Author Experience
Join this webinar to learn more about the author’s experience when interacting with publishers.
ChronosHub provides an end-to-end platform for your publishing workflow, making the process fast, transparent and collaborative for your authors and your team, every step of the way.
Your authors will remember how easy it was to select a journal and submit their article, see any charges both pre-submission and post-acceptance, sign their licenses and pay the charges – and they will thank you for it by returning time and time again.
Journal visibility and price transparency pre-submission
Our publisher-branded Journal Guide provides your authors with a complete overview of your journals in a custom setting, with filters and search options guiding them to choose the best journal to submit to – leading to less unsuitable submissions for you to manage.
Article processing charges and other charges, discounts, waivers, agreement eligibility and funder compliance are clearly stated, so there are no hidden costs, and authors know what they’re getting themselves into before they submit.
It’s also a great tool to share with your institutional and consortia customers to help them promote all those agreements that you have spent time negotiating together!
Hassle free and with price transparency during submission
There’s an easy way for authors to submit their article, without the hassle of entering metadata data and affiliation manually. Whatever peer review system you use, we can take care of the submission step for your authors, making the journey quick and requiring minimal admin time. And for your authors, less time spent on admin tasks means more time for research!
Throughout the process, authors have full visibility over any charges that they might face if their article is accepted. Article processing charges and other charges, discounts, waivers, agreement eligibility and funder compliance are all clearly stated, so there are no hidden costs, and authors know what they’re getting themselves into even during submission.
Learn more below.
Accurate and rule-based price calculation of all charges
Read & Publish agreements, transformative agreements, membership discounts, discounts for editors, waivers for low-income-countries – there’s no need to check articles manually for any of these, our platform does all that for you! As it’s all rule-based, the final price is accurate and there are no surprises - and no need to amend invoices later in the process.
It also means that you can rest assured that agreements are put into effect, which leads to an increase in open access publishing output, and less complaints from your customers about missed open access.
For your institution, consortia or funder customers who’d like full control of what they are paying for or what is included in an agreement, there’s our approval dashboard, where admins can give consent with the click of a button.
Instant license signature and change requests
There’s no need to email documents back and forth, authors can sign their publishing license right here, on the ChronosHub platform, at the click of a button. And that goes for any license – whether they publish closed access, or open access. You choose which license should be signed, and we’ll take care of it.
Once the license is signed, we’ll email all co-authors a signed copy, so everyone is in the loop.
Clear communication is key, and we’ll show authors early on what license they are getting, and what this entails, so there’s no confusion. If they’re not happy with it, you can offer them the option to ask for another license, and the requests are managed in our platform by your admin team.
Automated and hassle-free payment
Everything here is automated to reduce errors. At the payment stage, you can provide the authors with a full breakdown of all author charges, like article processing charges, colour or page charges, and discounts or waivers – so they have a clear overview of all the charges they’re paying for in one place.
There’s a choice to pay by credit card or invoice. Credit card payments are integrated with your card provider, leading to immediate settlement and faster publication. Otherwise, the charges can be paid via invoice, which can also be re-directed to someone else.
Chasing for invoice payments and reconciliating accounts are optional as our platform can be configured to match your existing workflow and requirements, while making sure things are done in the most efficient and streamlined way – for you as a publisher, and your customers.
Consolidated reporting, immediately accessible
Data is king, and you’re the king of your data – always accessible and there when you need to look something up. Which invoices have been paid? How many articles have been accepted in my journal? It’s all there, at your fingertips.
And not just for you and your team – but also your customers: authors, institutions, and consortia each have their own dashboard. You don’t need to answer their questions and send them reports, they can do it on our platform themselves, anytime and anywhere.
Because we like to empower everyone in their decision making, whatever the need.
We are constantly looking for ways in which we can make the pathway to publishing easier for authors and support their open journey. This is one way in which we can remove some of the time and complexity that otherwise burdens the researchers’ already busy lives. We are committed to making routes to publishing more accessible and simpler, promoting discoverability and opening up opportunities for more voices to be heard within the research ecosystem, and this partnership with ChronosHub is a great step along this journey.
We are regularly evaluating ways to ease the path to publication for our authors and improve their experience with Open Access. With ChronosHub, we can support the different Open Access business models in a flexible way and ensure access to all the data and analyses that authors and their institutions need. It also allows us to successfully continue to strive for our “Open for Open” principle.
The video case study highlights the key challenges Emerald Publishing, and certainly most publishers, are facing in their efforts to transition to Open Access. The focus is on unburdening researchers and ensure an optimal author experience along the end-to-end publishing workflow.
Romy is specialized in the academic online publishing industry, with a focus on publisher relations. And she’s one of our key experts in Open Access publishing terms.
