The Board of Governors has devoted much time, thought, and discussion to create some ‘Best Practice’ templates using wording that best represents the ISI philosophy. Indeed, these templates are designed to ensure consistency, completeness, and coherence with ISI practice and philosophy. We want you to use these templates as the basis for your communication with authors.

You can find these templates in our Notepad on the 5. Decision tab. Select the appropriate template and Insert it into your dialogue box. Once the template’s wording is in the comments for author field, modify it as needed, including inserting your wording on how the author needs to improve the paper; that is, copy and paste the wording of your Development Letter. Note that the system will fill in for you the placeholders; for example, [ARTICLE-ID], [ARTICLE-TITLE]. When you click the PREVIEW button, you see the message formatted with the placeholders filled in.

Figure 3. Select and insert the Best Practice Wording, then paste your development letter into it; the system will fill in the placeholders automatically

The Board of Governors continually improves the Best Practices templates so use only these and do not create your own local copies of letters. Since the templates fill in the form for you, why make extra work for yourself?

The Development Letter you compose for the paper goes into the specifics of what you, as Editor, suggest to or require of the author to make the paper better. So first Insert the templated wording and then either copy the contents of your Development Letter into the proper place of this wording or attach the file with your comments where the template reads == Insert Development Letter Here ==.

You also tell the system the target date for the author to submit the revision. The system uses that date to know when to send reminders. You can change that date; for example, if the author asks for an extension (Figure 4).

Figure 4. If the author asks for an extension to submit the revision, click on the pencil icon to modify the due date; the system uses this date to send reminders­

For quality assurance, the Editor-in-Chief reviews letters to the author before having the system send them.