Transfer Desk for Editors

How the Springer Nature Transfer Desk helps journal Editors

You’ve worked hard to attract submissions to your journal. That hard work has still paid off—even if some of the submissions that you get aren’t the right fit for your journal.

Those authors thought highly enough of your journal to send you their work. And even when it’s not the right fit for you, you have the chance to repay the compliment by helping them find a Springer Nature journal that is a better fit.

That’s where the Transfer Desk comes in. The Transfer Desk helps you help researchers submitting their work to you in several ways:

It expands services your journal offers to your authors
It is an alternative to outright rejection for papers that you reject due to scope, or selectivity on interest level
It helps the research community by ensuring that all useful research is published in a timely way, enabling a complete scholarly record

The Transfer Desk on The Source

Read about the Transfer Desk on The Source—including interviews, profiles, and more.

This is what it is:

How can you benefit from the Transfer Desk?

The Transfer Desk can offer editors more control and choice over what happens to rejected papers, making it easy to decline articles and helping authors find the most suitable home. So you can feel comfortable sending sound submissions on for transfer quickly, knowing that our Transfer Desk team will do the hard work of finding more suitable journals, and in most cases transferring over the author’s files. 97% of transferred authors have rated the Transfer Desk's service as satisfactory.

What is the Transfer Desk?

The Transfer Desk is a team of subject specialists, familiar with their fields and with Springer Nature’s journals in those fields, who help match article submissions to the right journals to publish them. For you as an Editor, the Transfer Desk helps send suitable, quality submissions to you; and helps you provide better service to authors so you don't have to just reject articles that don't fit your journal.

This is how it works:

Transfer offer

When you reject a manuscript, you can either reject it outright or, if you feel the paper is sound and might fit well in another journal, you can send it to the Transfer Desk. You always have the option to reject without transfer and the Transfer Desk will only make transfer suggestions for papers that you, the editor, has deemed suitable for transfer.

Propose suitable journals

An Editorial Submissions Advisor (ESA)—who has expertise in your field—analyzes the manuscript and proposes one or more suitable journals, and sends those recommendations to the author. The ESA decides this based on their subject matter and journal portfolio knowledge, our advanced journal matching technology, as well as the authors’ submission preferences.

Authors’ decision

The author lets us know the journal they would like to submit their manuscript to.

Submission assistance

The Transfer Desk will assist the authors with the submission to their journal-of-choice. In most cases, Transfer Desk helps the author with sending their manuscript and other files to the receiving journal’s Editor.

New submission

The manuscript arrives at the receiving journal for editorial assessment, as a new submission, in line with that journal’s Instructions for Authors. The journal’s Editor then begins the editorial assessment process, as with any other submission. The Editor has complete control over editorial decisions for the submission.

“[The] Transfer Desk allows me as an editor-in-chief to manage my journal’s scope whilst at the same time maximize the chances of good papers getting published. Through the Transfer Desk, I can acknowledge the quality of work that does not fit the journal’s scope, avoiding the ambiguity for authors about a ‘reject’.”

What Editors say

Many of our papers that we reject as under threshold are in perfect scope for another journal within the company. The Transfer Desk knows all possible journal targets, including journals that we aren’t always aware of, and can help our authors find the perfect home for their manuscript where they can reach their intended audience.
—Barbara Cheifet, Chief Editor of Genome Biology
This is an excellent opportunity to be rewarded for the research accomplished. Some research ideas may be better suited for journals that we have not previously considered.
The Transfer Desk service provides an easy and seamless way for me to offer transfers for sound papers that are rejected due to reasons such as scope. All I need to do is click through the decision and the Transfer Desk takes care of the rest.
—Professor Elias Brinks, University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, Editor-in-Chief of Astrophysics and Space Science
Transfer desk is a very helpful support service to speedily get articles to the most suitable journals.

Frequently asked questions

Do I get a say in which journals are recommended to authors?

If an author is offered a transfer, does this mean that the author must accept this or is the Transfer Service optional for the authors?

Will it be indicated in the manuscript files that it is a transfer?

What will be the status of peer review reports from the previous journal? Will they travel over to the new journal that is considering the article?

How can I reject a manuscript without offering a transfer?

Will you recommend open access journals that require the payment of an article-processing charge?

Other services for editors

Reviewer Finder

Find peer reviewers for your journal's manuscript submissions faster and easier than ever before.

SharedIt

Your journal articles can be shared freely by your authors and readers.

ORCID

ORCID allows your authors to identify themselves at the time of submission with a personal, permanent digital code that distinguishes them from other researchers.