An editorial dashboard is a centralized workspace within a journal management system that gives authorized editorial users an overview of journal activity, submission workloads, peer-review progress, pending decisions, and other information needed to manage editorial operations. Unlike a dashboard designed for one specific user, an editorial dashboard can provide broader visibility across the journal’s editorial team.
In Alkademy Press, the editorial dashboard is part of the platform’s role-aware environment for managing academic journals. It gives editorial teams a shared operational view while allowing access to remain aligned with individual responsibilities and permissions.
An effective editorial dashboard does more than display statistics. It helps journal teams understand what is happening across the editorial operation, where work is accumulating, which tasks need attention, and how efficiently submissions are moving through the publishing process.
What Does an Editorial Dashboard Do?
An editorial dashboard brings important journal-management information into one operational workspace.
A journal may have many manuscripts at different stages, several editors handling different subject areas, reviewers working against different deadlines, and authors responding to revision requests. Managing this information individually can make it difficult to understand the overall state of the journal.
An editorial dashboard provides a broader view.
Depending on the platform, it may display:
- Active submissions
- Manuscripts by status
- Editorial assignments
- Pending decisions
- Reviewer activity
- Review deadlines
- Revision activity
- Editorial workload
- Recent journal activity
- Submission trends
- Publication-related information
The precise information should depend on the user’s role. A managing editor may require operational oversight across the journal, while an editor-in-chief may need a wider view of editorial performance and workload.
Key Features of an Editorial Dashboard
The value of an editorial dashboard comes from how effectively it turns dispersed editorial information into something the team can act on.
Submission Pipeline Overview
An editorial dashboard can provide a high-level view of the journal’s current submission pipeline.
Editors can see how many manuscripts are newly received, being assessed, undergoing peer review, awaiting revisions, or approaching an editorial outcome.
This overview helps the team understand where submissions are concentrated and whether particular stages are becoming overloaded.
Editorial Workload
A journal may have several editors sharing responsibility for incoming manuscripts.
An editorial dashboard can help authorized users understand how work is distributed across the team.
This can make it easier to identify editors handling unusually high numbers of active submissions and support more balanced allocation of future work.
Workload information can also be useful when planning editorial capacity as submission volume changes.
Manuscript Status Monitoring
Current manuscript statuses provide a useful operational signal.
An editorial dashboard can group submissions according to their current state, allowing staff to identify records awaiting assessment, review, revision, or decision.
This is particularly useful when the journal has a large number of active manuscripts and individual records are difficult to monitor manually.
Peer Review Monitoring
Peer review generates activity that can be difficult to oversee without a central view.
An editorial dashboard can surface information about reviewer participation, outstanding reviews, completed reports, and other review-related activity.
This gives editorial teams a way to identify manuscripts that may require attention without opening every individual submission.
Deadline Visibility
Editorial operations involve multiple deadlines.
Reviewers have review deadlines, authors may have revision deadlines, and editors may have internal targets for completing assessments or decisions.
An editorial dashboard can bring important deadlines together and help the team identify work that is approaching or overdue.
Editorial Decision Monitoring
A journal needs to know which manuscripts are waiting for decisions and which have already received an outcome.
An editorial dashboard can provide visibility into decision-related activity across the publication.
This can help senior editorial users identify potential bottlenecks and ensure that manuscripts do not remain unnecessarily inactive after the required information has been received.
Revision Monitoring
Revisions can create additional workload because a manuscript may return to the journal more than once.
An editorial dashboard can help teams identify manuscripts awaiting author revisions, recently revised submissions, and revisions requiring further editorial attention.
This gives the journal a better understanding of the active revision workload.
Team Activity
A shared editorial environment may need to show recent activity across authorized users.
Depending on permissions, the dashboard can help senior editorial staff understand whether important actions are being completed and where additional coordination may be required.
Activity information can also contribute to accountability by preserving a record of actions within the editorial system.
