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Resources → Editors → FAQs

Who will I work with at Maney Publishing?
Editors of Maney published journals are well supported by dedicated members of a team who each have their own responsibility. Every journal is assigned a Managing Editor, Marketing Executive, Production Editor, and Customer Sales and Service Executive. Maney staff works closely with Journal Editors.

• The Managing Editor, or Publisher, oversees relations with the parent society, attends publication committee or Editorial Board meetings, and maintains informal contact with all concerned with the successful publishing of the journal.
• The Marketing Executive implements the promotional campaign for a journal or book series, liaising with the Editor or society officer over the content and style of marketing material, and the priorities of the marketing plan and its progress. We encourage editors and society officers to deal directly with the marketing department, thereby bringing new opportunities for promotion to our notice. 
• The Production Editor supervises every aspect of the publication of an issue, from receipt of copy to the despatch of eprints, copyediting, typesetting, proofing, and printing. Behind this three-strong team are the full resources of the company.
• The Customer Sales and Services Executive will liaise with subscribers and subscriber agents to renew subscriptions to the Journal; circulate invitations to renew to all current and recently lapsed subscribers, following-up with several reminders where required; issue pass numbers to enable secure online access to renewed subscribers; issue complete mailing data and despatch instructions to the printer for mailing each issue of the Journal on publication, and handle claims for non-receipt and mailings of issues to late-paying subscribers.

How can Editors contribute to the marketing and advertising of a journal?
The marketing department will ensure that all journals are appropriately marketed and promoted. The main marketing activities are direct mail, attendance at relevant conferences, and advertising. Editors can play an important role in the marketing of a journal by identifying specialist conferences and seminars, recommending links to and from the Maney website, and posting information on listservs and discussion groups.

All Maney journals are peer reviewed! Why is the peer review process so important and what guidelines does Maney recommend?

Rigorously maintained, the peer review process is an integral part of the evaluation of submitted papers. The Editor will seek the advice of the journal’s Editorial Board and others with relevant expertise to ensure the standard and integrity of contributions published (following revision where appropriate) is maintained. It is vital that the confidentiality and intellectual property of the authors and reviewers are respected during the peer review process. For more information about Maney’s policy regarding peer review please click here.

Why do we ask authors to assign their copyright to the journal and what rights do they have after publication?
Maney fulfils its obligation to authors, and the societies for whom it publishes, by disseminating their scholarship and research as widely as possible. This involves international print distribution and multiple licenses for online access. Only by the assignment of copyright by authors can Maney make the necessary arrangements with consortia, networks of campus libraries, and professional groups, and protect the integrity of the published work.

Authors retain certain rights after the assignment of copyright has taken place:
Maney will never unreasonably withhold permission for an author to republish his or her own material, subject to acknowledgement of the original place of publication. In all cases the author should contact permissions@maney.co.uk for an official letter of permission. There are various instances where authors may reuse their work without seeking additional permission from Maney, so long as no commercial use is made of the article. Please click here for full information.


Who is responsible for obtaining permissions for the reuse of illustrations, tables or quotes in articles?
The author of a submission is responsible for obtaining permission for the reuse of any material published. Any illustration, table or quotation (including short sections of poems) that is subject to any kind of copyright, or ownership by a third party, needs to have permission clearance before use from the copyright holder. Click here for a document containing further advice for authors about what kinds of permissions they need and when they will need to obtain them.

Authors are happy to assign copyright of the article text to the journal copyright holder, but wish to retain copyright of their own images that are published within it, what should they do?
If an author does not wish to assign the copyright of his or her own images in the manuscript to the journal copyright holder along with the rest of the article, this can be accommodated. Please click here for full information.

What are the ethical obligations of Editors? What should I do if plagiarism is suspected or if an article has been submitted to another journal?
If you suspect an article is not the author’s original, or the article has already been published in another journal, please contact the Managing Editor of the journal. If the work has already been published elsewhere, this may be detected by checking new submissions against databases such as Scopus, Medline or Web of Science, or through Google Scholar.
Similarly, if you suspect that an article includes plagiarised work, notification to the Managing Editor must be made. Please refer to the Publishing Ethics section for more information.

 

An author would like his or her paper to be published as an open access work so that it is available for all to read without a subscription. Is this possible?
Yes, publishing an open access (MORE OpenChoice) paper is possible in the Maney journals listed here . Click here  for article charges and information on how MORE OpenChoice operates.


Who is responsible for the appointment of the Editorial Board, and what are their responsibilities?
It is the responsibility of the Editor to appoint members of the Editorial Board. The Editorial Board, which should be large enough to provide the necessary expertise, while of a sufficient size for regular communication, is an international group of scholars and experts, committed, for a fixed term of office, to the high quality and strategic direction of the journal.

