How to prevent peer-review problems?

A while back at Daily Nous, there was a thread on 'journal horror stories', one of which involved a single journal 'misplacing' a large number of manuscripts, claiming the papers were sent out to referees when this never occurred. Although this is an extreme and isolated case, the DN horror stories thread suggests that authors often run into less serious problems. This coheres with my experience on social media, where I often run into posts where people say things like, 'My paper has been under review at journal X for Y months. Should I email the editor to find out what's going on?'. Oftentimes, people express some trepidation about emailing editors, as they don't want to negatively influence the outcome. They just want to know what's going on with the paper.

Given that these kinds of situations give rise to stress for authors and extra work for editors (reading and responding to emails), I wonder whether something could be done to make things better. So here's an idea that I had: why not just improve journal submission portals (e.g. Editorial Manager) to give more information? Here's what I have in mind. When I log in as a reviewer at many journals, the software typically tells me when my review is due, as well as how many other referees there are. Why couldn't the journal submission software give similar information to authors, as in something like this:

Referee 1: review competed on 4/5/2021.

Referee 2: review due on 4/10/2021.

Referee 3: review 1 month overdue.

This could, obviously, give authors precisely the kind of information they want about where their paper is in the review process. Also, sometimes when a journal is taking a long time (say, 8 months or longer), authors want to know whether they should keep the paper under review or withdraw it. Given that this decision could turn on the likelihood that the paper will be rejected, why couldn't the submission software give the author information on what the referee recommended, as in:

Referee 1: review competed on 4/5/2021 (recommendation reject).

Given that journals typically require two 'accept' verdict to accept a paper, knowing that one reviewer recommended rejecting the paper could be important information for authors to have (and it's worth noting, again, that when reviewers log in they often have access to this kind of information - so why shouldn't authors?). Finally, it seems to me that this kind of system might help improve review times at slow journals. Given that it would inform authors when reviews are well overdue, authors could contact journal editors specifically when there is an overdue review holding up the process (which, or so I understand, is one of the main reasons for delays in the review process). This could then lead editors to address tardy reviewers more promptly, etc.

Finally, it seems to me that other forms of information could also be included in submission portals, such as information about securing reviewers in the first place, as in:

Referee 1: review requested 4/5/2021, awaiting reply.

What do you all think? Do you think it would be better for authors and editors for journal submission software to include more information like this?

Comments

[ehz]

Ergo has exactly this kind of system. You see when referees are invited, whether they agreed to referee, when their report is due, whether it's completed and what the verdict is.

[anon]

Agreed: Ergo has fully solved this problem already, and journals are good to the extent that they are like Ergo (from a management perspective, anyways).

I no longer submit to journals that use email as the submission system, since that is basically the paradigm of "not like Ergo" (e.g., dialectica). The journal that all the recent stories were about (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly) used email for submissions, too.

[Nicolas Delon]

I don't want to understate the transition costs of moving away from (or customizing) Editorial Manager or ScholarOne Manuscripts, but Ergo has simply provided a proof of concept that other norms are possible. Anything short of what they do requires justification—-transition costs might be one such justification, but I don't see many others.

[Bandwagon Jumper]

I’ve long evangelized Ergo’s system. It is quite clearly the best one I’ve submitted to to in terms of transparency.

[AssitantToTheRegionalManager]

Nicolas Delon is right I think. I’ll mention particular kind of cost.

I worked a handful of years ago as an editorial assistant and the journal was affiliated with Wily and used their manuscript manager partner. I would like everyone to do the Ergo thing but there are advantages to being connected to a publisher. They cover a lot of production costs, they paid my salary indirectly, and they do still add prestige by putting the journal into libraries (to be clear, I think we should rock that boat as a discipline but the top journals are still print journals with big distribution). But if you want those advantages and their general infrastructure for whatever reason, you are going to be using their management system. Those can be tweaked and customized a bit, but only a bit (at least the one I used). It seems clear to me from older posts here and elsewhere that Phil Imprint and Ergo have had to work hard to break free from the old norms and have sometimes struggled to pay for things. I’m thankful they are blazing the trail but many journals will see important advantages in publisher connections and that will bring with it their rules and systems.

[ehz]

Journals that seem to use the same management software still differ in the kind of information they provide to authors. For examples, it seems that Analysis, Thought, and AJP all use ScholarOne, but in Analysis the author gets more fine grained statuses ('referees invited', 'awaiting referee reports', etc) whereas in the other two the author mostly gets a general 'under review' status that could mean anything from 'an editor was assigned' to 'the reports are in'.

I'm assuming that implementing something like what Analysis does, for journals that already use ScholarOne, isn't too difficult (happy to be corrected). I don't really understand why more journals are not doing this.