Elsevier receives millionth response to Editor, Author and Reviewer Satisfaction Survey
As part of our feedback program the quarterly Editor, Author and Reviewer Satisfaction Surveys give us insights into how our customers think and feel about our products and services. The feedback helps and inspires us to improve our products and services. The sheer scale of responses indicates how invested our customers are in helping us improve our products and services.
Rewarding the millionth respondent
In March, we received the millionth response to our surveys. To commemorate this milestone, a prize was awarded to the millionth respondent, Dr. Agnieszka Sobczak-Kupiec, PhD, who specializes in material engineering, chemical engineering, technology and nanotechnology at the Krakow University of Technology, Poland. She completed the survey after she published her article titled "The influence of calcination parameters on free calcium oxide content in natural hydroxyapatite" in Elsevier's Ceramics International.
Ewa Kittel-Prejs, Publishing Director for Elsevier in Poland presented her the prize: an iPad and a $250 Elsevier WebShop gift certificate – as well as eBook subscriptions worth more than €10,000 for her institution.
Looking ahead
We continuously aim to help our authors, editors and reviewers improve their outcomes and work processes. To do so we need to repeatedly think about the value we offer them, not just in absolute terms. The Editor, Author and Reviewer Satisfaction Surveys help us identify where we can make the greatest difference, so that we can continue helping researchers advance science and improve and save lives.
Using feedback constructively
Some examples of initiatives that have come about from listening to our authors, editors and reviewers over the years are detailed below:
- Driving up quality - When deciding where to publish authors have consistently told us that the quality of the journal is important. A relentless focus on quality over the last several years has seen our share of citations improve – we are now 7% above the industry average.
- Improving publication time - Authors have also identified the speed of publication as a priority.Article-based publishing makes the article available much quicker. Authors no longer have to wait for the compilation of the journal issue itself. This is a key part of Elsevier's efforts to find new ways to speed up and enhance the publication process.
- Making peer review more efficient - For years our editors have been searching for better, faster ways to find and retain reviewers. Reviewer Finder, a new feature in Elsevier Editorial System (EES) tool makes the search for qualified reviewers more straightforward and simple. It allows editors to find potential reviewers, by providing information such as a reviewer's affiliation and area of expertise to identify a good match or a potential conflict of interest. Automated Reviewer Reminders, another new feature in EES helps editors speed up the peer review process by sending out automated reminders to their reviewers to submit their article reviews.
- Making it easier to submit to another Elsevier journal - An improvement to the manuscript submission process is the Article Transfer Service (ATS). Through ATS, an article that is not accepted by an Elsevier journal is submitted to another Elsevier journal for which it may be more appropriate, after author's approval. It is designed to not only save authors time but also to reduce the risk of reviewers receiving the same manuscript twice.
- Ensuring authors know when they are cited - CiteAlert is a service which automatically notifies authors by email when their work is referenced by a newly published article. Authors will receive a CiteAlert soon after their work is cited, provided that the relevant journal is being indexed by SciVerse Scopus.
- Improving the structure and expanding the content of the article - Our Article of the Future project seeks to improve the scientific article on SciVerse ScienceDirect in all areas of content, context and presentation. This year, all articles on ScienceDirect are under a new three-pane format. The format is more dynamic, makes content and data more accessible and includes apps that researchers can use to get better results or work more efficiently.
