As a publisher, you want to keep quality submissions within your journal portfolio and provide the best possible experience for submitting authors. So, if you find that your editors are frequently outright rejecting manuscripts that aren’t quite right for their journal but could work for another one of your titles, you may want to explore the option to offer manuscript transfers between those publications (a.k.a. cascading submissions). Or, if you have a transfer process in place that editors rarely use, it may be time to tweak it.
We recently added support for manuscript transfers to Scholastica’s Peer Review System, so we thought it would be helpful to compile a quick best practices guide. Below are tips to support journal publishers implementing manuscript transfers for the first time or seeking to improve their existing transfer workflows. Let’s get to it!
What are manuscript transfers, and what are the benefits?
First, let’s define manuscript transfers for those just getting started (if you’re familiar with all this, jump down to the next section!):
A manuscript transfer occurs when a journal rejects a submission for reasons unrelated to research quality and offers the author(s) the opportunity to redirect it to an affiliate title, often including review reports if it was sent out for peer review. For example, an editor might offer a transfer if they receive a promising submission that isn’t within the scope of their journal.
The benefits of offering transfers are many, including helping authors identify alternative publication venues and enabling them to seamlessly redirect their submission to a more suitable journal without having to start from scratch. Manuscript transfers also enable publishers to repurpose the work of editors and reviewers who initially assessed a submission and to keep high-quality manuscripts within their portfolio.
Getting manuscript transfers right
Now that we’ve established the value of manuscript transfers, let’s dig into how to ensure a smooth experience for all parties involved.
Establish manuscript transfer protocols for your journals
Which journals should be able to transfer manuscripts between each other? How should manuscript transfers flow (e.g., freely between journals or in a particular order)? Should there be a maximum number of journals that can be included in transfer options (e.g., editors must choose no more than 2 out of 4 eligible titles)? At what point in the peer review process should editors make transfer offers?
These are questions to answer before initiating manuscript transfers to ensure all of your journal editors are on the same page and that your peer review system is properly configured to automate transfers. There are no “right” answers; what’s best for you will depend on your portfolio and publication workflow goals.
Let’s walk through a few possible scenarios and key considerations:
If you publish two journals on related topics and each sometimes receives submissions better suited for the other, you might allow transfers to flow between them in either direction (i.e., Journal A to Journal B OR Journal B to Journal A). If you have more than two related journals, you might also allow transfers to flow between them in any direction; however, you might want to limit transfers to particular titles and/or establish a transfer order.
For example, if you have a flagship journal that receives more submissions than the other titles in your portfolio, you may want to focus on transferring manuscripts from it to other related journals as appropriate and not allow your other journals to transfer submissions to the flagship. In that case, you could allow the flagship editors to transfer manuscripts to any of your other journals (e.g., Journal A to Journal B, C, and D) or you could specify an order (e.g., Journal A to Journal B → Journal B to Journal C → No transfers at Journal C). These types of parameters can help reduce editor decision-making time and ensure manuscripts are funneled to journals in order of priority.
With regard to when in the peer review process to offer transfers, you might decide to permit editors to transfer submissions at any point in peer review (e.g., first or second round), or you might instruct editors to transfer submissions as soon as possible (i.e., before peer review or after no more than one round of review). You’ll likely want to opt for the latter approach if one of your primary goals for manuscript transfers is to reduce reviewer fatigue at a high-submission journal (e.g., a high-impact flagship title).
Different publishers will have different possible journal transfer configurations, depending on the makeup of their portfolio, and varying considerations for when to initiate transfers in journals’ editorial processes. So, be sure to convene with all relevant stakeholders to weigh your transfer options and determine the best path forward.
Obtain permission to transfer review reports ahead of time
Your editors won’t know if the submissions they send out for peer review will end up being manuscript transfer candidates until after the fact, but that’s no reason not to be prepared for the possibility! You can facilitate seamless manuscript transfers downstream by notifying peer reviewers that you support manuscript transfers between journals within your portfolio and requesting permission from them to:
- Transfer their review report to another journal
- Disclose their identity to the transfer journal
We recommend that publishers include these as standard questions in the reviewer forms for all their journals that offer transfers to get necessary permissions ahead of time. Be sure to explain what “manuscript transfer” means, as some reviewers may be unfamiliar with the term.
It’s best to directly ask these questions rather than posting information about transfers on an “information for reviewers” page and expecting referees to implicitly agree as part of accepting an assignment. People don’t always read things closely, and you don’t want to open the door for confusion or tension if a reviewer hears from editors at a transfer journal without expecting it.
