The Annals of African Surgery editorial team organised a live demonstration of the ScholarOne manuscript submission system at the recently concluded 17th Annual Surgical society of Kenya Scientific conference and Annual General Meeting. This was held at the Acacia Premier Hotel, Kisumu, on 5th April 2017.
The demonstration began with one of the AAS Interns, Brian Ngure, who demonstrated how to prepare a manuscript for submission and highlighted some of the common mistakes made by authors during this process. He emphasised on the importance of following the author instructions when preparing the manuscripts, having separate files for tables and figure as well as ensuring the body of the manuscript is anonymized (does not have the names of authors) to allow blinded review.
AAS intern addressing the audience during the demonstration
Philip Mwachaka, Assistant Editor (ASE), also gave the audience an overview of how the system works and demonstrated the stages of review: preliminary intern checklist, assignment to ASE, reviewer selection and allocation, comments to author for corrections, editorial meeting for decision making, batch assignment and preparation for printing. He also urged the audience to sign up as reviewers and commended some who had been active and dependable.
Prof. Hassan continues the discussion after the demo session. From left: Dr. Siboe, Dr. Mwachaka, Prof. Saidi, Brian Ngure
EIC, Prof. Hassan Saidi, closed the session with remarks on the journal’s involvement in the African Journal Partnership Program (AJPP). He highlighted the journals goal to be the leading surgical journal in the region.