Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (UniSZA), in the state of Terengganu, Malaysia, has 10 different faculties spread across four campuses. UniSZA publishes the Journal of Nusantara Studies (JONUS). Nusantara is an Indonesian and Malay word which refers to a maritime Southeast Asia. Twice a year, JONUS publishes around 20 papers on social and cultural aspects of human behavior in the Nusantara region.
“In our journal, we accept any papers from any country as long as the topics are related to the Nusantara region,” says Dr. Radzuwan Ab Rashid, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Nusantara Studies (JONUS) and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Languages and Communication at the Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Malaysia.
Using ScholarOne Manuscripts, the Journal of Nusantara Studies was able to:
- Streamline its management and reduce the amount of work required to review and publish papers.
- Reach out to higher quality reviewers from around the world, enhancing the journal’s reputation amongst its global reviewer base.
- Ease the reviewer management process, while increasing the journal’s research and reputation.
- Assure authors about the quality and reliability of the journal.
- Educate editors about the elements that make high quality papers and authors on how to enhance the quality of their research-based writing.
Streamlining publication
JONUS started its first issue in 2016. Before its adoption of ScholarOne Manuscripts, communication with authors and reviewers was a slower and more complex process.
Radzuwan recalls that he spent so many hours reading manuscripts, line by line, even after receiving feedback from reviewers, to ensure the quality of submissions. The process was very time consuming and required that a lot of attention be paid both to the submissions and the feedback from reviewers.
ScholarOne Manuscripts helped streamline the publication process, the management of authors and reviewers and helps journals like JONUS improve the quality of reviews and, in turn, of individual papers.
“The ScholarOne submission system is very useful for me as a user to submit papers and it is also very useful from an editorial board perspective,” says Radzuwan. “Definitely, the management has become much easier.”
Previously, staff at JONUS would do most of the management manually, regardless of the capabilities of the software. One key difference with ScholarOne Manuscripts is ongoing support and upgrades.
Other previous challenges were a lack of clarity as to whether authors and reviewers received emails and frequent crashes, particularly during the submission process for new papers. These crashes often discouraged authors who ended up sending papers by email. ScholarOne Manuscripts has offered clarity and stability to JONUS’ processes.
Finding efficiencies
JONUS adopted ScholarOne Manuscripts, making the publishing process more efficient and improving the quality of publications by streamlining communications with authors and reviewers and attracting more of both from further afield.
“When we were using [the previous submission platform], we really had a problem getting good reviewers. There was only had a section where papers could be submitted and we assigned reviewers, but we needed to search for the reviewers manually, and read their emails and all those kinds of things,” says Radzuwan. “It was very taxing managing papers before. With ScholarOne Manuscripts, it is very, very easy. ScholarOne makes the management of the papers more effective.”
ScholarOne Manuscripts’ superior manuscript management capabilities can seamlessly integrate with external systems, and our email templates are cleaner and easier to navigate, more reliably generating responses from authors and reviewers.
Additional benefits
One particularly useful aspect of using ScholarOne Manuscripts is the universe of world class reviewers it opens up. Authors in Malaysia often expect less stringent peer review processes when submitting to local journals, but the journals themselves benefit from maintaining the higher levels of integrity and quality that ScholarOne Manuscripts reviewers can facilitate.
“When they send us a review, sometimes we receive between two and three pages of comments, which are very good and help improve the quality of papers,” says Radzuwan. “I think many, many authors are surprised when they receive the review or when we deliver the comments from reviewers.”
The result is finished papers with much greater economic rigor. Publishing better papers that are more thoroughly reviewed and edited in turn elevates the quality of the journal as a whole. Simultaneously, the process of reaching out to top reviewers around the world spreads the word about the journal and the research it presents, giving it greater academic weight and influence.
Since it started using ScholarOne Manuscripts, JONUS has received papers from a range of sources that were not common before, including from universities in Southeast Asia, mainland China and Taiwan. In recent months, the journal started receiving submissions from Pakistan. The fact that the reviewers hail around the world, including Europe or North America, gives the journal greater visibility.
“Reaching out to reviewers recommended by Web of Science Reviewer Locator on the ScholarOne Manuscripts platform helps to sensitize them that there is a journal on social sciences and Nusantara. And then, maybe, they send us a paper,” says Radzuwan.
Another noticeable change is the number of citations. Radzuwan says JONUS papers have been cited more than 120 times since the journal began using ScholarOne Manuscripts.
“Using ScholarOne Manuscripts reduces 70 percent of the burden of managing the journal compared to our previous platform,” says Radzuwan. “I’ve been telling people that, if your university has a budget, you should go for ScholarOne.”
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