Hi all, I have a couple of questions about desk rejects in OJS3 (rejecting a submission prior to peer review) that I hope that the community might be able to help with:
Firstly: is there a structural or design reason why it’s necessary to assign an editor before a decision can be recorded? Currently it takes a significant amount of clicks (and loading time) to assign an editor, and our journal customers often need to desk-reject many submissions, which makes the whole process take far too long at the moment. Ideally, the submission could be rejected without needing to assign an editor - is this an avenue that we can explore, or would that be problematic?
Secondly: are desk rejects marked or recorded differently to post-review rejections in the database/system? From a user perspective there is a very meaningful difference between the two kinds of rejections, as submission&review metrics are vital in reporting to internal and external stakeholders. This requirement is set to become even more important with the development of Plan S.
We would be grateful for any help whatsoever on the above issues, and will gladly cooperate in any developments that spawn out of this discussion.
Peter Ford
(PM, Ubiquity Press)