Faster Editorial Decisions

Overview

“Our average time to first decision is four months, authors are withdrawing, and I honestly do not know which stage is the problem.” Long turnaround is rarely caused by the platform. It comes from undefined hand-offs, reviewer invitations that go unanswered for weeks, editors who are not reminded, and no one measuring the pipeline.

NeucitePress diagnoses your workflow stage by stage using your own OJS or submission-system data, agrees realistic turnaround targets with your editorial team, redesigns the steps and reviewer-pool practices that cause delay, and reports the numbers every month so the improvement is visible.

Who this is for: editors-in-chief and managing editors of journals with slow or unpredictable decision times, and journals preparing for indexing assessments where peer-review timeliness is checked.

What’s Included

• Workflow diagnosis — stage-by-stage measurement of submission intake, screening, reviewer invitation, review, decision and production, with bottleneck and delay analysis
• Turnaround targets — agreed targets for time to first decision, review completion and decision-to-publication
• Recommendations report (PDF) with prioritized findings
• Redesigned workflow document and standard operating procedures (Standard and Premium tiers)
• Reviewer-pool fixes — invitation cadence, reminder schedules, replacement rules and pool expansion practices
• Author and reviewer email templates and OJS configuration recommendations (Standard and Premium tiers)
• Monthly tracking of turnaround metrics against the targets
• Editor and staff training session (2 hours, online), three months of implementation support and a post-implementation review call (Premium tier)

How It Works

1. Kickoff call — we agree scope, data access and the metrics that matter to you.
2. Diagnosis — we extract stage timings from your system and interview the editorial team.
3. Targets and redesign — you receive the findings report, targets, redesigned workflow and templates. Results are typically delivered within 3–4 weeks of the kickoff call.
4. Implementation and tracking — the new workflow goes live; monthly reports show progress against target.

What Stays With Your Editors

The journal’s editors keep final authority over reviewer selection, editorial assessment and acceptance. NeucitePress designs and runs the process, configures the infrastructure and reports the metrics; every editorial decision remains the journal’s.

Important Limitations

• Turnaround depends on reviewer availability and editor responsiveness. NeucitePress can shorten the administrative stages it controls and improve reviewer response rates; it cannot promise a specific decision time.
• This program redesigns and measures the workflow. Ongoing handling of individual submissions is a separate service (see Managed Editorial Office and Find Reviewers & Follow Up).
• Requires read access to your submission-system data for the diagnosis.

Common Questions

Which platforms do you work with?
OJS is the most common, and the configuration recommendations are written for OJS 3.x. Journals on other systems receive the same diagnosis and workflow redesign.

What if the delay is our reviewers, not our process?
That is the most frequent finding. The reviewer-pool fixes address invitation timing, reminder schedules, replacement rules and how the pool is expanded; if you also want NeucitePress to source reviewers for each submission, that is offered as a separate per-submission service.

Is this a one-time engagement?
Yes for Basic and Standard. Premium adds three months of implementation support and a review call after go-live.

Every engagement can begin with the Journal Health Check.