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What's New for JBO 4.3
Scheduled Release Date: (5/3/2010)

Archive: JBO Changes by Release

Release 4.3 Items

1.  New reviewer status for review requests: There is now a new status for reviewers sent review requests but who do not respond to the request. This new status, called "NonResponder", can be used to more accurately reflect reviewers who never responded vs. those who actually declined the review request. This status will tell JBO that the reviewer never responded, and to close the review request without (incorrectly) marking the reviewer as having declining to do the review. The goal of this change is to allow offices to distinguish between reviewers who actually declined the request and those who have offered no response, but whose request lingers and prevents the manuscript from moving forward to either finding other reviewers or drafting the action letter. (Prior to this change NonResponders would remain as pending reviewers indefinitely or would have to be incorrectly marked as "declined" in order to move the manuscript forward in the workflow.) Several features are being revised in or added to JBO to support this new status:


1. The "Remove Reviewer" menu option is being revised to allow reviewers to be marked as not having responded to the review request.


2. On the Manuscript Information page, in the "Reviewers" section: if a reviewer has been marked as a "NonResponder", their reviewer number will be replaced with the letters "NR" (similar to the "X" that displays for declining reviewers). And in the column for "Returned, the words "no response" will be displayed.


3. The Overdue/Pending report will be revised to add a column called "Closed as Non-Responder". (wording for the current column "Set as Declined" will be changed to "Closed as Declined" to help differentiate the functions). When a reviewer is marked as a "NonResponder" from this report, they will disappear from the Overdue/Pending report, as happens when a reviewer is marked as declined.


4. A new journal-level option is being added, asking offices whether JBO should automatically set reviewers as "NonResponders" after a specified number of days. Offices can select whether to automatically mark reviewers as NonResponders if no reply has been received either 21, 30, 45, or 60 days after the review request was sent. (the default option will be 30 days).


5. A new "Consecutive Non-Responder Report" available to all users will list all reviewers who have not responded to the last two requests sent to them. This report can be used, particularly by coordinators, to follow-up with the reviewers and to more easily find potential problems with the sending of review requests.


6. At the point that an action letter is sent, JBO will automatically run through the list of reviewers who were sent review request letters for that manuscript. Any reviewers who have not submitted a review will be marked as "NonResponders". This includes reviewers who may have agreed to submit a review but who never actually submitted one. JBO will retain the history that they agreed to review, but will consider them a "NonResponder" when sending thank-you letters to reviewers.


7. Emails sent to editors with counts of pending, agreed, and declined reviews will also include a count of reviewers marked as NonResponders.


8. Reviewers whose status is either "Declined" or "NonResponder" will be excluded from the calculation when determining when all expected reviews are in. This will remove the need for coordinators to inaccurately mark reviewers as "declined" in order to move the manuscript from status "Review Requests Out, Awaiting Return of Reviews" to "Reviews Returned, Needs Action Letter".


9. Historical information about reviews will be updated: for any manuscripts that have already had a decision letter sent out (i.e., JBO has a decision recorded for that manuscript), but there may be reviewers still listed as pending, we will clean up these records, marking those pending reviewers more correctly as "NonResponders".
2.  Revised letter text for Canadian Journals: Add French-language reviewer thank-you letters.
3.  Revised author view of ms history: Manuscript history language - as displayed to authors checking the status of their manuscript - is being revised. The language used in some cases was found to be confusing to authors, who at times thought - due to the status language - that something was required of them. This change simplifies the language to be more clear for authors. See the list of the language changes below.
Note: Editorial offices should be aware that "ad hoc" manuscript status history items DO NOT DISPLAY to authors checking their manuscript status. Authors see ONLY ms history entries that correspond to workflow milestones.

Current Status Code Language in JBO	New Language for Author View (new language in blue)
New Submission, Needs File Created --- Not YET in JBO	Manuscript Submitted
New File Created, Needs Action Editor Assigned	Manuscript File Created
Assigned to Action Editor, Needs Desired Reviewers	Assigned to Action Editor
Re-submitted Revision, Awaiting Reviewer Assignment or Editorial Action Letter	Revision Submitted
Desired Reviewers Identified, Needs Review Request Letters Sent	Desired Reviewers Identified
Review Requests Out, Awaiting Return of Reviews	Reviews Requested
Reviews Returned, Needs Action Letter	Reviews Returned
Action Letter Drafted, Needs Editor Approval	Decision Letter Drafted
Action Letter Edited, Needs Sent to Author	Decision Letter Approved
Action Letter Sent to Author	Decision Letter Sent to Author
Awaiting Author Revision	Awaiting Author Revision
Tentatively Accepted, Pending Forms	Tentatively Accepted, Needs Forms from Author
Accepted, Forms Received, Pending Publication - Needs Sent to PBO	Accepted, Forms Received, Pending Publication
Previous Versions of Re-Submitted Articles	Previous Versions of Re-Submitted Articles
Withdrawn by Author	Withdrawn by Author
Rejected	Rejected
Orphaned	Orphaned
Added to System Through PBO: Accepted Record	Added to System Through PBO: Accepted Record
Published	Published
Sent to PBO for Technical Edit, Not Yet Available for Potential Lineup	Sent to Production for Technical Edit
PBO Technical Edit Complete, Available for Issue Lineup	Production Technical Edit Complete
Previously Published	Previously Published

