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I'm developing an in-department certification process, with multiple faculty members assigned to assess each new certification, and it occurred to me to model the overall process on the (familiar) cycle of submitting articles to editorial review at a journal.

Not having been on the backend of that, it's dawning on me that I don't know what the usual record-keeping looks like for a normal journal editor. Is there some standard software platform to keep track of who is assigned to reviews, deliverable dates, status, feedback, etc.? Can it be put in a simple spreadsheet or database? Is it usually accessible by multiple people at the journal, or private to the one editor?

I've searched online and not found anything in this vein. Any advice or examples of "best practices" in record-keeping for the editorial process would be helpful.

Daniel R. Collins
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1 Answers1

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These days editors don't do much paperwork because the editorial management system (EMS) does it for them. The EMS logs all actions, sends automated reminders to reviewers, informs the editor when a review is submitted, and so on. It is usable by multiple people, and an editor with sufficiently advanced permissions can see what other editors are doing or even override them.

There's a list of free & open source EMSes here, don't know if it's applicable for your situation.

Allure
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  • The linked view of the EMS was helpful, and I did use that as a starting point for my database I used to track our process. Picking this as the selected answer. – Daniel R. Collins Oct 28 '20 at 03:40