About Review
Reviewing is the act of checking the metadata, files, and any embargo before approving or rejecting an item for publication. The Review interface is configured by group. If Review is enabled for the top level group, any item published to any group in the repository will have to go through review before publication. If not enabled at the very top level Group, you can enable Review in a group and only items submitted to that group or its child groups will be required to go through review before publication.
You can find (and enable) Review for any group through the configuration page for that group. See the group article to learn how to access the configuration page for any group. The Review option is a slider in the Administration section of the configuration page above the Group storage section.
Disable Review
To ensure that repository pages continue to function properly and the user experience is not interrupted, Review can only be disabled through a Support ticket.
Assigning Reviewer role
Any account can be made a reviewer across groups in the repository. In the group configuration page, in the Administration section, find the Define roles fields and select the name of the account. Then select the Reviewer role and click the save button at the very bottom of the page.
How Review works
If a user submits an item to a group that has Review enabled, after clicking the 'Submit for review' button, they will see a pop up indicating who might review their item. They will also see an icon indicating the item is in review on their My data page and they will see an indicator on the edit item page as well. All the reviewers for the group will receive an email that an item was submitted.
Find and assign an item
All reviewing requests can be found in the reviewing pool from the reviewer account. All reviewers set either at the group level or institution level will receive both email notifications and will also have them listed in the reviewing pool. If you would like to receive reviewing requests for every subgroup at your institution, you will need to add yourself as a reviewer to each subgroup or you can simply set yourself as institutional reviewer. While you won't be displayed as a reviewer on every Edit group page, you will be an implicit reviewer there and you will receive all the requests.
If the user creates the item in My data, then the review request will go to the group the user is assigned to. If the user creates the item in a group project, then the reviewing request is sent to that group.
Please note: when creating items in projects, it is important to remember that reviewing is connected at group level, so depending on the group you select to link the project to might or might not have reviewing turned on.
To view items for review, click on the dropdown menu and select Review requests.
You will then see all review requests that are open, whether they’ve been assigned to you or not. You can opt to view only your assigned requests and sort by newest or oldest first. The number you see in the menu displays unassigned, open requests. The number might be different to what you see when you enter the pool. By default, the pool shows all the requests even if they are assigned already, filtered by the group(s) you can review. If you know there are open review requests but you cannot see them, it means they must be assigned to groups that you cannot review.
You can filter items in the review interface based on whether they’re under review or have been approved, rejected, or archived. Just click Status in the top right and select the statuses you wish to apply. You can also add additional filters like reviewer and date created. You can also collapse filters after searching for them.
To process an item through review, select the item and assign it to yourself as the reviewer. The image below shows a situation where you are an institutional reviewer. As an institutional reviewer, you can assign the request to yourself but also to other reviewers that are assigned to the same group of the request. If you are a group reviewer, you can only assign the request to yourself.
Once an item is assigned to you, you can edit in situ, write a review, email the author, reject and decline from the reviewer area.
Editing an item in review
If you want to change some of the metadata, click the edit tab on the right of the screen and make any changes. Be sure to save your changes. If you do not save the changes, you will approve the previous version. If you need to change embargo settings or you'd like to modify file names or even the files themselves, you will need to be and administrator in order to impersonate the submitter's account. If you are an administrator, you can click the 'Edit as administrator' button in the upper right area of the screen. If you make changes while impersonating, you will need to save and re-submit the item from the author account and then review the item for publication.
Accepting or rejecting submissions
If an item is assigned to you and you open the item for review, you will see two options under the Review tab on the right side of the screen:
- Approve & publish - clicking this will open a pop-up summarizing the item license and repository terms and providing a text box for an optional message to the submitting author. Clicking the pop-up's Approve and publish button will make the item public in the repository
- Decline & return - clicking this will open a pop-up with a text box so that you can sent a message to the submitting author. After clicking the pop-up's Decline button, the item will be removed from review and will be visible in the submitting author's account as a drafted item.
- The submitting author can make any changes and re-submit the item.
Leaving comments
Reviewers can leave comments on items in review. Comments can be optionally sent to the submitting author. Comments stay with the review log and can be viewed by other reviewers. Comments can be used to document changes made, send notices or information to the submitting author, provide notes for other reviewers in multi-step review processes, or store private (to reviewers) notes about the item.
Comments are found on the Review tab near the bottom of the pane. Check the 'Notify owner by email' box to send the comment to the submitting author.
Versioning
An author can make edits to an item in their account and submit the modified item for publication. By default, Figshare repositories are set up to version items, i.e. version the DOI. Your repository may have a different configuration. Depending on what was changed by the submitter, the changes may or may not trigger a new version. Changes to metadata that are part of the citation, changes to the license, or changes to the files will trigger a new version.
No matter what is changed, the item will have to go through the review process. After clicking on an item on the Review page, you can see the history of reviews on the Review tab on the right side of the screen.
In rare instances, you may have a request to change an item and publish it without creating a new version. Only top level administrators can do this. Importantly, this should only be done for items that do not have any versions already as this process will remove all versions.
- Unpublish the item that needs the change - it will become a draft in the owner's account.
- Make the desired changes. You'll see that the original DOI is still part of the record. Do not change that.
- Submit the item for Review
- Accept the item from the Review workflow and the item will again be public, with the changes, and no new version.
For examples of review checklists from other institutions, please see here.