Automated Reviewer Reminders in EM are based on creating specific Automated Reviewer Reminder Reports. Each report defines certain criteria, and links to a specific letter template. Each day all the configured reports are processed in one batch between 04:00-08:00 EST/EDT, and all eligible Reviewers receive a reminder email. Under normal circumstances, each Automated Reviewer Reminder Report will trigger no more than once per reviewer invitation or agreed review assignment.

See below for steps to create or update Automated Reviewer Reminders. For a more general explanation of how the reminders work, see How are Automated Reviewer Reminders sent from Editorial Manager?

How

To set up Automated Reviewer Reminders:

1. Check with your Journal Manager or Editorial Office what automated reminders may already be set up.
2. Plan out what reminders you will need of what type.

   • Each reminder will be set for so many days before or after a due date or other milestone.
   • To send multiple reminders, for example 3 days past due and again at 10 days past due, then you must create separate reports for each reminder days value.
   • Your Journal Manager can help you with planning out reminder schedules.
3. If you will be personally creating the reminders, coordinate with your Journal Manager or Editorial Office to make sure all the letter templates you need are in place before beginning, and that you know the names of the templates to use.
4. Under Administrative Functions in your main menu, click 'Send Reminder Letters'. If this is not listed, you do not have permission to send any manual or automated reminders.
5. Click the Automated Reviewer Reminder Report link. If the link is not there, then you are not able to create Automated Reviewer Reminders.
6. Scroll to the very bottom of the form, and check the list of Saved Automated Reminders. For those you created personally there will be links to edit or remove the report. If the report was created by someone else, you can see the reminder type and number of days but the edit and remove links will not appear.

   • To edit a report you previously created, click the pencil icon and the form will reload with the details of the saved report.
   • To create a new report, scroll back to the top of the page and continue with the next step to complete the form.
   • If someone else has saved a report of the same type you are planning, you may want to check with that person to ensure you are not conflicting.
7. Select the specific Reminder Type, and enter a number of days in that row. The types are:

   • No Response. Send Reminder: reminds reviewers exactly X days after they were invited.
   • Reminder Before Due Date: reminds reviewers who have agreed, or who have been assigned without invitation, exactly X days before the due date. 0 is not allowed as a value, and reviewers with blank due dates will not be reminded.
   • Reminder Past Due Date: reminds reviewers who have agreed, or who have been assigned without invitation, exactly X days after the due date. 0 can be used as the value to send a reminder exactly on the due date. Reviewers with blank due dates will not be reminded.
   • Reminder Outstanding Partially Saved Reviews: reminds reviewers who saved a review exactly X days ago and have not yet submitted their review.
8. Partially Saved Reviews: if you have chosen Before Due or Past Due reminder type, select how to handle reviewers who have saved a review. Some potential uses of this option:

   • Exclude partially saved reviews from due date reminders, and let those reviewers receive reminders based on the Outstanding Partially Saved report that is sent X days after they saved.
   • Save one report with partial reviews excluded, and then save a different report with only those with partially saved reviews, use a different letter template for each.
9. Enter a Reminder Name.
10. Select a Reminder letter from the drop-down list.

    • All letters defined as Reviewer Reminder letters will be available.
    • In most journals the name will include 'automated' or 'auto' when the letter wording is suitable for an automated report.
11. Optionally filter by a single Reviewer Role, for example if different letters need to be sent to different reviewer roles.
12. Optionally filter by a single Handling Editor (last assigned editor). Note that some editors have a restricted reminder permission, in which case only submissions that editor was assigned to (not only has handling editor) are included in the report.
13. Optionally filter by Section and/or Article Type.

    • CTRL-click to select multiple options.
    • Use the 'Clear All' link to de-select everything, so no filter is applied. This ensures that if new sections or article types are added to the journal they will be included in the report.
14. Click 'Save Automated Reminder' for a new report, or 'Submit' if editing an existing report.

The report will be run in the next nightly batch, and send reminders to authors who meet the exact number of days criteria at that time.