Transfer submission to another journal within the same OJS

Software Support
1

Hi,
I would like to know if there is a way to transfer a submission, which was made to one journal, to another journal within the same multi-journal-installation of OJS. We currently publish several journals in the field of agriculture and each has its own focus. Sometimes a submission would be better fitted to another journal and we ask the author if they would like to switch. However, they currently have to start a new submission, thus, losing the ID and the submission date (which gives them advantage since we work in chronological order) and they have to enter all the data and upload all the files again. Is there a way to transfer the submission? Might this be a feature others would also use?

2

Hi @heike_riegler,

Interesting. There are a few details to consider: what would happen if the submission was already in process, i.e. had assigned reviewers, copyeditors, etc.? What if those users weren’t also playing the same role in the target journal?

I suppose one approach would be to leave the submission in the original journal, and archive it; and then create a duplicate submission, with a new ID, in the target journal.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

3

Hi @asmecher,

to address your question: the decision to transfer a submission to another journal is made at the very beginning by an editor-in-chief or the managing editor, both of which have editor and journal manager roles assigned to them. But now that you mention it, I guess it takes either site administrator rights or at least someone with journal manager rights in all journals involved in the transfer.
How does one duplicate a submission? Do I have to enter all the metadata again?

All the best,
Heike

4

Yes, I think you would need to copy the metadata piece-by-piece from the original submission to the new one.

My concern would also be the potentially different policies and workflow between the journals. What if the second journal has additional Author Guidelines? The Author would have agreed to the Guidelines of the original submission. If some of these are binding statements, the Journal Manager shouldn’t be able “agree” to new Guidelines on behalf of the author. You could also have a discrepancy of what indexing, competing interest statements, and usage permissions are required between the two journals.