Professionalizing the publication of scientific journals: challenges of manuscript management in the implementation of ScholarOne Manuscripts

The history and the present days distinguish the Revista Gaúcha de Enfermagem (RGE) as an important means of disclosure and dissemination of knowledge in the area of Nursing and Health in the national and international scope. RGE has been a leading journal within the current editorial context for more than 40 years uninterrupted, contributing to the scientific community in different operational contexts of nursing.

To that end, RGE’s editorial team has undertaken efforts in order to meet the criteria, politics and procedures for admission and permanence of scientific journals in the SciELO Brasil Collection, according to documents published in 2014 and 2017, which consider three priority actions for national scientific journals: professionalization, internationalization and financial sustainability^1-2.

Recently, in 2016, RGE migrated its management system of manuscripts from the SEER Electronic System of Journal Editing (SEER - Sistema Eletrônico de Editoração de Revistas) editing interface to ScholarOne Manuscripts. With this, the work process of the editorial team had to be reformulated in order to professionalize and qualify the previously consolidated practices. Besides the new tools, the ScholarOne Manuscripts platform has contributed to the professionalization of the editorial team, by standardizing actions and simplifying the procedures of submission and follow-up of the editorial flow for the authors that want to publish their manuscripts in RGE.

The authors desire an agile, careful and fair evaluation, adequate editing, fidelity to the text, speed and academic impact with the publication. This set of expectations fundamentally depends on the quality of the article and of the editorial processes of the journals by means of computerized systems, pre-analysis, process of peer review, and quality of editing³.

The ScholarOne Manuscripts interface is an electronic editing platform of scientific journals by Thomson Reuters and is associated with big publishers and scientific databases, being an international platform that standardizes the editing processes among the journals with a high impact factor. Authors are allowed to follow all processing and editing steps of the manuscript, according to the phases inherent to the editorial flow. Moreover, there was an expansion of the visibility and circulation of RGE among the prominent journals, strengthening the engagement with the movement of free access, continuous flow and electronic format.

The appropriation of the new criteria by the editorial team for utilization of the ScholarOne Manuscripts, aiming at mediating the relationship of the authors and ad hoc reviewers with the new interface technology, has required investments for improvement in all steps of the editorial flow, from the processes of submission, receipt, pre-analysis, review, evaluation, editing, and layout, to the publication of the scientific articles submitted.

The strategy found by the RGE’s editorial team, in order to learn and instrumentalize themselves for the use of the new interface, was confirmed by means of tests and simulations in the configuration phase of the platform to the needs and particularities of the Journal. Also, tutorials made available by other journals were consulted, consulting services were requested to the SciELO’s technical support team, and a technical visit to other journals that have recently implemented the interface was performed. All these actions have contributed to the decision-making about which is the best editorial flow, facilitating the transition among the management systems of manuscripts.

The mobilization and articulation for implementation of the ScholarOne Manuscripts have made RGE’s editorial team a leader in the field. Participation in in-person and on-line courses as well as the sharing of experiences with other editorial teams that have already been using the interface have elucidated the trends and novelties in the manuscript management systems.

During the process of implementation and use of the new interface, regular meetings were held with RGE’s Editorial Board, and the exchange of experiences among editors were shared, as well as meetings for evaluating the adaptation period, definition/review of deadlines, inclusion of the reviewers and the sending of invitations to new consultants. Thus, it was possible to strengthen and to concretize the use of the interface, building trust among the platform users and the community, maintaining the quality of the manuscripts in the academic sector and enabling the validity of the data existent in the scientific literature⁴.

We have seen favorable results in this first year of implementation of the new system, especially in the reduction of the evaluation time of the articles submitted, from a previous average of 434 days in 2016 to 132 days in 2017. 294 manuscripts were submitted in 2017, 138 being approved in the pre-analysis and submitted to evaluation by ad hoc reviewers, 56 of which were accepted for publication. This repercussion proves the engagement and prominence achieved by the RGE’s editorial team in this first year of the ScholarOne Manuscripts interface.

The implementation of the ScholarOne Manuscripts system has enabled the team of editors to be mobilized for a qualified management, following the standard of excellence of the most distinguished journals. The editorial team has obtained efficiency and agility in the RGE editing process, which proves the professionalization of the journal - one of the priority actions recommended by the SciELO Brasil Collection.

Referências

• ¹
  Scielo. Critérios, política e procedimentos para a admissão e a permanência de periódicos científicos na Coleção SciELO Brasil. São Paulo; 2014 [citado 2017 dez 10]. Disponível em: Disponível em: http://www.scielo.br/avaliacao/20141003NovosCriterios_SciELO_Brasil.pdf
  » http://www.scielo.br/avaliacao/20141003NovosCriterios_SciELO_Brasil.pdf
• ²
  Scielo. Critérios, política e procedimentos para a admissão e a permanência de periódicos científicos na Coleção SciELO Brasil. São Paulo; 2017 [citado 2017 dez 10]. Disponível em: Disponível em: http://www.scielo.br/avaliacao/Criterios_SciELO_Brasil_versao_revisada_atualizada_outubro_20171206.pdf
  » http://www.scielo.br/avaliacao/Criterios_SciELO_Brasil_versao_revisada_atualizada_outubro_20171206.pdf
• ³
  Barata RB. Desafios da editoração de revistas científicas brasileiras da área da saúde. Cien Saude Colet. 2017 mar [citado 2017 dez 18]; 0112/2017. Disponível em: Disponível em: http://www.cienciaesaudecoletiva.com.br/artigos/desafios-da-editoracao-de-revistas-cientificas-brasileiras-da-area-da-saude/16158?id=16158&id=16158.
  » http://www.cienciaesaudecoletiva.com.br/artigos/desafios-da-editoracao-de-revistas-cientificas-brasileiras-da-area-da-saude/16158?id=16158&id=16158.
• ⁴
  Silva JAT, Dobránszki J. Problems with traditional science publishing and finding a wider niche for post-publication peer review. Account Res. 2014 Oct;22(1):22-40. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2014.899909
  » http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2014.899909

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  07 June 2018
• Date of issue
  2017