Article transfer service
Finding the right home for all submitted works
Before publication, a manuscript may flow through multiple journals and rounds of review. Authors can sometimes wait many months before publication, with the efforts of editors and reviewers expended at each stage.
That’s why we’ve been running an article transfer service for several years, to help speed up the process and reduce wasted or unnecessary effort. This has proven to be very popular, and so we’re now extending this support to give authors a wider range of options from Taylor & Francis journals and platforms.
On this page, find out:
- What are article transfers?
- What’s the benefit of using a transfer service?
- How does our article transfer process work?
- Publishing with F1000 Research
- Further tools and resources
Does your journal use our Article Transfer Service? Find out what this means for you and get answers to the most common questions in our FAQs
What are article transfers?
The transfer, or ‘cascade’, process is designed for papers which aren’t suitable for the journal they were originally submitted to. If an article falls into this category, then one or more alternative journals from the same publisher may be suggested. Authors will have the option to submit to one of those suggested journals for consideration. Or, decide to submit their manuscript elsewhere.
Submission details and files will be transferred to the submission system of the chosen journal when an author accepts a transfer offer. Research can be published faster and used more rapidly.
What’s the benefit of using a transfer service?
- For editors and society partners – improves the experience of submitting to your journal, helping authors find the right home for their research. When peer review reports are transferred it can also reduce the overall time and effort for academics involved in peer review.
- For authors – they won’t need to enter all the details into a new submission system, saving time so they can focus on their research.
- For readers – the results of research efforts can be published faster and therefore deliver benefit to other researchers and the public quicker.
How does our article transfer process work?
At the point that you decide to reject an article from your journal, you’ll be given the opportunity to identify if a manuscript may be suitable for publication elsewhere. You do this by selecting a ‘Reject – Unsuitable’ decision option.
The author then receives an email asking if they would like to transfer their submission for consideration by one or more suitable alternatives. If the author agrees, we’ll move as much information as possible about the article over to the submission system of their chosen journal. Of course, authors are entirely free to submit their manuscript elsewhere.
The ultimate decision to accept or reject the manuscript is entirely at the independent discretion of the journal editor.
Using reject decisions
You’ll have two reject options when using the Article Transfer Service:
Reject Unsuitable – use this for all articles that do not meet the editorial threshold of your journal or are out of scope. Unless your initial review has already identified concerns about the soundness of a paper, this will be the default reject decision.
Reject Unsound – use this for unsound articles only; where the article in question should NOT be published because you have concerns over the method, research question or conclusions
The option you choose will not be visible to authors; they will continue to receive a standard reject decision. When you select the ‘Reject Unsuitable’ option, authors of these papers may be contacted with a selection of suitable alternative Taylor & Francis journals to consider.
Extending the transfer service
The service puts researchers first, helping authors find the right home to publish their research. Given the success of this program, we’re expanding it to give authors a wider range of options from Taylor & Francis journals and platforms.
If you’re a society partner or editor of a Taylor & Francis journal that isn’t currently part of the transfer service, we may shortly be in touch about extending this to your journal’s authors too.
Publishing with F1000Research
For journals in relevant subject areas, rejected authors will also begin to see F1000Research as an alternative recommendation. F1000Research is a new part of the Taylor & Francis Group which offers an innovative publishing process. Submitted articles are rapidly published on the F1000Research platform, after a comprehensive set of prepublication checks. This is then followed by open and transparent peer review.