In cases where reviewers decline to share their identity with transfer journals but agree to share their comments, the journal receiving the transfer may wish to enlist new reviewers to know who assessed the submission. However, the initial reviewer comments can still help speed up that process by reducing the number of new reviews editors need or the scope of comments. So there’s still a lot of value there.
Ensure transfer packages include all necessary manuscript details and files
Of course, you’ll want to ensure all necessary manuscript details are included in initial manuscript transfers, so the editors at the journal to which a submission has been transferred can process it without delay.
What should be sent with manuscript transfers? You’ll want to include:
- The author’s original submission form inputs, with all metadata they entered (e.g., PIDs like ORCID and ROR)
- Submission metadata like: submitted-at date, the date the decision was issued, etc., so the transfer journal has the full manuscript history
- The decision type and decision letter issued by the transferring journal
- Past peer review details (depending on whether the manuscript was sent out for external review and the permissions the reviewers specified)
In cases where a journal receiving a manuscript transfer has different submission requirements than the transferring title, such as requiring a cover letter, you’ll also want to collect that information from authors as part of the transfer process.
Note for Scholastica users: When publishers allow transfers between journals using Scholastica’s Peer Review System, the system will automatically prompt authors to complete any additional fields in the transfer journal’s submission form that were not part of the original journal submission.
All the information above should be sent to the destination transfer journal along with the manuscript file(s) and logged in the system of the transferring journal so editors can easily refer back to the details of the exchange if needed.
Clearly communicate transfer decisions to authors
Once you have all your ducks in a row for getting reviewer permissions for manuscript transfers and processing them, the main factor to ensure everything goes smoothly is author communication. Ultimately, authors must permit manuscript transfers (editors should never move submissions without consent). You’ll want to ensure that each of your journals that offer manuscript transfers clearly explains to authors what a transfer option is…and what it isn’t.
You don’t want authors to interpret transfer offers as opportunities to send in revisions. With that said, be sure the decision letters your editors send directly state that they have rejected the submission (or language along those lines) but are offering a transfer. They should then clearly explain what a manuscript transfer means and what the author(s) can expect if they accept the offer. Using standard decision letter templates for transfers that editors can personalize is the easiest way to ensure precise and consistent communication. Editors can refer to this blog post for sample language.
If you allow editors to selectively transfer manuscripts among multiple journals (e.g., Journal A and/or B and C), it’s especially important for them to specify which journal or journals to which a transfer offer applies in decision letters so it’s clear to the author. You can also configure your peer review system to show authors a dropdown list of only available transfer options, so they don’t choose a non-applicable title by mistake.
Finally, be sure editors set deadlines for authors to accept or decline transfer offers so manuscripts don’t get stuck in a limbo state. If an author chooses to decline a transfer, their submission at the original journal should be closed and updated to a “reject” decision, again, so there is no confusion around the potential for revisions.
Common pitfalls to avoid
By following the recommendations above, you should be set for successful manuscript transfers! To help your editors avoid any snags, below are a few common pitfalls to consider.
Transferring questionable submissions: Transfers can become problematic if editors are issuing them too liberally. In such cases, you can end up creating more work for the editors of journals receiving transfers and more instances of disappointed authors when transfers don’t work out. That said, it’s best to advise editors to refrain from offering transfers unless they think there is a high likelihood that the journal receiving the transfer will accept it.
Confusion around the status of transferred submissions: As noted, if an author declines a transfer decision, you’ll want to close it and ensure the author sees a “rejected” submission status in your peer review system, so there is no ambiguity around the possibility for revisions. Similarly, if an author accepts a transfer decision, you’ll want to close the initial submission and create a new submission instance for all file management and communication for the transferred manuscript. Doing so will prevent authors from accidentally referencing old files or contacting the wrong editorial team about their current submission.
You can see how we distinguish between original and transferred submissions in Scholastica’s Peer Review System here.
Formatting faux pas: Finally, when transferring submissions between journals in your portfolio, it’s best to allow format-neutral submissions to avoid a situation where an author has to update the font, spacing, etc., of their manuscript and reupload it to the transfer title. That will basically cancel out the time-saving benefits of offering transfers in the first place. Check out this blog post to learn more about aspects of journal production processes that publishers can automate to eliminate pre-formatting steps for authors and format-related technical checks for editors, ultimately speeding up publishing.
Putting it all together
We hope you found this guide to manuscript transfers helpful! If you have any questions or additional tips to share, feel free to post them in the comments section below.
To learn more about how manuscript transfers work using Scholastica’s Peer Review System, check out this blog post. Scholastica’s manuscript transfer feature is available to publishers using our peer review system for two or more related journals at no additional cost, and it’s easy to get started.
