Maine Desk
Professional Editorial Services |
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Maine Desk Moves its Journal Review System Online with FormArtist
Summary
"FormArtist solved a problem that had been nagging me for years - how to move the review process for my journals online. I wanted something that was easy to use, secure, and professional. FormArtist has allowed me to create an online review system that has been praised by all my reviewers."
Leslie H. Nicoll, PhD, MBA, RN, Editor-in-Chief & Principal and Owner of Maine Desk
Situation
Both CIN (CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing) Journal and JHPN (Journal of Hospice and Palliative Nursing), are published by Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins. The Editorial Office, however, is maintained as an independent enterprise and housed within Maine Desk, which provides professional editorial services to aspiring authors, particularly in nursing.
Leslie Nicoll has been Editor-in-Chief of CIN since 1995 and JHPN since 2001. She established Maine Desk in November 2001 and created the editorial office for both journals at that time. Prior to that, Leslie was a Senior Research Associate at the Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine , Portland , Maine .
CIN has been published since 1982 and is the leading nursing informatics journal in the world with approximately 5000 subscribers. It is a peer reviewed journal and is indexed in MEDLINE, CINAHL, and Social Science Citation Index (among others). CIN has an active pool of approximately 100 manuscript reviewers and receives in excess of 100 manuscripts per year.
JHPN has been published since 1999, and is the official publication of the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA). It currently has about 6000 subscribers. JHPN is peer reviewed, indexed in CINAHL, has about 60 reviewers and receives about 50 manuscripts per year. The goal is to grow this number to support more frequent publication of the journal. Right now it is published four times per year.
It has been a long standing goal of Leslie's to move to an online submission and review process for both journals. Before implementing FormArtist , Maine Desk was using a traditional paper-based/mail review process. Given that every manuscript is reviewed by at least 2, and often 3 reviewers, this process was expensive: copying the manuscripts and review forms, postage for mailing, and postage for return envelopes. In addition, it was slow, with manuscripts often taking four to six weeks to be reviewed and returned to the office. Manuscripts were also frequently lost in the mail.
Maine Desk used a structured format for comments for reviews. Other journals utilize email based review systems, but with a more free-form format. Leslie was reluctant to do that because she knew that to have a structured format made the reviews more complete and made it easier for her to give useful feedback to authors.
Solution
Maine Desk received a press release from Quask about FormArtist in October, 2003. Leslie immediately sensed that it might be the solution they were looking for and downloaded the trial version from Quask's website. After a bit of trial and error, Leslie was able to create a manuscript review form for CIN and upload it to Quask's test site. She then copied the form as a template and modified it for JHPN.
Maine Desk immediately purchased the Presto version but upgraded to the Professional version when they realized just how versatile the program was. Leslie Nicoll quickly became the chief designer and FormArtist implementer for both journals.
At the time of writing this case study, Maine Desk has 4 forms deployed: manuscript review for CIN; manuscript review for JHPN; poetry/essay review for JHPN; and manuscript reviewer application form for both journals.
Within only a month of installing FormArtist , Maine Desk is rapidly moving away from their old paper based system to a completely online solution. All the reviewers are very enthusiastic about the online review process, finding it quick and easy to use. The time taken to turnaround reviews has dropped dramatically, and they are now getting reviews back in days, instead of weeks!
Implementation
It took Leslie only a weekend to implement the FormArtist solution into Maine Desk. During this set-up period she had a few technical queries which were resolved very quickly and efficiently by Quask's Customer Support team, which she found to be very helpful. They have since taken advantage of the web hosting service from Blue Domino which makes form deployment easy and automatic.
Benefits
So far, they have found the biggest savings to be in time, copying costs, and postage. Explains Leslie, “If you consider that I send out 150 manuscripts for review (for both journals), to 2 or 3 reviewers (let's say 400 packets per year) at $5 per packet, I have the potential to save $2000 next year.
That is significant for a small office that operates on a shoe-string budget!”
“Since the new system is much easier to use and less labor intensive, I am more likely to send every manuscript to 3 reviewers, which should increase the overall quality of the reviews. If someone is unable to review a manuscript, they can contact us immediately and we can select a different reviewer - another timesaving benefit.”
“A major issue in professional publishing is the time lag from receipt to publication. Right now for CIN and JHPN, the time lag is about 12-15 months, which is actually very good in the market (I know of journals that take 24-36 months for publication).
My goal is to get that figure down to 9 months and I think with our expedited submission and review process, this may be possible.”
“I also put my reviewer application online which has turned out to be very successful. Previously, if someone wanted to be a reviewer, they had to write to us, we sent out a packet of information, they had to fill it out and return it. Many reviewers got lost in the process - either we did not send the info in a timely fashion or they never got around to completing it. By having it online, I can just give them the URL and they have the responsibility to complete and submit. People no longer need to contact me, they can just go to the site and sign up to be a reviewer. Simple!”
Since implementing FormArtist, Maine Desk has also developed a new website, www.mainedesk.com, which is generating lots of traffic and requests for information for them.
Future
In terms of expanding their use of FormArtist, they currently have a Lotus Notes based manuscript tracking system (MTS). They are planning to import the XML data from their FormArtist forms into the MTS. That is one plan for the future. They are also looking to use FormArtist as a tool for regularly communicating with all those involved in the journals. Hence they hope to develop annual surveys for authors and reviewers, asking for updates to personal information, questions about the journal, their subscriptions etc. Previously, trying to do anything like this has been very time consuming and expensive.
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