The main responsibilities for an effective board member are:

• To advise the journal Editor, and the Publisher’s Managing Editor, on all aspects of the content of the journal with particular emphasis on its aims, scope, quality and standards.  
• To referee papers for the journal, particularly when a quick response or special expertise is required.  
• To help the Editor to identify referees for papers when asked.
• To provide suggestions for contributions to the journal, such as editorials, reviews, and conference symposia which might form the basis of special issues or supplements and commission articles for general issues where appropriate. 
• To disseminate the aims and scope and activities of the journal through academic and professional networks.
• To provide information on conferences and workshops to the Managing Editor for the purposes of promoting the journal. [The larger, national and international conferences should be known; it is information on the smaller, irregular ones that is more difficult to acquire.]
• To promote the journal by distributing flyers and publicity materials at conferences and workshops, and to relevant contacts.
• To help the Publisher’s Managing Editor to identify important research and/or teaching institutions which might subscribe to the journal.
• To attend Editorial Board meetings with due regard to availability and geographical location.

All Editorial Board members are entitled to a complimentary subscription to the Online version of the journal.

Will my journal have a production schedule for publication and why is this important?
Maney has an obligation to authors and subscribers to publish journals quickly, regularly, and on time, and production schedules, agreed with the Editor, enable us to do this.  For more information about production please click here.

What is the average submission length, and should Editors only publish unsolicited material?
Submissions vary between different subject disciplines and journals. As a guide, humanities articles should not normally exceed 10,000 words, with an additional 150– 200 word abstract. Materials Science papers are roughly 3500 words, with short communications being 1000–1500 words, and review articles or critical assessments comprising of 4000–5000 words. Healthcare journals have more variation, but should normally not exceed 5000 words. For further information, please refer to the Instructions for Authors pages, to be found on each journal page. Search our journals here to find Instructions for Authors.

Unless they only publish reviews, most journals publish unsolicited articles that have been refereed and approved (usually after a requirement to make revisions of varying extent). The acceptance rate of a journal will depend on the quality of the articles submitted, and the number of articles that the issues of the journal can contain. In addition to unsolicited articles, Editors may commission reviews, articles from leading academics, or special issues, for the interest and instruction of readers, and to develop the subject. Solicited or commissioned articles are subject to refereeing like all other submissions. For more information about peer review please click here.

The journal I edit uses Editorial Manager™, what information do I need to give to reviewers?
Here are some questions that reviewers are likely to ask about Editorial Manager™ (EM). Please direct them to this page for further help, and advise them to download the tutorial for reviewers available here.

How do I submit a review of a paper?

• Login to the EM site as a reviewer
• Accept the invitation to review as follows: Main Menu > New Reviewer Invitations > Agree to Review
• Submit your review as follows: Main Menu > Pending assignments > Action Links > Submit Recommendation 
• Select your recommendation from the drop-down menu located at the top of the page, fill in the manuscript rating questions and enter your comments in the space provided at the bottom of the page. The feature to upload a marked up manuscript is available on certain EM sites.
• Click on ‘Upload Reviewer Attachments’ at the bottom of the page and follow instructions to attach your file.

I have been asked to review a paper in a journal that uses Editorial Manager™, how can I access a Word version of the paper?
View assigned paper as follows:
Main Menu > Pending assignments > Action Links > View Submission
If the author has uploaded a Word file, this can be downloaded from the blue hyperlink at the beginning of the full paper (the link will appear at the top of page 2 or 3 of the PDF file). Click this link and save the document on your local drive. Track changes may then be used to make amendments or insert comments directly onto the manuscript. Some EM sites have the option to upload attachments with your review. If this feature is available, click on ‘Upload Reviewer Attachments’ at the bottom of the reviewer recommendation page and follow instructions to attach your file. If the upload feature is not available, please email the marked up manuscript to the editorial office. Contact details can be found in the Instructions for Authors or on the EM site.

What are impact factors and how are they calculated? What other metrics are being used for the evaluation of journals?
Apart from the use to which the Web of Science database is put by researchers searching for the latest literature, it is also used for calculating the impact factor of a journal. An impact factor is calculated either over a two or a five year period, and is the number of citations (i.e. the number of times articles from a journal are included in the list of references in other journals) divided by the number of articles published in the journal. If, on average, every article published in a journal is cited twice, its impact factor will be 2. For example, Journal X has published 24 articles and has been cited 48 times. The 48 citations are divided by the 24 articles published.  More recently other journal metrics have been developed, for example the Eigen factor and Sci-Imago, and the impact of a journal can also be assessed using Scopus.

 

What do i do if I receive a submission with poor English?

Submissions may require editing for language before peer review or acceptance. Editors may ask authors to revise the manuscript themselves or ask a native speaker to help them. For authors submitting with poor English language skills may wish to use a professional language-editing service.

 

Editors may include the following note in their communications to authors. Please note that editors using Editorial manager to handle submissions may already have a separate decision term and letter for this purpose. Please ask the Managing Editor if you would like this set up for your journal.

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Language and language-editing:

Submissions are vetted for quality of written language and may be rejected on these grounds. Authors submitting in English may wish to use an English language-editing service to refine their manuscript before submission. For information about language-editing services and discounts, please visit www.maney.co.uk/languageediting.

Use of an editing service does not gurantee that your paper will be accepted for publication. A decision will be made following the usual peer review process.

NB: Some Maney journals publish in languages other than English. Authors should check carefully prior to submission of their article the languages accepted for publication for each title.