’ behalf under their individual People Record, even if the publication opts not the request keyword or classification terms from users. This allows the journal to maintain information about users and their backgrounds that cannot be changed by the users themselves.

As a customized schema of terms, classifications can be organized into a hierarchy by the journal. This can include major, minor, and subclassifications with a numerical structure. Classifications can be entered manually, or a pre-existing list can be imported into the system by the journal’s dedicated Aries Account Coordinator (AC). Journal-configured classifications can be modified independently at any time in response to evolving priorities or shifts in purview. Additional configurations can be set by the journal to govern how the classifications are displayed and how the users are allowed to choose from the list. For example – requiring the user to select from the lowest level of classifications to ensure a more detailed and precise disclosure of their expertise, or automatically selecting all parent classifications in the hierarchy when a sub-classification is selected by the user.

Keywords and classifications are a simple, yet powerful tool to help journals make the best possible matches between submissions and registered users within the EM database. With multiple channels to solicit personal terms from users proactively and flexible configuration options, scholarly journals are empowered to keep detailed People Records and leverage this information throughout their workflows. To learn more about how to configure keywords and classifications in EM, check out this helpful tutorial article or contact your Aries Account Coordinator.