Configuration guide

This section provides an overview of adminstration features. It is reserved to editors with the following rights: - Manage journal configuration - Manage account profiles

Categorization of articles

Categorization of articles

Article types

Article types are the main entry point to configure the workflow. They are created, edited, or deleted on this page:

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Clicking on the edit icon image.png will get you to the configuration for this article type:

Categorization of articles

Standard categorizations

Nestor provides a wide choice of tools to categorize articles:

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For a specific article, those categories are available and may be corrected in the metadata module.

Category name Particularities
Expertise fields

  • Tree structure

  • Used to categorize articles and users, to improve editors/referees matches for a given article
Article types
Sections
  • Flat list
Topical issues
  • Flat list

These categories can be updated automatically:

These categories may be used in combination to:

Categorization of articles

Special categorizations: custom fields

Custom fields are a way to categorize articles in any way besides standard categorizations. They can be quite simple (text, date etc.), or they can be used to create special options related to your journal.

For a specific article, custom fields are available and may be corrected in the metadata module.

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Custom fields configuration is available here:

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Simple custom fields

There are five types of "simple" custom fields:

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For example, let us imagine that for each article, I want to track the number of pages.

I can configure a custom field accepting only numbers, so:

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In the article page, I will retrieve my field and can input the relevant data for this article:

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List custom fields

The custom fields select / checkbox / radio are used to create a flat list of selectable options. When creating such a custom field, you will have to provide the corresponding list of options:

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The configured options will then be selectable in the article page:

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Custom fields and other tools

Categorization of articles

File types

File types may be configured in the journal configuration, where file types are listed, and may be created, updated, or deleted:

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Clicking on “Edit file type” will get you to the file type configuration, where the following options must be edited for any given file type:

Categorization of articles

Flags

Flags are symbols displayed on articles, to help editors to identify important information. They are visible both in articles pages and in articles lists.

Flags on the article page
 Flags in article lists
In article pages, flags are displayed in the upper information area, near the reference and the status
 In article lists, flags are displayed next to the reference

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Configuring flags

Flags are based on the article metadata and categorizations. The following data can be flagged:


Flags: a case study

For example, we want to closely follow articles submitted for a 2023 special issue. Let us create this flag:

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Any article included in this topical issue will be flagged accordingly:

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Categorization of articles

Data exports

Exporting data from Nestor is a simple process, please have a look here :)

Workflow configuration

The workflow is defined at the article type level. However, please also ensure that your users can execute relevant actions (such as technical checks, assignments, decisions...): check the next chapter for more details.

Workflow configuration

Workflow summary

The workflow is divided into statuses, an article will go through a series of statuses to reach a final decision.

Below is a diagram of the Nestor workflow. For each status, Nestor expects an action from the indicated user, and use the due date to calculate delays.

Blue boxes represent editorial statuses: they will appear in editors' to-do list and require your attention!

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Some parts of the workflow are highly configurable, namely:

Configuring these usually involves:

Workflow configuration

Submission

Before configuring the submission workflow, please ensure the following are defined properly in your journal:

Article type configuration

Once the above are defined, the submission workflow is easily configured at the article type level, where specific file types and metadata may be requested at submission or revision.

Two practical examples:

For each article type, you may configure:

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Configuration of the submission questionnaire

First, configure your questions to the author here:

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Then, set up the questionnaire in each relevant article type:

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Configuration of submission instructions 

During the submission process, the author may be guided during each step of the submission. For this purpose, you may configure specific instructions here:

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These instructions will be displayed to the author in the submission tunnel:

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Configuration of submission e-mails

E-mails triggered by the article submission are configurable in the mail configuration.

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Submission e-mails can be triggered to these recipients:

The events triggering submission mails are:

Workflow configuration

Technical check

Article type configuration

The technical check workflow is first defined at the article type level. For each article type, you can enable/disable the technical check, and set up the time granted to the author to satisfy the technical check:

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Profile configuration

Once article types are configured, you must ensure at least one person can perform the technical check action.


