New manuscript submission sites now launched for all Society for General Microbiology journals
Posted on September 25, 2014 by Hayley Hewitt
Earlier this year, the Publishing team at the Society for General Microbiology made the exciting decision to move the Society's five journals to a new manuscript tracking system (MTS) and production tracking system (PTS). Now, after months of preparation and fine tuning, the new systems have launched. They are called Editorial Manager and ProduXion Manager, and are provided by Aries.
Why did we do this? And what does it mean for our authors, editors and reviewers? Listing all of the advantages of the move would make for a very long blog post, but here are some of the key benefits:
Editorial Manager is entirely configurable by Society staff, and procedures can be amended as and when needed. This ensures any problems can be rectified immediately to suit the different journal workflows. This hands-on approach is vital within the constantly evolving STM industry. On the production side, the ProduXion Manager system allows staff to easily monitor the stages involved in creating the final publishable version of a manuscript, allowing us to identify possible improvements in our procedures and to accelerate production speeds.
The initial submission process is straightforward for authors, who also benefit from a faster conversion time for PDFs. The integrated PTS ensures any accepted manuscripts are transferred quickly over to the Production team so that the formatting of the accepted article can begin. Authors can log in and view the status of their manuscript at any time during the editorial or production process, from submission to publication.
Editorial Manager provides reviewers with ‘deep links’ in invitation emails that automatically take users to the manuscript within the system. We understand reviewers are often very busy and our goal is to save them time by having less clicks. They can also add keywords or classifications to their profiles, allowing Editors to quickly find suitable reviewers linked to specific topics.
Finally, we particularly wanted a system that was intuitive to use for our Editors. They use the system on a daily basis and it is vital that the system is configurable and easy to navigate to ensure the smooth handling of manuscripts. Editorial Manager delivers on this with its clear and efficient interface.
The systems launched on the 3rd of September. All new submissions must be submitted to our Editorial Manager sites, while existing submissions (under review or revisions) will continue the peer review process in the previous system, Bench>Press. This process is called ‘dual running’ and is standard within the industry. All users have received a notification email which makes them aware of the correct system they need to use, but if you are unsure, please contact the Editorial Office for further advice.
We hope you’ll find Editorial Manager easy to use, whilst providing an outstanding service to all users.