Bulk Manuscript Actions

As an editor, you may sometimes want to take actions that apply to many manuscripts at once. In Scholastica's manuscripts table you can do this using bulk manuscript actions. There are three actions you can take in bulk: assigning an editor, assigning tags, and quick rejecting.

(Note that quick reject is not enabled by default. Your journal's admin must first set up a rejection template in the journal's configuration options to use this feature; details below.)

The first step to using any bulk actions is to select the manuscripts you want to act on. To do this, simply click the checkbox in that manuscript's row in the manuscripts table. The row will be highlighted blue once you have selected it. Alternatively, you can click the checkbox in the black table header to choose all the manuscripts currently displayed.

A .gif of a user using the checkboxes in a row in the manuscript table to select multiple papers at once. They then open the bulk actions dropdown which is unable to be clicked until at least once manuscript is selected.

Remember that if you search, sort or filter the table after making a selection, your selection will be lost - you cannot select manuscripts across multiple pages or separate searches.

Once you have made your selection, you will be able to choose from the options in the bulk actions drop down menu.

Assign editor

The assign editor bulk action allows you to assign the selected manuscripts to a single editor (or no one).

When you choose this action, you will be asked which editor to assign the selected manuscripts to and whether to send that editor a notification email.

A .gif of a user using the checkboxes in a row in the manuscript table to select multiple papers at once. They then open the bulk actions dropdown, select

Assign tags

The assign tags bulk action allows you to assign tags to all of the selected manuscripts at once.

Simply select the manuscripts you want to tag, choose 'Assign tags' from the bulk manuscript actions menu, and then assign one or more tags and click save.

Quick reject

The quick reject bulk action is not enabled by default. In order for your journal's editors to have access to this option, it must be enabled by the journal's admin in the configuration options section of the journal's settings. To do so:

From your Dashboard, navigate to: My Journals > Settings > Journal Settings >Configuration Options .
Select the Special Reject Options section from the sidebar on the left.
Under "Quick reject submissions from manuscripts table" click
Enter a template to enable quick reject .
Enter the template for your journal's rejection letter.
Click Save
The template will be saved and the quick reject option will be enabled.
You can always disable the quick reject option by coming back to this page and unchecking the box next to the option. Click Update Journal to save the change.

Enable Quick Reject

With your quick reject template enabled, you can now reject manuscripts in bulk from the manuscripts table. When you do so, the decision template set up by the admin editor will be sent to the authors of the rejected manuscripts.

Please note: if you have any author-visible review feedback submitted for that manuscript, it will not automatically be sent with the decision letter when issuing a quick reject decision.

If you're quick rejecting old articles from several months (or even years!) ago and don't want the author to receive an email notifying them of your decision, you can just uncheck the box labeled "send an email with this decision" on the quick reject pop-up box.

Please note : Law authors tend to prefer to receive decisions, so this option should really only be used when making decisions on manuscripts that were submitted over a year ago. Please click here to read about how real law authors feel about receiving decisions.