Configuration of technical check e-mails

Once technical check is set up, new submissions/revisions will feature those two actions:

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These actions trigger e-mails, whose templates are configurable in the mail configuration:

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TC e-mails can be triggered only to the corresponding author, who will need to correct his paper accordingly.

NB A special event exists to notify the editor when the author revises after a technical check:

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Workflow configuration

Editorial assignments

Manual assignments

Configuring a manual assignment is done at the profile level. For a given profile:

For example, an Editor-in-Chief will usually have the right to assign:

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Configuration of manual assignments e-mails

This allows e.g. the Editorial Office to access more specific assignment letters (compared to an EiC).


Automatic assignment strategies

Automatic assignments are defined on this dedicated page:

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When an article lands in the status "Awaiting assignment", Nestor will check the strategies defined here and apply them if the criteria are met. The goal is to quickly dispatch articles to relevant editors based on the article metadata. The dispatch criteria can be any standard or custom field.

Stragegies are sorted by priority, with upper strategies having higher priority. As soon as a criteria is met, the strategy is applied, and lower strategies are ignored. A strategy with inactive editors will always be ignored (see ⚠ in the screenshot)

For example in the screenshot above, a paper with:

will match the second strategy and be dispatched to Pascale and Thierry.

Configuration of automatic assignments e-mails


Strategies and filiation links

It is recommended to have a decision-making editor close to the rightmost editor, so that any proposal is passed on and a decision can be reached quickly. For a given strategy, multiple editors can be assigned on the fly:

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When there are multiple editors in a strategy, Nestor will assign them sequentially from left to right and apply responsability rules.

As such, the rightmost editor in the strategy will always be the current editor and receive the assignment notification. His parent editors are merely put in cc of the notification. This is extremely useful to assign several affiliated editors to handle e.g. a special issue:

Editor-in-Chief > Associate Editor > Guest Editor (= current)

In that example, the Guest-Editor will be responsible for handling the peer review, and his decision proposal can be subject to validation by his parent (in the screenshot above: the Associate Editor).

 

Workflow configuration

Peer review

Configuration of the referee questionnaire

First, configure your questions to the referee here:

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Article type configuration

Once the questionnaire is ready, activate the peer review and set up the questionnaire in each relevant article type. 

For each article type, you can enable/disable the peer review and set up the time granted to referees to answer invitations and send reports:

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The numbers of mandatory review defines how Nestor handles the statuses transition, as defined here.

 

Profile configuration

Once article types are configured, you must ensure profiles have the right to manage the peer review:

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Sending the paper to referees

Once the above configurations are ok, the peer review workflow is functional. It is documented here.

Workflow configuration

Decisions: the recommendation system

Depending on your workflow needs, your journal can use very specific labels for decisions. Some decisions will be related to scientific corrections, others may be related to copyediting or language corrections. In Nestor those labels are called "recommendations". Here are a few common examples:

Acceptance group
 Revision group
 Rejection group
  • Provisory acceptance
  • Acceptance
  • Minor revision
  • Major revision
  • English revision
  • Proofreading revision
  • etc.
  • Direct rejection
  • Rejection after refereeing
  • Rejection for plagiarism
  • Rejection for serial publication
  • etc.

Those labels are freely configurable here:

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From this page, you will be able to set up:

Workflow configuration

Configuration of questionnaires

 

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Writing in progress...    ↁ_ↁ

Any enquiries? please contact us:  support@nestor-edp.org

 

Configuration of user rights

Configuration of user rights

The author and the referee profile

In Nestor, all users are considered potential authors or referees. Consequently, author and referee profiles are unique. For a given journal:

The main focus of those pages is the visibility regarding peer review. Those configurations can be found here:

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Note that other settings may interest you:

Configuration of user rights

Editor profiles

Contrary to the author and referee profile, editor profiles are not unique. It is very common for a journal to configure several profiles, with different sets of rights. The reason is that editor profiles are used by people with different tasks as regards articles. Common examples of profiles are:

The configuration can be found here:

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Each editor profile has specific settings. Settings are sorted by family:

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Configuration of user rights

Granting editor rights to someone

To grant an editor access to someone, you must first access the user page. Just click on someone's name in an article or in search results:

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In the user account page, you may simply assign the editor profile here:

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Configuration of user rights

Disabling/removing an editor

When an editor leaves your editorial board, it is recommended to just disable his profile:

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This way:

Note that disabling the profile as indicated will:

Configuration of user rights

Editor profile: decisions and proposals

Depending on his/her profile, an editor can either propose or take a decision on a version (cf. the related editor guide).

This is defined in the article workflow rights:

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Decisions and proposals: purposes

Your journal may or may not allow associate editors to send decisions directly. It sometimes happen that the decision to author is subject to approval by the Editor-in-Chief.


Example 1


Some journals have a straightforward acceptance workflow:

Example 2


Other journals apply a more stringent procedure, where:

  • The editor in charge proposes acceptance to the Editor-in-Chief
  • The EIC checks the proposal and sends the final decision of acceptance


Technical differences

Decisions

Proposals
Trigger an editable message from Editor to Author Trigger an editable message from Editor to his parent (assigning) editor

Is recorded in the decision module

 Is recorded in the decision module
Article changes status according to the decision

Article change status to "Decision proposed"
The current editor does not change
 The parent (assigning) editor becomes current (see also responsabililty swiches)


Link with the recommendation system

When configuring editor rights, please take care of selecting the available recommendations for this profile. See also the dedicated page for setting up recommendations.

Configuration of user rights

Editor profile: responsibility (in charge)

Writing in progress...    ↁ_ↁ

Any enquiries? please contact us:  support@nestor-edp.org

Configuration of user rights

Landing pages at connection

The behaviour of Nestor at login differs according to the user's profile and activity.

Depending on the following priorities, the user will either land on the author, referee or editor dashboard:

Switching dasboard is done via the selection menu in the upper right:

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Configuration of e-mail templates and reminders

Configuration of e-mail templates and reminders

Overview of the template configuration

All templates linked to your journal are stored in the templates configuration:

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Existing templates are sorted:

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Configuration of e-mail templates and reminders

Editable / automated e-mails

E-mails are the primary mean of communication through Nestor:

Consequently, understanding and properly configuring the mail engine will ensure your users are timely informed of their ongoing workload.


Actions & types of e-mails

When people work in Nestor, the system will detect important events and generate e-mails according to your configuration.

E-mails can be of two types:

Some events only generate editable e-mails, while others only generate automated e-mails. A few events can generate both types. In those rare cases, Nestor will guide you during the template creation:

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Editable e-mails

Editable e-mails are triggered when a user wants to specifically get in touch with another user. Most common cases are:

Several templates can be linked to the same event. In this case, the user will have to select which template is the most relevant for the situation:

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After selecting the relevant template, the user has access to an editing box, where the template can be corrected before sending the mail:

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Automated e-mails

Some specific events will trigger automatic e-mails. Most common cases are:

The following events are used by the system for account management. Please take caution when editing templates linked to these:

Name of the event
 Description
USER_REGISTRATION E-mail sent when an author creates his account
USER_REGISTRATION_ON_BEHALF E-mail sent when the editorial office creates an account for someone else
USER_UPDATE_EMAIL E-mail sent when a user updates his mail address (= login)
USER_CHANGE_PASSWORD E-mail sent to a user requesting a password reset




Configuration of e-mail templates and reminders

Creating a new e-mail template

Creating an e-mail template is straightforward, just click here:

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You will be prompted with the template creation form, where you first must select an event. It is very important to select the correct event, as the system will use your template only when this event is detected:

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After selecting the event, Nestor will prefill the form with possible configurations to help you set up the template.

Configuration of e-mail templates and reminders

Drafting templates with variables!

