Does Scholastica support technical checklists?

Yes! Your admin editor can set up a manual technical checklist for submissions that you've received to make it easy for you and your editors to ensure you're ticking off all the important items on your checklist when moving a paper through your peer-review process.

Creating and editing technical checklists

Your journal can have one active checklist at a time. When you have created and activated a technical checklist, that checklist will show on all new submissions received after that point and all editors that have access to that manuscript can help mark items off the checklist to mark progress for your paper.

To create a technical checklist, the admin editor for your journal will navigate to My Journals > Settings > Journal Settings > Configuration Options > Technical checklists then click "Create new technical checklist".

Once on the "Create new technical checklist" page, you'll be reminded that the items you add here should be ones that you and your team will check off manually when complete.

Give your technical checklist a clear title, so if you create a different technical checklist later you can easily remember which is which. Please note: Your journal can only have one active checklist at a time, but you can create and save another technical checklist to activate for use later, replacing the previously-active one.

Restricting editor actions until the checklist is complete

Below the technical checklist title are the options to prohibit your team from 1. inviting reviewers 2. issuing a decision 3. or both until all items in the checklist have been marked complete.

An example use case:

If the admin editor has selected the "All technical checklist items must be completed before inviting reviewers" restriction when creating their technical checklist, then the editor will see the following warning when trying to invite reviewers:

Once all of the items are checked off by the editor, like so:

✅ Handling editor confirms that the manuscript has been appropriately anonymized

✅ Handling editor confirms that they've reviewed the plagiarism report

✅ Handling editor confirms that they've read the author's cover letter

Then the handling editor will be able to click "Invite Reviewer" because they've checked off all items on the technical checklist.

Instructional text

You can optionally include instructional text to preface the technical checklist for your editors to clarify any fine-tuned points or explain who they should contact if they have any questions along the way. If you'd like to include hyperlinks, images, or other formatting, you can do so using Markdown.

Creating checklist category headers and checklist items

The admin editor can create category headers for your checklist to easily organize your checklist items by type of check being completed or by individual who you expect to complete those items.

To create a category header, click "Add" > "New category header" > Then enter the desired name of your category header and click "Create category header".

Once you've created your category header(s) you'll be able to click "+Add item to category". You can click and drag to rearrange your category headers as well as to rearrange individual checklist items within a specific category.

If you don't need or want to use category headers, you can simply create a list of checkboxes directly by clicking "Add" > "Checklist item" > Enter your checklist item text and then click "Add" to finish.

Saving, activating, and deactivating your checklist

At the bottom of the technical checklist create/edit page, you can click "Save" on the left to save your changes.

You can click "Activate" to activate a currently inactive list and "Deactivate" to deactivate a currently active list.

If you choose to click "Activate" on 'List B' when you already have 'List A' active, you'll be alerted that 'List B' will be activated and will apply to future submissions from that point forward and that 'List A' will automatically be deactivated for future submissions. Submissions that were received prior to 'List B''s activation will still show 'List A''s technical checklist items.

The same applies for edits to a technical checklist. If my technical checklist has a category header of "Managing Editor tasks", then I receive a submission, then I edit my technical checklist to change that category header to "Managing Editor Susan's tasks", that previously-received submission will still show the category header of "Managing Editor tasks".

How to check off and complete Technical Checklist items

Any editors that have access to a given manuscript with an active Technical Checklist can complete checklist items by navigating to My Journals > Manuscripts > Clicking the manuscript title > Clicking "Technical Checklist" in the left "Editor Work Area" toolbar > Clicking the checkbox for the pertinent item.

The editor's activity will be recorded so you can easily reference which editors marked off which checklist items as complete:

Once checked, an item can still be unchecked if it was marked complete in error or if additional work is required. Any editor can click the checked checkbox to 'uncheck' it.

To see the full history of which checkbox items were checked, by whom, and in what order, just navigate to the Activity History thread in the manuscript work area for that paper: