OJS3 Tutorial: Sending the Author Agreement as email attachment
The Libraries’ latest standard agreement between partner Journals and Authors states, in the opening, that the Article is accepted for publication (pending ordinary editing). The most appropriate moment to send the agreement to an author is therefore after the review process, upon acceptance for publication of their submission. Signed agreements should then be collected and archived before the publication of the issue. This tutorial provides guidance on how to send the agreement as attachment to the Acceptance for Publication email to the author and where to store the signed contracts on OJS. |
STEP 1. First, you need to ensure that your current author agreement is saved in the OJS Publisher Library. To do so, go to Settings→Workflow and select the Publisher Library tab.
If your journal’s author contract is already saved in the Publisher Library, you can skip to Step 3.
STEP 2. Click on Add a file on the top right. In the new window, enter a filename, select Permissions as file type, upload the author agreement, check the Public Access box, click OK.
The Author Agreement is now saved in your Publisher Library. If you wish, now you can also make it available to download on your journal’s site from the Author Guidelines or Submission Guidelines sections, so that prospective authors will be able to review the terms of the contract before submitting their manuscript. To do so, you can copy the URL that has been associated with the file. You can see it by opening the edit panel.
STEP 3. Let’s now take a sample submission that has just finished the peer review stage. The journal has decided to accept the article for publication.
From the Submission management panel, in the Review tab the editor can click on the Accept Submission button to notify the author.
STEP 4. In the new window, scrolling down you should see the hidden menu Select Library Files to attach, click on it to see the files in the Publisher Library. Now that the author agreement is stored there, you can attach it to the acceptance letter and send it out for the author to sign.
STEP 5. Once the author has returned the signed author agreement, you can store the file for your record in the Submission Library. From the Submission management panel, click on the Library button on the top right corner.
STEP 6. In the new window, you can click on Add a file, enter a file name, choose Permissions as file type, upload the signed agreement, and click OK. The signed agreement is now stored in the respective Submission Library.
That’s all!