Writing in progress...    ↁ_ↁ

Any enquiries? please contact us:  support@nestor-edp.org

Modifying date formats

{{ "now"|date("m/d/Y") }}

Test variables

 

{% if article.articleType.code == 'LETTER' %}letter{% else %}paper{% endif %}

{% if articleEntity.finalDecision == 'CLOSED' %}

{% elseif articleEntity.finalDecision == 'WITHDRAWN' %}

Coauthor variables

{% if recipient.isPending %}

{% if recipient.hasValidated %}

{% if recipient.validOrcid %}

Configuration of e-mail templates and reminders

Drafting templates with conditions!

Nestor uses a programming language to generate text in messages. You can harness this and use branching conditions in your templates: https://twig.symfony.com/doc/2.x/tags/index.html. The configuration is a bit technical, but will result in:

The description below gives one typical example, but the possibilities are endless.


E-mail conditions: a case study

Let us consider the case of the acceptance letter, where we want to:

For this purpose, we could create two different templates:

Template for a "regular article"
 Template for a "note to the editor"

Dear author,


Congratulations on being accepted! We have received all source files and your paper is now in the hands of the copy editor.


You will receive the galley proofs in about two weeks.


Best regards,

The Editorial Office

Dear author,


Congratulations on being accepted! We have received all source files and your note to the editor is about to be published!


You will receive the galley proofs by tomorrow.


Best regards,

The Editorial Office

This presents the following downsides:

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Instead, let us create one single template, inserting cool conditions when needed:

Global template

Dear author,


Congratulations on being accepted! We have received all source files and your {% if article.articleType.code == 'REGULAR' %}paper is now in the hands of the copy editor{% else %}note to the editor is about to be published!{% endif %}.


You will receive the galley proofs in about {% if article.articleType.code == 'REGULAR' %}two weeks{% else %}by tomorrow{% endif %}.


Best regards,
The Editorial Office

This results in a single template to maintain, and a cleaner editor interface:

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Configuration of e-mail templates and reminders

Attaching rules to templates


In Nestor, critical actions will trigger a message and update the article status / dates when necessary. There are also cases when sending an e-mail should trigger an update of the article data, such as the section, or typically, a custom field.


E-mail rules: a case study

Let us consider this case, where a journal has a special procedure to highlight good papers on the journal website. For this purpose, the editorial office keeps track of the procedure, by using an article custom field:

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We want the above field to be set automatically to "proposal sent" when sending this message :

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Resulting automatically in:

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To do so, the Editorial Office can configure an update rule in the template configuration:

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After saving the configuration, each time this e-mail is sent, the "Highlight paper" value of the article will be set to "highlight proposed".

Configuration of e-mail templates and reminders

Notification bells

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Important e-mails are sometimes lost in the crowd and overlooked by editors. This is especially true for e-mails outside of the workflow, dealing with particular cases etc. Notifications are here to prevent this! Nestor tracks e-mails tagged as "important" and highlights them in the recipient interface.

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Setting up notification bells


Automatic notification bells

Nestor can tag an e-mail as "important" as soon as the mail is sent. To do so, the template must be configured accordingly:

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In this example:


Manual notifications

Regardless of the template configuration, notification bells can be set up manually on specific e-mails, when needed.

Note that an editor can see and uncheck important mails if he/she is the recipient. He cannot vizualize/uncheck notification bells on other e-mails (to other users). For example below, connected as Phil Palaeon, checking the message history of article jeos20220021. We observe notification bells appear only if I am the recipient:

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Profile right: access to all notifications

The right below allows the editorial office to have complete control over every user notifications in the journal:

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Configuration of e-mail templates and reminders

Configuration of automatic reminders

Automatic reminders are configured here, they are sorted by family of recipients:

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Author and referee reminders

Author and referee reminders work similarly. Every morning after coffee, Nestor will check all articles submitted in the journal:

Example 1 - Reminder for a revision

  • In my journal, one article is in revision: the author has a due date to revise (May 17)
  • The reminder configuration indicates: remind delayed author 3 days before due date
  • Nestor will send an e-mail to this author on May 14 (8am), reminding him to submit his revision

