SAGE Open case study
“When journals need temporary resourcing for whatever reason – an editor transition, a spike in submissions – Editorial Office is our first stop. We know they can hit the ground running.”
Kim Mitchell, Director, Open Access Journals at SAGE Publishing
SAGE Open was receiving submissions faster than their team could process them and they needed additional support with peer review tasks, while they grew their in-house peer review resources. Editorial Office stepped in to offer the support they needed.
Collaboration and communication
We started working with SAGE thanks to an acquisition – and as they didn’t have the internal capacity at the time to support the new titles, we continued to manage their peer review. Happily, SAGE were delighted with the service and stability we provided and these journals remain with us over five years on.
SAGE Open noted that the difference with Editorial Office is that we are interested in the specific needs of our partners. We asked thoughtful questions as they transitioned the first articles to us. This helps us to ensure we are collaborating effectively and efficiently.
Our communication has remained strong, too. Editorial Assistant, Annette Butler, who acts as the ‘point-person’ for SAGE Open, meets regularly with the team, to discuss workflows and any process changes. As Bailey Baumann, Managing Editor shares: “I look forward to my bi-weekly calls with Annette Butler because of her great ideas and her positivity.”
We also collaborate over Microsoft Teams and Google Docs. This allows Editorial Office to leave detailed notes in the peer review site, ScholarOne. Using these tools ensure the team at SAGE Open have an easy way to check on the work we have been sent.
Partner feedback
- Quickly get up to speed
- Make suggestions for improving processes
- Can scale up and scale down support as needed
Consistency and continuity.
Editorial Office aims to offer flexibility and we have been able to scale up and scale down support as needed by SAGE Open. We have some journals we work on, on an established basis and we know SAGE Open rely on our consistent approach and quality work.
If temporary resourcing is needed, we also offer more support. Importantly, when new freelancers from Editorial Office are assigned to work on SAGE Open, their team report that they barely notice the change because we select and train our team so well. This means a lot to us and is testament to the standards our in-house staff members maintain.
Currently, we are supporting SAGE Open with reviewer selection, initial checklists, and post acceptance checklists. Find out more about our Sourcing and Securing Reviewers services here.
We are also helping with some emails to authors, reviewers, and external editors. The SAGE Open team see that we work with speed and attention to detail, and are quick to adjust to process changes and take on new tasks. Find out more about our Email Management services here.