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How can an Editor manage user records in Editorial Manager?
Last updated on November 02, 2022In Editorial Manager (EM) an Editor with appropriate permissions can make certain changes to a user record. Depending on the editor role permissions the Editor may be able to view and/or update some or all of the following in Editorial Manager, including:
- Some Personal Details, Institutional Information, and Contact Details
- Personal Classifications and Keywords
- Reviewer Role and availability
- Editor Role
- Notes and Flags
Due to account security, Editors cannot make changes to the email address, username, or password for any users. Only the user themselves can make these updates.
How
- Search for the user record in Search People
- Select the user's name to open the record. For more information on the search options see How can an Editor search for submissions or people?
- Make your changes as described below.
- Select 'Submit' at the bottom of the page to save your changes.
Note that this page is different here where you are acting as an editor compared to 'Update My Information' where you update your own profile. There you will see username and password, but will not see editor-only information such as roles, notes, or activity history.
The 'Update Information' page is divided into sections that you can expand or collapse. Required information is marked in red. As an editor, you will be able to save a record without some required information but you will see a warning if you do.
For more information select a section below:
In the left sidebar you can see useful information and buttons, depending on your permissions.
- User's title and full name
- People flags after the user's name, in the example linked above only the grey 'null' flag appears as a link to open the People Flags screen. See How can editors use Flags on People records?
- Registration date and method
- Last modified date
- Whether the user has viewed the Privacy Policy. Note if the user has not viewed the privacy policy, you will be unable to Proxy on behalf of that user.
- Send Login Details button to trigger a password reset email to the user.
- "Exclude this user from receiving batch reminder emails" : determines the conditions for excluding the account holder from receiving batch reminder emails sent via reminder reports.
- "Exclude this user from receiving mass emails (sent via Batch Email tool)": determines the conditions for excluding the account holder from receiving mass emails sent via the Batch Email tool.
You may have permission to update some of this information, or it may be read only depending on your permissions.See screenshot.
- User's role information, see specific sections below for more information on the Reviewer and Editor roles.
- 'Activity History' link to see all current and past activity of the user as an author, reviewer, or editor.
- 'Additional People Details' link appears only if custom People Details fields have been configured for the journal. This opens a page with those additional custom fields.
- 'Correspondence History' link allows you to see the entire record of emails sent to or from this user for any submission.
- Personal Information: Any editor who can Search People will be able to update this section.
- ORCID: If the user has not populated the ORCID details, a Fetch link appears. Selecting this will search for a matching ORCID ID you could copy and paste, but only the user themselves can validate an ORCID ID.
- Institution Related Information: Any editor who can Search People will be able to update most of this section, except for: People URLS: these three fields appear only if you have permission to view and/or update them. They are meant to hold a link to the person's home page, department page, etc.
- The 'Alternate Contact Information" link may appear depending on your permissions, see How can I set temporary alternate contact details in my Editorial Manager account?
- The 'Unavailable Dates' link may appear depending on your permissions, see How do I let a journal know I am temporarily unavailable using Editorial Manager?
Editors with permission can select the buttons here to make changes to the Personal Classifications or Personal Keywords. See screenshot.
- Registration Questions
- The privacy policy question appears here, but editors cannot update the repons on behalf of any user, see screenshot.
- If the journal has enabled custom registration questions they appear here as well, you may have permission to update them for users.
Journals can have two types of notes active, Detailed People Notes and People Notes: Editors may have permission to view and/or update either type of notes. See How can I add Notes to a Reviewer's details?
The Detailed People notes has a tickbox to move it to the top of the page. This option is saved in your account, while you have it ticked, the Detailed People notes will always be at the top for you until you untick it.
A person must have a reviewer role in order to be invited to review. Many journals have only one reviewer role, but some journals will have different roles.
It is not possible to update the reviewer role while the user has any active invitations or agreed reviews, you must wait until the reviewer has completed all assignments before changing the reviewer role. Consult your Journal Manager or other support contact if there is some urgent need to make such a change without waiting for active assignments to be completed.
Set the correct Yes/No option for 'Board Member'.
- Locate the Reviewer Role in the 'User Information' section.
- Select the appropriate Reviewer Role from the drop-down.
- Journals can define multiple reviewer roles for any number of reasons, see below for details.
- Each reviewer role may have different options for what they can see or do in the system.
- Reviewers will see this role name while working in the system.
- This designation is displayed for editors when searching and selecting reviewers and also used on reports.
- The person themselves cannot see this option.
- Check that 'Available as a Reviewer?' is set to Yes.
- Without this the person will be hidden from most reviewer searches, and the option must be set to Yes before an invitation can be sent.
- The person is able to view and change this option themselves.
- Check that 'Forbidden to review?' is set to No.
- If it is set to yes, it is impossible to invite the person as a reviewer.
- The person themselves cannot see this option.
- Select'Submit' at the bottom of the screen when done with all changes.
For users that have no reviewer role but are currently set to available = yes and forbidden = no, an editor is able to assign a reviewer role while sending an invitation. It is not required to exit from the invitation process unless the user has been set as available = no or forbidden = yes.
What's the difference between the Editorial Board Member option and the Reviewer role?
There can be some confusion, especially if a journal has a reviewer role called something like "Board Member", but the Editorial Board Member yes/no option stands apart from reviewer roles. Any person with any reviewer role, even none at all, can be set as Editorial Board Member = yes.
Within EM, marking a user as Editorial Board Member = yes is essentially a flag. The designation is shown in search results when inviting reviewers and the Reviewer statistics can be reported separately for board members.
No matter whether the Editorial Board Member option is set to yes or no, a user must have a reviewer role in order to be invited or to complete reviews.
Journals can define multiple reviewer roles for any number of reasons. From a purely technical view in EM, using multiple reviewer roles allows a journal several options:
- Editors can search reviewers within one role at a time, or all roles at once.
- Alternate reviewers can optionally be configured to only automatically replace someone with the same role. Alternatively they can be configured to replace any declining or uninvited reviewer regardless of role. This option is set per article type.
- Optionally each role can have different configurations such as:
- Custom review question.
- Default communications such as invitation letters.
- Automated reminder schedules.
- Editors can report on reviewer statistics by role.
- Some reviewer roles can be configured to see more details than others, for example author names, other completed reviews, etc.
Consult with your Journal Manager and/or Publisher about configuration in your journal.
A user can only be allocated one role of any Role Family. For journals with multiple reviewer roles, each person can have only one reviewer role.
Please do consult with your Journal Manager and Publisher about all changes to editor roles. There will be other actions needed both in EM and otherwise when adding a new editor or changing an editor to a different role.
Editors must have specific permission to make changes to Editor Role information. It is not possible to change an Editor role while the person has any active assignments.
- Update the Editor Role drop-down list.
- Update Editor Description: text entered here will appear next to the editor's name in Assign Editor lists.
- Optionally, the Editor Description may be displayed to authors in the Request Editor step.
- In some journals, the Request Editor step is configured to display only the Editor Description (as opposed to the names). In that case, if the description is blank the author cannot select that Editor.
- Select 'Submit' at the bottom of the screen when done with all changes.
A user can only be allocated one role of any Role Family. For example, a user cannot have an Editor-in-Chief Role and a Managing Editor Role. If the Editor-in-Chief is going to perform both duties, then either that person's Role permissions should allow for the diverse responsibilities, or that user will need to have two different People Records in the system with different email addresses (not recommended).
Do not set a Publisher role for any user. In Editorial Manager, Publisher Roles refer to the Production team, those users responsible for getting Accepted submissions transmitted to production.
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