Search and Filtering
A useful editorial dashboard should allow users to narrow information according to relevant criteria.
Editors may need to filter manuscripts by status, assigned editor, article type, submission date, or other journal-specific attributes.
Without effective filtering, a dashboard can become another large list rather than a practical management tool.
Who Uses an Editorial Dashboard?
An editorial dashboard can serve several members of a journal’s team.
Editors-in-chief may use it to maintain oversight of editorial activity across the publication and identify areas requiring attention.
Managing editors can use it to coordinate day-to-day operations, monitor workloads, and follow up on delayed tasks.
Associate and section editors may use relevant parts of the dashboard to understand their responsibilities and activity.
Editorial assistants can use operational information to support administrative tasks and follow up on outstanding records.
Journal administrators may use broader information when managing several journals or supporting the publication’s overall operations.
The information available should depend on the user’s role. Not every editorial team member needs access to every manuscript, report, note, or administrative record.
Editorial Dashboard vs. Editor Dashboard
An editor dashboard is generally designed around the responsibilities of an individual editor.
An editorial dashboard provides a broader operational view of the journal or editorial team.
For example, an editor dashboard might show the manuscripts assigned to one section editor, while an editorial dashboard could allow an authorized managing editor to see workloads across several editors.
The distinction is therefore primarily about scope and level of oversight.
Both can exist within the same journal management platform, with permissions determining which users can access each view.
Editorial Dashboard vs. Journal Management Dashboard
A journal management dashboard may cover a wider range of administrative functions, including billing, subscriptions, website activity, publishing information, and user administration.
An editorial dashboard focuses specifically on the editorial side of journal operations.
Its information is therefore more likely to center on submissions, manuscripts, reviewers, editors, decisions, revisions, and deadlines.
For publishers managing multiple aspects of a journal, keeping editorial information distinct from broader administrative information can make each workspace easier to use.
Why Is an Editorial Dashboard Important?
Editorial teams need visibility into more than individual manuscripts.
A journal can have a well-designed manuscript workflow and still struggle operationally if there is no easy way to understand how many submissions are waiting for action, which editors are overloaded, or where peer review is slowing down.
An editorial dashboard provides this broader perspective.
It can help journals:
- Monitor the submission pipeline
- Identify editorial bottlenecks
- Understand team workload
- Track peer-review activity
- Monitor deadlines
- Identify pending decisions
- Coordinate editorial staff
- Improve operational visibility
- Support workload planning
- Maintain better oversight of journal activity
This becomes increasingly valuable as a journal grows. More submissions and more editorial users create more opportunities for information to become fragmented.
Common Editorial Dashboard Problems
One major problem is dashboard overload.
If the system displays too many statistics, charts, notifications, and manuscript records without prioritization, users may struggle to determine what actually requires attention.
Another issue is irrelevant information. A section editor should not necessarily be presented with the same information as an editor-in-chief.
Poor data freshness can also undermine trust. If the dashboard does not accurately reflect recent editorial activity, staff may make decisions based on outdated information.
Another challenge is confusing metrics. Terms such as active submission, pending review, or overdue manuscript should have clearly defined meanings so that different members of the editorial team interpret them consistently.
Finally, excessive visibility can create confidentiality concerns. Editorial dashboards should expose information according to role and need rather than assuming that every member of the journal team should see everything.
How Should Journals Design an Editorial Dashboard?
A strong editorial dashboard should prioritize actionable information.
Instead of presenting every available metric, the dashboard should highlight the information that helps editorial users manage the journal.
A useful design can distinguish between:
- Work requiring immediate attention
- Work currently in progress
- Work awaiting another participant
- Completed editorial activity
- Longer-term operational information
The dashboard should also provide clear paths from summary information to detailed records. If an editor sees that several submissions are awaiting decisions, they should be able to access the relevant records without manually searching through the entire submission database.
Role-based personalization is equally important. Different users should see the information appropriate to their responsibilities.