4.  New Reviewer Activity Report: This new report lists all reviewers to which an AE has sent a request letter, and also displays whether each reviewer accepted or declined. Main editor and coordinator users will be able to run this report for any AE in the editorial office. Associate editors will be able to run this report for their own review requests.
5.  Revised layout on main editor homepage/working file display: Main editors will now see a designation of "new" or "revised" in their working file - in the first section listing incoming manuscript submissions.
6.  Revised "Master File by Status" layout to add review counts: As a visual aid for coordinators and/or editors tracking reviews, manuscripts at a workflow status where reviews are pending will now display counts of returned and total expected (i.e., "possible") reviews. For example, if 3 reviews are expected and 2 have been returned, the display will be "2 returned of 3 possible". This display will appear in the "Manuscript by Status" sort, and only for manuscripts under current status "Review Requests Out, Awaiting Return of Reviews". This information will not appear on the Working File display because it is displayed only for manuscripts in the "Review Requests Out, Awaiting Return of Reviews" status, which does not appear as part of any user's working file.
7.  Revised review request function: We are modifying the "re-send a review request" function implemented in release 4.2, so that the review due-date is NOT changed when this function is utilized. Previously the coordinator has had to manually roll back the original due-date because the system overwrites it with the resend of the letter. The due date should not be overwritten with a (now) later date when a request letter is resent. The resent letter is a copy, not the original, and the original due date is paramount.
8.  Pre-populated document type for check-in of revised mss: JBO will now populate the document type from the previous version of the manuscript when a JBO record is being created for a revised manuscript submission. This will be done automatically (behind-the-scenes) when the revision is being checked in - there will be no added effort for coordinators with this change. This change is critical particularly for articles of special issues/special sections, and is being implemented to aid coordinators in their efforts to keep track of these special document types. In addition it will prevent problems at later stages of production, ensuring that the correct document type is transmitted to the Journals Department.
9.  New display option on homepage: A new "Master File by Document Type" display option is being implemented, so that manuscripts can easily be sorted by Document Type (especially helpful when working with special issues/special sections because it's difficult to readily identify these when all the manuscripts are displayed together). We have also created a new "Document Type Report" (available under the Reports menu), which is a sortable list of document type assignments for all manuscripts submitted between user-specified dates.
10.  New functionality to assist authors in checking manuscript history: Coordinators have requested the ability to have an easy way to re-send this URL information to authors who request it, so we have added a utility for coordinators that is similar to the function for sending out review submission URL to reviewers who've lost this information. This new function will simply allow coordinators to send a message to authors that contains the appropriate link to check history, and will include login instructions. This utility is available from the MS Details (Information) page > Other menu > Re-send Check History Link.
11.  Exclusion of Journals Dept-specified document types from Year-End "Rejection Rate" report: The following document types are now being automatically excluded from the calculation of the Rejected Report:
• Ad Hoc
• Award
• Book Review
• Clarification Notice
• Commentary Reply
• Correction
• Editorial
• Erratum
• Index
• Introduction
• Masked from Editor
• Newsletter
• Obituary * (for particular journals, as specified by APA Journals department)

This change was made to increase the report's accuracy and utility. Currently offices manually exclude items outside of the JBO report, such as book reviews, introductions written by editor, correction notices, obituaries (as applicable to certain journals), etc. With this new feature, offices can have greater accuracy in the report counts because these types of items will not be counted toward the totals calculations. The list of excluded document types (which was determined by the APA Journals department) is also displayed below the report itself. This report is available to Manuscript Coordinators and Main Editors.
In addition, we are including a new "Document Type" report, available under the Reports menu, which will be a simple sortable listing of what manuscripts are assigned to each document type. Coordinators can then use this report to find and recategorize the document type for manuscripts that should be excluded from the Rejected Report when it is run.
12.  New access to TOC functions for coordinators: JBO will now include a Journal-level option to determine whether coordinator users will have access to the Table of Contents (TOC) creation and editing functions. Previously these functions were available only to main editors. If the office selects this feature, the TOC menu options will display on the "OTHER" homepage menu listing for coordinator users. The default for this journal-level option will be "yes".
13.  Revise display of "Previous Reviewers": (formerly "Previous Reviewers"): On the Reviewer Search page, the textual display of the order of reviewers (for previous and other versions' reviewers) has been corrected. The revision ensures that the display remains consistent with the numerical order of reviewers as saved in the JBO record for the previous version. In addition, the heading for this section is now more accurately titled, "Reviewers for Previous / Other Versions".
14.  User help re: use of textboxes: We have added "user-friendly" messages immediately preceding the action letter and review submission "comments" textboxes to encourage copying & pasting of documents drafted offline or outside of JBO. We do this as a reminder that an unanticipated technical difficulty is always possible and could result in substantial loss of work, especially in the absence of an auto-save capability.
15.  Textual addition to Action Letter email: The word "Decision" has been appended to the subject line of action letters to help reviewers more easily differentiate decision/action letters from review requests.
16.  Revised information display on view of submitted reviews: The manuscript title now displays on the "View Review" page to help users more easily distinguish with which manuscript the review is associated.
17.  Revisions to save font specifications: We are making efforts to ensure that font specifications for outgoing correspondence - especially action letters, reviews, and cover letters for revisions - are the equivalent of 12pt or "medium" size to help reduce the likelihood of email programs and browser settings rendering a small font even smaller and therefore more difficult to read. Emails sent from JBO are programmed to be written in 12 point font. We may still have issues on the email recipient's side in the way their email program chooses to render the message. In instances where the client is changing the font specifications, there is often little that we can do to override this beyond the changes we are now making. However, in the event that this issue remains a problem, we will continue to look for other solutions.
18.  Back-end programmatic change: We have revised the programming on the review agree, decline, and submission pages (and read receipt acknowledgment pages), specifically related to variable storage, to prevent errors reported by users.
19.  Back-end programmatic change: We have revised the programming throughout the application related to session variable usage.

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