Click on the Editorial Board menu on the left-hand side and then the Editor button on the right.



Figure 7. Select the editor

The system lists available editors by order of topic match. The system also provides additional statistics about an editor, including the following:

  1. date when appointed as editor
  2. papers assigned in total, and papers assigned in the last 12 months for your journal
  3. papers completed in total, and papers completed in the last 12 months
  4. number of non-responses to an assignment
  5. number of papers pending
  6. their reviewer rating (this rating is the average of all editors’ ratings for all journals for this person as a reviewer)
  7. their editor rating (this is what you and other EiCs have indicated)

These statistics are useful to consider when making your appointment decision. For example, an editor may have a high topic match but has several papers pending; that is, the number they are currently working on. Avoid overloading editors. Another consideration is the number of non-responses from the editor. Perhaps the editor needs more mentoring through the review process, or perhaps the editor needs more supervision or training.

Now that you have decided on the editor to appoint for this paper select the “Step 2 Assign Editor” template from Your Notepad drop-down menu (Figure 8) and Insert it into the comment field. Once you have inserted the wording from the template, you can modify it if need be. But typically, you need not make any modifications. The system will insert the editor’s name and such into the template, but you can check the letter by clicking on the Preview button.

Figure 8. Best Practice templates for assigning Editor and Reviewers


The system does a lot of the busy work for you. The template letter identifies you; that is, the EiC or AEiC who assigned the new submission. Its wording makes it easy for the editors to remember what they are to do since it contains important guidance. The editor’s assignment email includes a direct link to the assigned paper and reminds editors that they can find the authors’ names and email addresses on their personal dashboard.