The University Journal Office has switched from analogue to digital systemic process of managing scientific knowledge and production, as a guiding principle for every Journal Editor. This development is in line with the present Information Age, also known as the Digital Age, which is an era where there is complete transformation from the traditional era, through the Industrial Revolution, to information high-technology and digital computerisation.
Speaking at a two-day training workshop tagged, “Electronic Journal Processing and Website Management”, organised for editors and staff of the FUNAAB Journal Office in the University, the Editor-in-Chief, FUNAAB Journal, Professor Chryss Onwuka, disclosed that the aim of the workshop was to serve as an appropriate medium for disseminating high quality and original research. He stated that the switch was to ensure that the turnaround time for processing of manuscripts do not go beyond three months from the submission date to the acceptance of manuscripts as well as ensure that peer-review management system is implemented to improve publication and editorial strategy business.
The former Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) of FUNAAB, said that participants had been trained on Open Journal System (OJS), which facilitates the development of open access and peer-reviewed publication by ensuring that publishing process relied on individuals who fulfill different roles and provide the technical infrastructure of online presentation of journal articles and editorial management through workflow of article submission, peer review mechanism and indexing.
According to him, the roles of the editors, as highlighted by the journal management system, include providing guidelines to authors for preparing and submitting manuscripts, providing a clear statement of the journal’s policies on authorship criteria, treating of all authors with fairness, courtesy objectivity, honesty, transparency, protect the confidentiality of every author’s work and establishing a procedure for reconsidering editorial decisions, when necessary. He enumerated the benefits of the journal management system to include online submission of manuscripts, making it possible for authors to track/review process, allowing notification and sending of reminders to e-mail addresses, providing automatic production of PDF files of submission of Microsoft versions for reviewers and assisting the editor to see the manuscripts, assign reviews, add or remove reviewers and send reviewer’s comment to the author. Other recommendations given at the workshop were that interested authors should have a user account and be enrolled as an author before submission of articles. Meanwhile, intending authors are to visit: http://journal.unaab.edu.ng, to submit their manuscripts.
