Change Submission Ownership

You can change a submission's owner from the Submissions tab of the Admin Tool.

About this task

Changing ownership is not supported for submissions that are in a terminal state, for example, rejected submissions. Ownership can be changed between authors specified in the manuscript. Ownership cannot be transferred to a submitting agent who is not one of the submission's authors.

Procedure

  1. From the Submissions tab of the Admin Tool, locate the required submission and click Actions > Change ownership.
    A Change ownership modal window will be displayed.
  2. In the Change ownership modal window, select the required submission owner from the Author dropdown.
    The Comment field will be populated with a relevant comment. There are two variations of the comment, depending on whether the new submission owner already has an Author Portal account:
    • When the new submission owner has an Author Portal account:
    • When the new submission owner does not have an Author Portal account:
    Note: You cannot edit the comment that is automatically entered by Author Portal. However, you can optionally add a comment of your own underneath the default one. Your comment cannot exceed 500 characters in length.
  3. Click Change ownership, or, if the new owner is not yet registered on Author Portal, Invite.

Results

In the Submissions tab of the Admin Tool, the submission record will be updated and will include the comment, for example:
  • When the new submission owner has an Author Portal account:
  • When the new submission owner does not have an Author Portal account:

If the new submission owner is a registered Author Portal user, the transfer of ownership will take effect immediately.

If the new submission owner does not have an Author Portal account with the email address specified for them in the manuscript author details, the following will occur:

  • The new submission owner will receive an email from the authentication provider, IEEE, inviting them to register for an account and verify their email address. The email will be sent to the email address specified for them in the manuscript author details.
  • Following the successful creation of an account, the new submission owner will receive a second email, from Author Portal, prompting them to accept ownership of the submission.
  • If the new submission owner registers for an Author Portal account using this address and logs in to the platform, this will complete the transfer of ownership.
  • Alternatively, if the new submission owner registers for, or already has, an Author Portal account using a different email address than the one specified for them in the manuscript author details, Author Portal will prompt them to verify their identity upon login. Once they log in and verify their identity, this will complete the transfer of ownership.

In all cases, when the transfer of ownership is complete, the previous and new submission owners, as well as the journal admin who initiated the change, are notified by email of the ownership transfer.

If the transfer of ownership fails for whatever reason, Author Portal displays the appropriate error message for either admins or submitters.
  • If an error occurs when an admin attempts to reassign submission ownership, Author Portal displays the following message:
  • If an error occurs when a submitter attempts to accept ownership of a submission, Author Portal displays the following message:

    Additionally, Author Portal sends an email notification to the admin who initiated the transfer of ownership alerting them of the failure.

What to do next

No additional steps are required for submissions that are in draft state, including revisions. However, for submissions that have been sent to ScholarOne, you must perform the following, additional steps:
  1. In ScholarOne, click Manage > Admin Center.
  2. From the Admin Center, locate the required manuscript and click on it.
  3. From the View Manuscripts page, select to View Details for the manuscript.
  4. On the Manuscript Details page, on the Manuscript Information tab, under Author-Supplied Data, in the Submitting Author row, select the new submission owner.
  5. Click Save.
  6. ScholarOne will display a confirmation prompt. Click OK to finalize the transfer of ownership.

If the option to edit the Submitting Author is not available, do the following:

  1. Click Support > Configuration Center.
  2. Click Configure This Site.
  3. Click step 17, Manuscript Details.
  4. In the Manuscript Details table, check the box for Manuscript Details tab: Allow the submitting author to be changed.
  5. Click Save.

If you have access only to the Client Configuration Center, you can perform the steps described above, with the difference that Manuscript Details are found at step 10 as opposed to step 17.