In rjournal/rj: Tools for managing the R journal

knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>",
  echo = FALSE,
  warning = FALSE,
  message = FALSE
)

Mission

Each Executive Editor (EE) of the R Journal is the primary article handler for about a third of submissions per year, responsible for:

matching the article with an appropriate Associate Editor (AE) or handling obtaining reviews without an AE.
communicating with AEs on submitted articles, and if necessary providing guidance to an AE about use of GitHub, and relevant rj functionality.
communicating progress and reviews with the corresponding author.
making a final decision if an article should be accepted, or rejected, or on an appropriate revision status, usually based on reviewer and AE feedback.
maintaining and enhancing the rj and rjtools software, in collaboration with other EEs and AEs.

Getting started

Install the rj package with

remotes::install_github("rjournal/rj")

The package is being updated and revised regularly, so you should re-install occasionally.

Emails using the `rj` package

All communications with authors should be generated using the rj package to ensure correspondence is recorded in the GitHub articles repo.

To ensure the email functions work correctly, please add the following line to your .Rprofile file.

options(browser=Sys.getenv('R_BROWSER'))

Assignments

The EIC will assign submissions to you. Notification is via an email to the author, cc'd to you.

With each submission, you can decide to:

reject() the paper as unsuitable for the R Journal.
Choose to send it to an AE via add_ae(), or handle it yourself.
If you handle it yourself, please find suitable reviewers as per the Associate Editor Guide.

Once you have received reports from reviewers or the AE, you can decide to:

reject() the paper
Request a major_revision()
Request a minor_revision()
accept() the paper

library(DiagrammeR)
editor_df <- create_node_df(n=11,
    label=c("is this a new submission?", # 1
            "examine article: should the paper progress to review?", # 2
            "is there a suitable AE?", # 3
            "update status to be `with AE`, update_status(), copy folder to AEs repo", # 4
            "message/email AE", # 5
            "has AE returned reviews and decision?", # 6
            "add_review() to correspondence folder, send decision to author, \n with reviews if appropriate, update_status(), \n notify and thank AE about decision, if appropriate", # 7
            "is the revision adequate?", # 8
            "should it go back to AE?", # 9
            "reject(), contact authors", # 10
            "act as AE, find reviewers, update status, follow AE flow chart"), # 11
   shape = c("ellipse", "ellipse", "ellipse",
             "rectangle", "rectangle",
             "ellipse", "rectangle", "ellipse",
             "ellipse", "rectangle", "rectangle"),
   width = c(3, 5, 3, 5, 2, 3, 4, 3, 3, 3, 4),
   fillcolor = c("orange", "orange", "orange",
                 "grey90", "grey90",
                 "orange", "salmon", "orange",
                 "orange", "salmon", "turquoise"),
   fontcolor = "black")

editor_edge_df <- create_edge_df(
  from = c(1,2,3,4,5,6,1,8, 8,9,9, 2, 3, 6),
  to =   c(2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,7,4,10, 11, 5),
  label = c("Y", "Y", "Y", ".", ".", "Y",
            "N","Y","N", "N", "Y", "N", "N", "N"),
  color = c("dodgerblue2", "dodgerblue2", "dodgerblue2",
            "grey50", "grey50", "dodgerblue2",
            "red", "dodgerblue2", "red", "red",
            "dodgerblue2", "red", "red", "red"))

editor <- create_graph(editor_df,
                       editor_edge_df,
                       directed = TRUE, attr_theme = "tb")
render_graph(editor)

Article assignment to AE

The keywords of a paper should be matched against the keywords of AEs available in associate-editors.csv. Also, the function ae_workload() should be used to ensure that the potential AE hasn't got too many current assignments.

A newly assigned article for an AE needs to have the directory copied from the articles repo to the relevant ae-articles-XX. The articles repo is the master copy, and once a paper is retrieved from an AE, the DESCRIPTION file is updated, and the correspondence folder is populated.

Notify the AE of the assignment. Make sure the AE responds so you can be sure they are handling the submission.

Chase up AEs who have been handling a submission for more than 3 months to check progress.

Checking progress

You should check progress of papers you are handling at least weekly.

report(editor = "XX") where XX is your initials provides a convenient summary of papers allocated to you. Submissions with three stars need urgent attention. Submissions with two stars may also need attention.
summarise_articles(editor = "XX") provides a more detailed summary of each paper.
late_aes(editor = "XX") gives a list of AEs who have not submitted their reviews on time.
late_reviewers(editor = "XX") gives a list of reviewers who have not responded or submitted their reviews on time.

Communications

Slack or email is used for communication, between EIC, EEs and AEs, and general information about operations. The channel editors_private can be used for protected conversations between EEs.

Monthly virtual meetings are held to keep communication between editors current.

Email is the primary manner for communicating with authors. The EE, not AEs, should communicate with authors.

Timeline for reviews

This is what the acknowledgement letter tells authors about the timeline for their paper to be handled:

The submission process proceeds as follows:

review by editorial board & assignment of associate editor (~2-3 weeks)

reviewers solicited (~2-4 weeks)

reviews received (~2-3 months)