Transfer Desk for Publishing Editors
The Springer Nature transfer service has expanded rapidly in recent years, and it is now a deeply-integrated aspect of submissions for most of our portfolios.
Cheryl Fernandes talks about her experiences as a Publishing Editor working with Transfer Desk.
How does your workflow change for transfers?
As a Publishing Editor, the workflow does not change. After a paper is rejected and transferred by an Editor-in-Chief, it is handled by an Editorial Submission Advisor (ESA) at the Transfer Desk. Transfers are received at journals as regular submissions and are assigned as per the usual workflow of the journal. As such, Publishing Editors do not handle transfers and there are no changes to the workflow.
How do transfers affect your KPIs and how can they be monitored?
Transfers affect many if not all of the KPIs measured for regular submissions. Once received, transfers are handled as regular submissions. They are included in overall rejection and acceptance numbers. Our reporting allows us to identify the number of transfers received, invited for review and accepted in our journals. Depending on the volume of transfers received, turnaround times can also be impacted.
Transfers support growth in our journals and contribute to yearly targets.
How has your experience been with transfers?
As the Transfer Desk deals with large volumes of papers across Springer Nature portfolios, my portfolio has diversified in terms of the origin of papers received via transfers. In particular in some journals, the acceptance rate of transfers is greater than that of organic submissions. The various Dashboards allow us to identify which journals donate transfers into our journals and vice versa.
I’m also reassured to see that authors rejected at my journals are finding alternative and more suitable homes within Springer Nature.
If any adjustments to configurations or cascade preferences are required, it’s very easy to get in touch with the Submissions and Author Service team.
What are you hoping transfers will (be able to) do in the future?
I hope that transfers could be tracked end-to-end. In other words it would be helpful to easily monitor the journey of a paper from the point at which it is first submitted to a Springer Nature journal. This visibility will assist us in future to guide authors to the right destination as early on as possible, improving the overall author experience. It will also help us to identify ways in which our journals could be developed to accommodate a wider array of authors.
If you are an editor you can learn how you can benefit by using the Transfer Desk service.
If you are an author you can learn more about Transfer Desk, how to use it and its benefits by visiting its dedicated page.
About the author
Chery Fernandes has spent the last year working as Publishing Editor for an applied sciences portfolio. She has recently joined the Submissions and Author Service Department.
