Solicit commentary

Invite the next stage in the review lifecycle

Proposal Managers, Cochrane Support and Central Editorial Service Only

Review lifecycle: Proposal → Protocol → Review → (Amendment) → Update 

Where the previously accepted or published version of a review is available in EM, you do not need to initiate a proposal.

Instead, you can invite a new submission based on the previously accepted or published submission. For example: when a protocol has published, you can invite authors to start working on the review.

In Editorial Manager this action is known as Solicit Commentary (commissioning a follow-up publication). This links the submissions together in the system so you can see the review progressing through its different stages. 

Solicit Commentary

• Locate the original or 'parent' submission in My Assignments with Final Disposition or All Submissions with Final Disposition > Accept on your Main menu.
• Solicit Commentary from the Action menu.

Send assignment email to Corresponding Author

• Pre-select Article Type for Invited Submissions generated from this Submission: choose the correct article type for the submission you are inviting. 

  • It is essential to pre-select an article type. This allows us to report on the submissions we are expecting.
• Author Response Due: enter 0 (zero) - we do not use this option.
• Author Submission due: add the number of days before the invited submission is due. You can estimate if needed as you can adjust this on the letter screen later in the process. 
  • Default values:
    • Protocol = 120 days
    • Reviews and Updates = 365 days
• Search for the Corresponding Author by name.
• On the Author Candidates screen, select to Asn. (Assign) the Corresponding Author.
• Select the correct Assignment Letter for the article type that you are inviting: 
  • Author Assignment for Protocol
  • Author Assignment for Review
  • Author Assignment for Update
• Click to Customize the letter and make any edits needed. 
• In the body of the email, any text showing as %TEXT% is an automatic merge field. This will convert to text when the message is sent. Click Preview Letter at the top of the screen to see the full text.
• CC. all co-authors into the email (you can use the Email all authors option in Archie/RevMan to copythe addresses as a string).
• If the review is managed by an active group, copy the Managing Editor/group lead into the email
• Save

• Until the authors submit their next draft, the placeholder entry for the next submission will be visible in Submissions with Pending Commentaries on the Proposal menu.
• When the next draft is submitted for editorial approval, View Related Submissions on the Action menu of any linked submission to see linked submissions.

Have I solicited commentary correctly?

To confirm if you have correctly invited the Corresponding Author to submit the next stage, you can:

• Check submission Details > Author(s) Invited to Submit Commentary.
• Check submission History > Correspondence History to confirm that the invitation/assignment email was sent to the Corresponding Author.