ScholarOne Manuscripts 2017 User Conference Key Highlights

Earlier this month, publishers gathered in Madrid for the ScholarOne Manuscripts 2017 User Conference. In addition to fine-tuning their ScholarOne skills, attendees got to hear speakers and weigh in on topics such as open peer review, preprints, and reviewer recognition. Here are some of the highlights from the week:

Keynote speaker Paul Jervis-Heath offered a unique perspective on academia – that of a designer. As part of a project to better understand how academics actually work, Paul and his team at Modern Human meticulously observed several researchers in their own environments. Paul described how this kind of intense observation leads to designing better products and services that fully meet the needs of users.

Chris Heid and Greg Kloiber (Clarivate) shared how ScholarOne continues to improve across four key areas: User Experience, Workflow, APIs & Interoperability, and Automation (see figure 1 below). Highlights included the new editor conversations, a re-designed Review Center, and upcoming submission integrations.

Alex Mendonça (SciELO) talked about the growth of the cooperation program of journals and how ScholarOne contributed to the professionalization and internationalization of the scientific journals in the network.

Emma Chan (BMJ) and Phil Hurst (Royal Society) joined Chris Heid (Clarivate) for a discussion about open peer review, addressing such questions as: what are the models of open peer review, how is it working for journals using it, what are the benefits and challenges?

Sue Bourner (IOP Publishing) discussed manuscript transfers and how the process turns a negative into positive for both the author and the journal.

On the topic of preprints, Darla Henderson (ACS), John Inglis (CSHL, BioRxiv), and Ginny Hendricks (Crossref) offered valuable insights about the current – and shifting – landscape.

Ian Potter (Clarivate) delved into the Wide World of Peer Review (and also provided a few throwbacks to the dark ages of the internet). Using aggregated data from ScholarOne Manuscripts and citation data from Web of Science, Ian provided insights into publishing metrics such as reviewer acceptance and completion rates, average time for a review to be completed, and variance of these metrics and others across geographic, subject categories, and impact.

Tatsuhiro Manabe (Kyorinsha) walked through the Language Toggle feature in ScholarOne Manuscripts, a utility that allowed his production and printing company in Japan to become more competitive.

With the growing problem of illegal sharing on scholarly collaboration networks, David Sommers (Kudos) explained how the integration between Kudos and ScholarOne (allowing plain-language summary at time of submissions) benefits both authors and publishers.

Andrew Preston (Publons) dove into what editors report as one of the most challenging parts of the job: finding qualified peer reviewers and getting reviewers to accept review invitations. Reviewer recognition is one of the strategies to start alleviating this challenge.

Overall, those who gathered in Madrid took away valuable insight and fresh ideas to help them move from knowledge into action (while also enjoying some tasty Spanish refreshments).

In the words of one attendee:

I’ve been coming to the ScholarOne Manuscripts User Conferences since 2008 (minus one year), and this has been the best first day yet! The pace has been great, and I’ve loved how relevant the take-home messages have been. It’s very refreshing.” – Clare-Louise Douglas, Peer-Review Manager, Taylor & Francis

If you weren’t able to make it to the conference, you can catch up on these topics and more by downloading the presentations below.

 

Figure 1. ScholarOne Manuscripts roadmap themes for 2017 and beyond

 

Check out some pictures from the event!

 

 

You can download these presentations: