A helping hand with EVISE: presenting the journal article publishing support center

Around-the-clock support is now available through our online support platform

Did you know that Elsevier offers 24/7 customer support to help you find your way on EVISE? We try to cover all questions that come from researchers, whether they are operating as an editor, reviewer or author (or all three!). We invite you to take a behind-the-scenes tour of our operations.

Online support center

Almost two years ago we introduced the journal article publishing support center opens in new tab/window, where we host the answers to many frequently asked questions (FAQs) about EVISE and other elements of the publication process. With the ability to drill down to your specific issue in a few easy steps, often the answer to a question is just a few clicks away.

To give you an idea of the most consulted support center questions about EVISE, here are the top three asked questions in September 2017 (do feel free to click on the links if you would like to learn the answer yourself!):

1. How do I clear only EVISE cookies? opens in new tab/window

   (NB this exercise solves many access problems.)

2. How do I submit a review and send my comments in EVISE? opens in new tab/window

3. What does the status of my submission mean in EVISE? opens in new tab/window

But hosting FAQs is not all that the support center offers. Among other things, it also provides you with the latest news about the EVISE system, provides updates about possible issues and offers guidance through video tutorials and e-learning modules.

The content and usage of the support center is actively maintained and monitored by a dedicated editor, who liaises with the responsible product team(s) and customer service department. This is to ensure that we offer up-to-date and easy-to-find answers and can also provide adequate support if a researcher reaches out for further assistance.

Besides the journal article publishing support center there are other support centers available for researchers, for example the ScienceDirect opens in new tab/window support center and Mendeley support center opens in new tab/window.

Personal contact

For complex questions that require personal assistance, we have a dedicated customer support team that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They answer all EVISE and other journal related questions. About 80% of the questions that they receive come from authors who would like to know the status of their manuscript.

We offer a range of ways in which researchers can get in touch with us: the options are displayed at the bottom of each page in the support center. The below screenshot shows the channels that are currently enabled for EVISE questions. Social media channels are a convenient way of quickly connecting with our support team and we recently added both Facebook Messenger (@ElsevierPublishingSupport opens in new tab/window) and Twitter (@Journal_Support opens in new tab/window) as additional contact channels. Currently we are responding in private mode on Facebook, meaning that the query conversations are not visible to the public. Twitter responses are dealt with either through direct messaging or tweets and can therefore be visible to the public as well.

The power of online customer support

The journal article publishing support center is Elsevier’s largest online support platform, with 214 live FAQs (of which some are shared with other support centers: e.g. browser information, clearing cookies and cache, etc.). The support center is part of our ongoing endeavor to help researchers find the answer to their questions quickly and easily themselves. It is clearly meeting a need as the steadily increasing traffic numbers demonstrate. In September the FAQs were viewed more than 540,000 times by almost 266,000 visitors – a record number! About 75% of the visitors leave the page without contacting us further.

We are still working on improving the visibility of the support center and expanding its offering. Why not bookmark the journal article publishing support center opens in new tab/window for your own reference and see if it can help you with any future needs or questions.