车讯:新套件加身 兰博基尼Huracan新车型谍照

Question

I am an editor for a math journal. When I select and invite a reviewer to referee a paper the journal's management software automatically writes and sends an email invitation to that reviewer.

For a couple of recent papers where I was having trouble getting reviewers to accept an invitation I started sending a manually written email (from my university email address) to the potential reviewer asking them to consider reviewing the paper,

My response and acceptance rates are much higher when I do this, which is great, but I worry if I am being overly pushy this way, or if emailing reviewers directly is outside the norm. When I get requests to review papers myself, I almost never get a manually-written email from the editor, just the auto-generated one.

So is it OK to send a manually written email to potential reviewers, when the journal already sends them an autogenerated email invitation? This manually written email would be in addition to the autogenerated one.

Answer 1

I wouldn't send both up front - that seems a bit spammy.

It seems perfectly reasonable to me for an editor to reach out to potential reviewers however they communicate with other humans: email, in the pub, at a conference.

If you're getting a better response with your personal communications, I'd recommend reaching out that way first, and if someone shows interest, that's when you can follow up with the autogenerated email.

Answer 2

Long time editor and editor-in-chief here:

I would say putting on a human touch is a perfectly legitimate approach and, as you are finding out, is improving your response rates. So go with it.

In the system we use the journal where I'm the EiC, I get to see the auto-generated email before I click "send". I often put a personal preface at the top. This way, the recipient gets only one email, but it has a personal element to it.