Section Editors and Autoassign

[ASMkelly]

I've read through several posts but I'm not certain I understand what has been put forward. I have sections in the journal and the editors when assigning want to see the listing beside each persons name that indicates their section. Therefore, I assigned all my section editors to a section. However, I do not want these section editors to automatically be assigned to incoming manuscripts for that section. A paper was just assigned all 8 section editors and a notification sent to all of them. Is there any way to get around NOT having to check the review and/or editing box in the journal manager/edit sections and just have the listing next to the appropriate person?

Thanks so much!
-Kelly

[jmacgreg]

Hi Kelly,

I'm not quite sure I follow. If you assign an SE to a section, they will have any submission to that section automatically assigned to them -- that's just the nature of being assigned to a section. If you don't want SEs automatically assigned to a section, you can remove them and then assign as you see fit once the submission comes in. You can always disable the prepared email that's sent out, if that's the problem (by finding the email listed in the Prepared Emails listing, and disabling it). If you could give us more detail on what kind of behaviour you're looking for, we could advise more accurately.

Cheers,
James

[ASMkelly]

Hi Jim -

I think we are probably using OJS roles a little differently and it just may not be possible. In the journal we have sections, but each "head" of that section is considered an "Editor" in OJS (7 in total). In this way, they can all view the incoming cue of manuscripts and move them between one another if more appropriate for another section. For each section, each "Editor" has a small board of people (Section Editors in OJS). The Editor will select one of their Section Editors to take the lead on a manuscript and assign reviewers.

My editors want to be able to look at the list of section editors and have next to them that designation showing which section they may be in (5-6 for each section). However, they do not want papers to be auto-assigned. The email is not the problem.

For example, after assigning everyone a section a manuscript came in and bypassed the Editor and was assigned to all 6 Section Editors under them.

Make sense? Hard to explain in type! In essence, I want a way to see someone's assigned role in a list of choices when assigning...

-Kelly

[jmacgreg]

Hi Kelly,

You're right -- there isn't any way to satisfy your current workflow 100% with OJS. It sounds to me like you're essentially looking for an interstitial assignment step that just doesn't exist. Perhaps the best compromise is to enroll your Head Editors as both SE and full Editor; assign them to the Review responsibility per each relevant journal section; and then assign all applicable SEs the Editing responsibility per section. What will then happen is this: a submission will come in, and the Editor assigned to review it will see it; since they have full editorial administrative power, they can see and manipulate which SEs are assigned to it, and they can even assign an SE to the review responsibility. You might have to test it out, and it may not be exactly what you are looking for, but at the very least you should be able to group SEs by section, have them manipulable by an overall Head Editor, and not have confusing emails be sent all over the place.

Cheers,
James

[ASMkelly]

Thanks Jim -

I didn't think so. It is less to do about the actual assigning and more to do with being able to view a list of of Editors and Section Editors with a designation next to them showing their role and to which section they have been assigned. I have a lot of editors and section editors and when they scroll through the list to make the assignments, there is no place to see each person's role and section assignment.

-Kelly

[jmacgreg]

Hi Kelly,

Do you have any developers on staff? We could suggest a few ways to do this (eg. by adding a column to the SE listing with this information), but I'm not sure that the use-case is strong enough for us to take it on right now. Eventually, we will work on displaying more information more elegantly in tables such as these, so this should at some point not be such an issue for larger editorial teams.

Cheers,
James