Manuscript transfer
service
Maximise your research impact with our manuscript transfer service:
find your perfect publication home.
Finding the right home for your research is key to ensuring you reach the right audience and make an impact on your field of study.
So, if your manuscript doesn’t align with your first-choice journal’s scope, we’re here to help you find the perfect journal to maximise the impact of your research and expedite your path to publication.
Our dedicated team is committed to supporting authors like you in finding the right home for your research.
What is manuscript transfer?
Emerald’s manuscript transfer service takes the pain out of the submission process, if your manuscript doesn’t quite fit your initial journal choice.
Our team of expert Editors work together to identify alternative journals that better align with your research, ensuring your work finds the ideal publication home it deserves.
How does it work?
If your manuscript is recommended for transfer, you will receive an email with the details of the recommended journal and the option to accept or reject the transfer. It’s always down to you as the author to decide if you’d like to accept.
Accepted transfers result in automatic transfer of your paper and any reviewer reports to the recommended journal.
Confirm the resubmission in the new journal, make necessary edits and wait for the outcome from the destination journal’s editors.
You will be notified when your paper is available where you can log in, make revisions and finalise your submission.
Why accept a manuscript transfer?
- Find the perfect publication home for your research, maximising its readership and impact.
- Save time by seamlessly transferring your files and review reports to the new journal, avoiding the need to start the submission process from scratch.
- Benefit from the expertise of our editors, who collaborate to recommend journals based on their in-depth knowledge.
- Potential for faster processing of transferred manuscripts, thanks to existing review reports and successful Editorial Office checks.
- The decision to accept or reject the transfer recommendation is entirely up to you as the author.
- As the author, you are in control – you have the option to modify your manuscript before transferring to your recommended journal.
Author testimonial
When I learnt about the option to transfer my manuscript, it seemed like a convenient and efficient way to continue the review process without starting from scratch, which meant more time efficiency.
I think the manuscript transfer process was much straightforward and efficient. The communication was clear, and steps were explained in the emails… Emerald's process was efficient and quick. As a result, I would consider publishing with Emerald again using the manuscript transfer service .
Frequently asked questions
- If your manuscript is not accepted by your first-choice journal, you may receive an invitation to transfer from the editor in the decision email.
- The transfer process begins when you click “Accept” in your Author Centre and select the journal you want to transfer to from the options suggested by the editor.
- All author accounts, files and any reviews received are transferred automatically to the new journal.
- You will be notified when your paper is in the Author Centre for the new journal. From there, you simply log in and confirm the details. You will have to provide any missing information unique to that journal’s submission process. You can also make any revisions to your paper and submit a new cover letter before completing your submission.
- Your manuscript will be assessed by the recipient journal’s editor.
Your author account and co-author accounts, the manuscript, along with all files uploaded during the original submission, associated submission data, and any reviewer reports.
Participating journals will be presented as transfer options.
The journal(s) that the editor may refer you to are from a list of titles with overlapping scope. Which and how many titles depends on what the editor feels makes the most sense for your paper.
The decision to transfer is entirely yours. We are working to provide you with the best options to get your manuscript published quickly and in front of the right audience.
No. The transfer of available peer reviews alongside your submission to the new journal will help editors make a faster decision.
Participating editors know that too often an article is not accepted for reasons that have nothing to do with quality. As such, reviewer comments will be considered with respect to the requirements of the new journal.
After agreeing to transfer and before completing the submission, you can revise your manuscript and address reviewer comments accordingly.
While we encourage revising your submission files and responding to reviewer comments where appropriate after agreeing to transfer and before completing the submission, this is not a requirement.
You can check the new journal’s author guidelines for further guidance, noting the new editor may adjust the revision requirements to suit the receiving journal’s standards.
Any changes that contribute to the manuscript’s improvement are recommended and welcomed.
The need for further review is assessed on a case-by-case basis, depending on the extent of revisions required, the new journal’s expectations, how well reviewers’ comments are addressed, and the topic.
However, the review process tends to be quicker at this stage, emphasising that the transferring of reports benefits authors, reviewers, and editors alike.
Your paper does still need to go through thorough quality checks with the new editorial team before any decisions can be made.
If your paper received the transfer decision after the peer-review process, the new editorial team will already have access to your previous reviewer reports and, therefore, will have much more information to base their decision on.
Even though your paper was recommended for transfer, every paper still needs to be reviewed by the new editorial team before a decision is made.
As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), we’re fully committed to ethical publication practices and will always ensure that the scholarly record is correct before any research is accepted for publication.
Every journal and editorial board will be working to different timescales due to a number of different factors.
We know it’s important to you to have your research published as quickly as possible and that is always the aim of every journal and editorial board, too.
Yes, the choice is always yours to accept the transfer or withdraw your paper from the process.
You can still submit your paper to your second-choice journal outside of the transfer process. All this means is you would be starting the publishing process from the start again, and so any feedback on your submission from the initial journal Editor will not be included as part of your manuscript files for the new submission.
