We regularly survey Reviewers to get a better understanding of their motivations. Findings from our Reviewer Feedback Program suggest that Reviewers value feedback, recognition, relevant manuscripts and more information on Reviewer policy.
90% of Reviewers would like to be able to see the final decision and other Reviewers’ comments. Your publishing contact can ensure that this functionality is switched on in EES for your journal.
Reviewers receive 30-day access to Scopus as a reward and to help facilitate their review. With Scopus, Reviewers can easily identify items that have been published in that field or by that author.
Additionally Reviewers can access the full text of articles for Elsevier publication in ScienceDirect, via Scopus for the same 30-day period.
If you wish, your publishing contact can help arrange an annual listing of Reviewers in the journal and certificates for Reviewers, both of which are small but powerful ways of acknowledging Reviewers. A template of the certificate can be viewed here.
Reviewers tell us that they appreciate information about the review policy of a journal. Your publishing contact can work with you to create or update a policy for your journal. Our template reviewer policy can be used as a starting point.
To help ensure that Reviewers receive relevant papers, your publishing contact can advise you about cleaning your EES database of Reviewers and assigning keywords.
Improving the Speed and Quality of Reviews
Since the introduction of EES, overall review times have been reduced, in some cases by more than 50%, and the complete editorial process from submission to decision has been reduced by an average of 9 weeks.
In EES you can:
Set up reminders for Reviewers and customize Reviewer letters to include deadlines, guidelines and information about where they can get help, e.g. Scopus; and
Specify Reviewer questions, which are customizable by manuscript type, and develop a manuscript rating scale, to help ensure consistent and thorough review.
Finding Relevant Reviewers
We appreciate that finding Reviewers can be challenging. Here are some of the ways we can help:
Via the Scopus search bar in your EES assignments page, you can search Scopus to identify potential Reviewers, link to their published work and citation histories, see who their co-authors were and set up citation alerts to keep up to date with who is citing which research.
Additionally, Reviewers can access the full text of articles for Elsevier publication in ScienceDirect, via Scopus,significantly helping Reviewers in the peer-review process.
With just one click in EES, you can automatically search the Internet for article-title related topics via Scirus, and be brought to a list of the author’s published articles in Scopus.
Your publishing contact can help you create a Reviewer classifications list for your journal, from which Reviewers indicate their areas of expertise and use this to search for matches with the manuscript classifications.
Within EES, you can build a database of relevant Reviewers by assigning classifications and adding keywords or notes to the people notes field, search for Reviewers matching the manuscript's keywords or classifications, automatically un-invite Reviewers when they don't respond in sufficient time, and set up automatic alternate Reviewer invitation.
Our Submission, Peer Review and Editorial System, EES
Nearly all of Elsevier’s journals use the Elsevier Editorial System (EES) for managing the submission and peer review process.
Launched in 2002, EES today counts 3,5 million registered users and almost 2 million active end users per year. With 64,000 new author manuscripts received per month, 100,000 emails generated daily and over 8 million page hits monthly EES is one of Elsevier’s key products, servicing authors, editors and reviewers.
