Create "Invite X as reviewer" option

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

It would be great to have the feature: @whedon invite @arfon as reviewer

This could perhaps generate some default invitation message e.g.:

Hi @arfon, @Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman, an editor for JOSS, would like to invite you to review the submission: BioSigKit: a set of useful biosignal processing tools. The review process is centered largely on the software and also on a short paper (see below). Please let us know if you are interested in reviewing this work. Thank you! :rabbit: :rocket:

--> Check article proof :page_facing_up: <-- --> Check project repository :package: <-- --> Check out the review guidelines :mag: <--

[kyleniemeyer]

@Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman while this would be nice, I think it really would be better to work as an email than a message in the review issue... of course, this would require us to capture reviewer emails, since I don't think GitHub necessarily makes those available. @arfon is that true?

[labarba]

I personally send that kind of email (or sometimes contact via Twitter) to invite reviewers, and get their acceptance to serve, before tagging them in the PRE-REVIEW issue.

[arfon]

As part of the work in making https://joss.readthedocs.io/en/latest, I've added a template letter (based on @labarba's example for JOSE) that partially addresses this.

As @kyleniemeyer mentioned above though, we don't necessarily have access to the emails of GitHub users which means I'm not sure whether it's worth trying to automate this as a @whedon command.

[labarba]

I wouldn't like an automated email for inviting reviewers.

Personally, it takes me a second to delete an automated invitation to review: it's impersonal. So when I'm trying to recruit a reviewer, I like to add a personal touch to the email: "I saw your website lists blah…" or "I see you published a paper on blah…" It takes a little time, but the personal touch of an editor reaching out to a potential reviewer makes a difference.

[karthik]

I'm with Lorena. Tagging someone without a heads up or prior context just seems rude and also a rather odd way to get someone to participate. The kinds of people that review for JOSS are likely already drowning in GitHub issues, so yet another mention doesn't really help. I do what Lorena does. I have a text expander template which looks for the issue URL in my clipboard and formats a nice email telling a reviewer what JOSS is, what the expectations are and what the deadline to respond is (today+10. I usually ask people to respond within 10 days if they are able to review).

I believe Kyle also has a similar template.

*> As @kyleniemeyer mentioned above though, we don't necessarily have

access to the emails of GitHub users which means I'm not sure whether it's worth trying to automate this as a @whedon command.*

The reviewer sign up form does collect emails and we could expose that to the editors only. But we would need to backfill information for ones that didn't sign up via the form.

• Karthik

On Fri, Apr 13, 2018 at 2:57 PM, Lorena A. Barba [email protected] wrote:

I personally send that kind of email (or sometimes contact via Twitter) to invite reviewers, and get their acceptance to serve, before tagging them in the PRE-REVIEW issue.

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[labarba]

An exception to tagging without a heads-up could be when the author suggests reviewers, from the list of registered volunteers.

But as an editor, I don't like to do that, as I also feel it's a bit rude.