If you feel the paper has merit but needs some improvements before you can send it out for peer review, you can select the “On Hold” decision. Placing a paper on hold allows you to communicate with the author to ask for revisions before passing the revised paper for external review. Your focus at this point is on content, not form. That is, don’t worry about APA citation standards, but rather focus on the readability of the paper and whether the material is presented logically and makes sense.

There is a template for placing a submission on hold. Insert the template into the Comments for Author box from Your Notepad and adapt it as you wish. If you have comments in a file, upload those to the system using the Upload & Insert File feature and add the link to your uploaded file into the templated wording.

There are two additional things you need to do. One is to check the box “Remove Submitted Doc file to allow the author to resubmit,” and the second is to enter a target date for the author to get back to you. The system uses this date to send reminders to the author and you. You can change this target date later. The reminders are really helpful to remind busy authors of their paper. If the author of a paper on hold doesn’t respond or elects not to revise the paper, revisit the Desk Review page and reject the paper.

Figure 4. Placing a paper on hold requires writing the author, setting a target date, and removing the old file.
In the Comments to Authors box, you insert a template from Your Notepad and then modify it as needed.