Screening Papers
About Prescreening
This guide provides a brief introduction to acting as a prescreener for Mathematics Magazine.
What is prescreening?
Prescreening a paper is about deciding whether a paper looks like it is worth spending referee and editorial staff time on. In other words, just making the decision about whether a paper should be sent out for review. This involves deciding whether or not you think the paper could become something lively, engaging, and interesting to our audience. The paper doesn’t have to be perfect to meet this threshold. Some of our authors may have a good idea, and some good math, but need help with writing. We even have some people who’ve agreed to help out in this situation.
What isn’t prescreening?
Prescreening is not refereeing a paper. It’s just about making sure the paper is plausibly, after suitable editing, a candidate for being published in Mathematics Magazine. So you don’t need to pay close attention to the proofs, or make any decisions about if the paper is correct. Instead, focus on:
Does it seem interesting?
Is it written well? (There’s always room for improvement.)
Is it worth spending several hours of someone else’s time on determining if it is any good or not?
It should not take much of your time. You are not expected to pay much attention to the proofs, just give it a quick read or two, a short think, and then write a couple of sentences.
So I’ve read/looked over the paper, now what?
If you think we should send it out, you should indicate as much in the Discussion attached to the article on Editorial Manager. Even better, if you think you know of someone who would be a good referee, you should include that information in your remarks. You can also volunteer to be a referee.
If you think it should be rejected, you should indicate that in your comments, but you should also include a sentence or two of (hopefully constructive) criticism that I can share with the author about why we are choosing to reject their work.
What is the process?
You will receive an email with the subject line “Invitation to discuss a manuscript.” The email will include the manuscript number, title, and author name. Manuscript numbers look like MATHMAG-D-??-?????, with numbers for the question marks.
In the email is a link to the discussion. Click on it.
You should see a screen like the one below:
4. First download the article by clicking on “View Submission” at left, and navigating the dialog. Once you’ve done that you should click on the Topic link (usually “Prescreening”) to participate in the discussion. That will take you to a window that looks like this:
You can also access the discussion by clicking on the Discussions link, which will show an active list of all discussion active on the article.
5. Most of the navigation here is pretty clear (e.g., to see the comments you can click on them, or you can click on View/Print All). Your remarks about whether or not a submission is worth sending out for review or not should go in the Comments area, and you can save your comment and notify me at the same time with the Post button.
6. You may receive follow up emails from the system if I have questions.
Other things to think about
Sometimes, while reviewing an article, you’ll notice something fishy. Maybe you’ll notice some possible plagiarism, maybe you notice something wonky about the text or the citations, or something worries you. In all of these instances, record your concerns in the Comments box, and I’ll get back to you about them.