Thread

I’m using EE for an open access, peer-reviewed journal, and so it has a fairly involved editorial workflow. I’m curious if more experienced developers have suggestions about how to attach peer review reports to member submissions.

We’ve got member/author profiles, and a channel for their original submissions (both set up easily enough with SafeCracker forms). The challenge is how best to handle the review process, which involves (1) managing editors who direct (2) member submissions to (3) reviewing editors. To protect the integrity of the process, the identities of (2) and (3) should be hidden from one another.

We’ve set up the following statuses on the primary channel for submission entries. The first is set when someone makes a submission through the website. The remainder are subject to our editorial process.

* Submitted
* Assigned for Review
* (Possible outcomes based on reviewer input:)
      - Declined and Closed
      - Declined with Suggestions
      - Revised and Resubmitted
      - Closed
      - Accepted for Publication
* Revised for Publication
* Typeset
* Open

I wonder especially if there’s a way for a super-admin or managing editor (1) to assign the post someone for a blind review (3), make a decision based that feedback, and then pass the review back to the submitting author (2). I suppose one might do something with reverse-related entries? It’s just a little unclear to me how to set it up.

I am aware of modules like the award-winning Better Work Flow, but it doesn’t seem to provide for outside review.

Thanks,
Daniel

Just thinking out aloud with this one, I might not have grasped everything but here goes 😊

Ordinary statuses might not work here so my suggestion is to use multiple Channels for your submissions, where all Channels share the same Custom field groups, Catgeory group(s) and Status group. What you then have is the ability for any editor to move entries between Channels.

Basic setup

1. Create 4 Channels
a) New
b) Review
c) Published

2. Create 2 member groups
a) Member group for managers
b) Member group for reviewers

3. Assign member group permissions
a) Managers can only access content in the “New” Channel
b) Reviewers can only access content in the “Review” Channel

4. Workflow
a) Submission added to the “New” Channel
b) Manager previews the submission
c) Manager changes the Channel the entry belongs to “Review” (under Options)
d) Reviewer reviews the new item
e) Reviewer makes revisions, closes etc, or moves the entry to the “Published” Channel

To protect the identity of the author from the reviewer you can either stop submitters names being included in the author list (Memder group prefs>Include Members in PUBLISH page multi-author list?), or you could hide the field using a custom publish page layout.

Very clever. Thank you.

Your suggestion is more elegant than the other approaches I’ve considered (repurposing channel comments, or related forum entries, or perhaps reverse-relating reviewer reports in another channel). I will have to think through how the hand-off would go, but it’s a smart way to sandbox user permissions.

Hey ddriver,

Rob has really taken some time to lay that out. Thanks for that Rob, another example of how awesome our community is here!

Is this a good starting point for you ddriver? I can move this to Community Help if you would like to get some more input.

Just let me know!

Cheers,

Go ahead and move it over. And yes, thanks again Rob for such a thorough response.

Hey ddriver,

Moving!

Cheers,