Occasionally you will be asked to handle a Transactions
correspondence. Procedures differ slightly except when the correspondence
is a technical item. See Editorial
Procedures.
Also, you may be asked to handle an item for which the Editor-in-Chief
has a conflict of interest (e.g., the authors work at the same
company or university as the Editor-in-Chief). In this case, it is important
that the Editor-in-Chief not have access to the reviewers' identities
and that the final decision is made by the Editor.
In this situation, the online tool can still be used to store
the paper and make a decision. However, the reviewers have to
be contacted outside of the tool. The Editor can extract
the electronic file from the tool and email it separately to
each reviewer. Reviews can be collected using email, outside
the tool. The reviews can be pasted into the decision letter
developed using the tool. Once the decision is approved, separate
emails need to be sent to each reviewer, giving he decision
and copies of all reviews (the part intended for the author).
The preliminary decision is still sent to the Editor-in-Chief, but only
for the purposes of simple checking, such as making sure there
are at least two reviews.