Example 2 - Reminder for a referee report

  • In my journal, one article is in peer review: the referee has a due date to send his report (June 12)
  • The reminder configuration indicates: remind delayed referees 1 day after due date
  • Nestor will send an e-mail to this referee on June 13 (8am), reminding him to upload his report


Editor reminders

Editor reminders work differently: editors usually work on several manuscripts at the same time, so it is not possible to send them one e-mail for each manuscript. Instead, Nestor will regularly send a summary of the editor to-do list, in this format:

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Note that editor reminders are configured by profile: this way you can remind different profiles using different frequencies. Typically EIC do not need to be reminded as often as Associate Editors. In the screenshot below, we can observe that:

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NB the template letter selection will propose all templates linked to the event EDITOR AUTOMATIC REMINDER. Make sure these templates include the variable {{ editorReminderList }}

If an editor complains about receiving too many automatic reminders, note that he/she can disable the reminders in his own account (check "configure e-mail alerts" in the editor guide).

Configuration of e-mail templates and reminders

Creating a request for revision (to the author)

A request of revision must be created with the event: "Request for revision":

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Once the template is created, it must also be linked to a specific recommendation:

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Statistics

Day-to-day statistics

To prepare statistics on articles, you can use advanced searches and data exports to get the source data. From then on, you can handle common statistics requests using pivot tables in your favorite spreadsheet program.


Delay computations

Concerning delay computation between two dates, use the following formulas in Excel (to use column headers, format your data as a table).

1 Submission date
 Final decision date
 From submission to final decision (formula)
2 25/05/2023 27/06/2023 24
3 25/05/2023


Standard formula
=IF(OR(A2="",B2=""),"",DAYS(A2,B2))

French Excel version

=SI(OU(A2="";B2="");"";JOURS(A2;B2))

Recommended: column headers, needs data to be formatted as a table

See example below:

Formula

=IF(
    OR([@[Publication date]]="", [@[Submission date]]=""),
    "",
    IF(
        [@[Publication date]] - [@[Submission date]] >= 0,
        [@[Publication date]] - [@[Submission date]],
        "N/A"
    )
)

French Excel version

=SI(
    OU([@[Publication date]]=""; [@[Submission date]]="");
    "";
    SI(
        [@[Publication date]] - [@[Submission date]] >= 0;
        [@[Publication date]] - [@[Submission date]];
        "N/A"
    )
)
Submission date Publication date

Submission to publication, with the above formula
04/11/2025 02/01/2026 59
07/11/2025 03/01/2026 57
15/11/2025

17/11/2025 15/11/2025                                                              N/A

FAQ

FAQ

The editor tells me he cannot perform an action. How can I see his interface and help troubleshoot it?

Administrators are allowed to log in as another user and perform actions on his/her behalf.

This allows the administrator to see exactly what the users experience, and helps to quickly troubleshoot problems. Note that users' passwords are crypted and remain undisclosed to the administrator.

The feature is available to the administrator via each user page. When clicking on a Nestor user, the administrator has access to this button:

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Clicking this button connects the administrator with this user account:

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From that point on, the administrator can execute actions on behalf of this user.

Any action recorded in the article history will appear as executed by the impersonated user, with a special note:

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To leave the user account, the administrator simply has to log out as usual. He will be redirected to his own account:

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FAQ

How to send files to Similarity Check?


Nestor can send files to Similarity Check (SC). SC can be triggered either manually or automatically.


Automatic Similarity Check

Automatic SC is defined at the file type level. The conditions are the following:

If all these conditions are met, the file is automatically sent to SC when the author completes the submission. This will return a similarity percentage that you can retrieve in the file module:

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Manual Similarity Check


On an article, in the file management module, the SC button will appear if the following conditions are met:

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Push the button, and let simmer a few minutes…

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Nestor will then display the similarity result, clicking the percentage will lead you to the full report in iThenticate.

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FAQ

How can I set up automatic reminders?

Have a look at this page      ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