Understanding the Editor’s review form in 10 countries

Over the past few years, DOAJ’s journal applications have multiplied. Predatory journals, 50 form fields, all checked and double-checked before approval. DOAJ embarked on a five-month journey to redesign the Editors’ Open Access Journal review form to increase efficiency and aid people’s decisions. Working alongside the operations Manager, editors and development team, I set out to lead this research and prepare the ground for design evaluation.

Inspiration

I worked closely with my team to define 3 research objectives..

  • Identify usability issues with the editorial review form

  • Understand editor workflows across roles (Triage, Editor, Managing Editor)

  • Surface opportunities to aid people’s decisions

Five methods were used throughout this research, totalling 65 participants from 10 geographies, 3 groups, and 8 languages. Qualitative methods helped to understand ways of working and mental models, while the secondary studies cross-referenced and informed the main study.

🔬 Methods Used

Method Participants Purpose
Comparative Interviews 6 editors from peer organisations Benchmarking workflows, decision making form features, usability, and completion time
User Interviews 16 DOAJ editors (4 roles) Understand workflows, frustrations, cognitive load, errors and satisfaction with the form
Card Sorting Study 17 editors Evaluate Information Architecture from previous study, surface mental models
Conversational AI Survey 4 editors Validate key themes and supplement interview findings
Heatmap Analysis 1 year of HotJar data Confirm scroll/click patterns and UI problem areas
Heuristic Evaluation Internal Review Identify high-impact issues using Nielsen’s 10 heuristics, deliver quick fixes
Co-Design Workshop Stakeholders + researcher Sketch ideal form structure, vote on features, prioritise, design the future workflow for all groups

🧠 Notable Insights

  • Editors often scroll up/down repeatedly due to poor IA

  • High cognitive load and duplicative checks (e.g. Subject Classification done 3x)

  • Editors use external tools to compensate (notes, Slack, spreadsheets)

  • No autosave: users lost notes frequently and developed strategies not to

  • Most used features to prioritise redesigning: Notes, Journal Info, Save/Submit

  • No accessibility personas or dedicated testing conducted

Co-create

Back at the drawing board, data from the studies was collected on a Miro board for team visibility and collaboration. Using thematic analysis, I synthesised data into a set of comprehensive deliverables:

  • A collage of competitor forms with observations for design inspiration

  • 🧭 Personas & Empathy Maps: Created three personas to reflect distinct user groups

  • 🗺 IA Redesign: From card sorting and interview data, we grouped and prioritised questions into 10 thematic categories. These became the backbone of a proposed user flow..

Stakeholders actively participated by reviewing the generated content, the results of card sorting, empathy maps and together we selected feasible features and voted to prioritise these. Desired features included:

  • Tabbed interface

  • Progress indicators and

  • Auto-filled or automated fields (e.g. Classification, Endogeny).

They then created the future workflow for each Editor group based on their responsibilities and goals. After that, they paper-sketched solutions based on their area of expertise, presented their ideas to each other and ended with final paper prototypes ready for design and the next iteration phase.

Implementation phase

“Bring ideas to life and test with users.”

🧪 Strategic Recommendations

Five themes of insights with design recommendations and next steps.

  1. Form Information structure or Architecture (IA),

  2. 10 Usability heuristics with quick fixes and

  3. Five UX metrics,

  4. Form Accessibility Advocacy and

  5. Automation Opportunities

📊 Outcome & Impact

The redesign vision was presented to major stakeholders, the editorial team and invited further cross-institutional collaboration.

🧭 Reflection

“When we care, we go beyond any brief…”

This project stands out as one of the most comprehensive, end-to-end HCD processes I’ve led. Through research and design, we built shared understanding, surfaced needs between geographies, and co-created 4 artefacts as the building blocks for any future research and design DOAJ will need. The resulting themes of recommendations gave strategic direction and set the groundwork for the editorial service design blueprint and Research Operations.

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