Editorial Dashboard and Editorial Workload
Editorial workload is more than the number of manuscripts assigned to each editor.
Different submissions can require different levels of attention. One manuscript may be waiting for a reviewer, while another may require a detailed decision after multiple review rounds.
A useful editorial dashboard can therefore provide context around workload rather than relying only on raw manuscript counts.
This can help senior editorial users understand where additional support may be required and where processes are creating unnecessary delays.
Workload visibility can also support succession planning and editorial team coordination when journals experience changes in staffing or submission volume.
Editorial Dashboard and Peer Review
Peer review is one of the areas where broader editorial visibility can provide substantial value.
A journal may have dozens of manuscripts at different points in review, with reviewers responding at different speeds.
An editorial dashboard can give authorized users a high-level view of this activity while keeping detailed reviewer information within the appropriate manuscript records.
This allows editorial teams to identify patterns such as a growing number of overdue reviews or manuscripts that have remained in review for unusually long periods.
The goal is not simply to collect metrics. It is to help the journal determine where intervention may improve the editorial process.
Editorial Dashboard and Decision Management
Decision management requires both detailed manuscript information and broader operational awareness.
Editors need access to the evidence required to make individual decisions. Senior editorial users may also need to know how many submissions are awaiting outcomes across the journal.
An editorial dashboard can provide that higher-level view.
It can help distinguish between manuscripts that genuinely require editorial judgment and those that are waiting for an administrative action before a decision can be completed.
This separation can make it easier to identify genuine decision bottlenecks.
AI and Editorial Dashboards
AI can support editorial dashboards by helping teams process large amounts of information more efficiently.
Potential applications include summarizing editorial activity, organizing information across manuscript records, identifying patterns in operational data, or assisting with routine administrative tasks.
However, dashboard intelligence should remain transparent and reviewable. Editors and journal administrators should be able to understand the underlying information rather than relying entirely on automated interpretations.
AI should support editorial oversight while keeping responsibility for scholarly decisions with appropriately authorized human editors.
Alkademy Press and the Editorial Dashboard
Alkademy Press provides an editorial environment designed to support journal teams with different levels of responsibility.
Its role-aware dashboard structure is particularly relevant to editorial operations because editors-in-chief, section editors, and managing editors can work within an environment suited to their respective responsibilities.
The platform also connects editorial oversight with peer-review management, allowing review activity to remain associated with the manuscripts and editorial records being managed. This reduces the need to maintain separate systems for submission handling and reviewer coordination.
For journals managing several publications, Alkademy Press provides a multi-journal environment, allowing authorized users to work across their journal portfolio rather than treating every publication as an entirely separate administrative system.
The platform’s full audit trail also provides a record of editorial activity. This can be valuable when a journal needs to understand what actions have taken place on a submission or maintain a reliable history of editorial operations.
Together, these capabilities give the editorial dashboard a broader purpose: helping journal teams maintain operational visibility while keeping manuscript handling, peer review, and editorial responsibilities connected.
What Should You Look for in Editorial Dashboard Software?
When evaluating editorial dashboard software, look beyond the number of metrics displayed. The more important question is whether the dashboard helps the editorial team make better operational decisions.
Important capabilities include:
- Submission pipeline visibility
- Role-based dashboard access
- Editorial workload monitoring
- Manuscript status views
- Manuscript assignment information
- Peer-review monitoring
- Review deadline visibility
- Revision monitoring
- Decision tracking
- Search and filtering
- Activity history
- Notifications
- Editorial notes
- Conflict-of-interest information
- Audit trails
- Multi-journal management
- Reporting and analytics
- Secure access controls
The dashboard should also allow users to move easily from high-level information into the underlying manuscript or editorial record.
A strong editorial dashboard ultimately answers four practical questions: What is happening across the journal? Where is work accumulating? Which tasks need attention? Who is responsible for the next action?