Configure Waiver Request Processing

Some Open Access publications may require that Authors pay a publication charge to submit their work. Publication charges are typically made payable upon acceptance of the manuscript for publication.

Publishers can allow Authors to request a waiver of publication charges as a step in the submission process (whether or not the publication site is enabled to handle publication charges). The submission is held back from the editorial workflow until a decision is made regarding the waiver request.

Note: Editorial Manager features functionality to handle publication charges with third-party payment systems. For details, see Configure Publication Charges Processing.

To configure:

Configuring this feature requires creating and designating letters, as well as setting preferences by Article Type.

To create the letters, go to PolicyManager > Email and Letter Policies > Edit Letters. Create three letters in the Publications Charges family:

Waiver Requested by Author: Triggered in the EM system when an Author requests a waiver during a completed submission process. The request is sent to the person identified to handle waiver requests (enter the applicable email address in the Recipient field). Letters can be formatted with a merge field to include the comments entered by the Author (%WAIVER_REQUEST_COMMENTS%) as well as deep links to grant (%GRANT_WAIVER_REQUEST%) or deny (%DENY_WAIVER_REQUEST%) the request.
Waiver Approved: Sent by Editor/editorial staff to the Author when a requested waiver is approved.
Waiver Denied: Sent by Editor/editorial staff to the Author when a requested waiver is approved.

For details on letter configuration, see Create Letters.

To designate letters to send, go to PolicyManager > Email and Letter Policies > Configure Waiver Request. For each action (Author Requests Waiver, Waiver Granted by Publication, Waiver Denied by Publication) select the appropriate letter from the drop-down list (these are the letters created in the above step). When finished, click Submit.

To configure a sending address for waiver-related emails, see Set "Email From" Address.

To present the waiver request during the submission process, go to PolicyManager > Submission Policies > Edit Article Types, and click the Edit link next to the Article Type to be enabled with the feature. On the Edit Article Type page, go to the Article Type Parameters section and set the Waiver Request preferences for new and revised submissions (Display, Hidden). When finished, click Submit.

Note: Configuring the Request Waiver submission step (for new or revised submissions) is not recommended for publications using Commerce Manager.