How to design an effective editorial report

There are a number of things that you should consider when designing your editorial report. Primarily these should include:

What information do you need to convey that is important to your audience?

For instance, if editors are more interested in their rejection rates over other performance metrics, then create charts that emphasize rather than bury that information amongst a host of other data (such as, in this case, turnaround time or article types handled). Origin Reports offers two and three variable charts. However, if your editors just want to know about rejection rates, then restrict your chart display to simply show that. The point is: give your audience what they want, particularly if it can result in actionable items. This is especially true at an editorial board meeting where only limited amounts of information will be digested. Consider presenting more complex charts and tables in a written report where the audience will have more time to process the information and its meaning.

When trying to make a chart type selection, consider if your data is simple or more complex. For simple data, such as the number of submissions in a given year, choose a simple chart, such as a bar chart. This will allow your reader to quickly comprehend the data.

If your data are more complex, such as needing to show evolving trends in submissions by manuscript type for various countries, then you will need a chart that shows more details, such as a chart with three variables (e.g., a chart that shows total submissions by country broken down by manuscript type). This will allow you to show the total for a given group, but also what types of elements, such as manuscript types, make up that group.

Are you trying to highlight a trend, show a comparison, point out an association, or simply stating a data point? Once you understand what you would like to display, try out various chart types to see which one most easily demonstrates the point you want to convey.

Complicated data stories often benefit by a narrowing of the data or reducing how much data you choose to show. This can be done by applying filters. By reducing the amount of data displayed, you can focus your reader's attention on the areas that you think are of most interest, such as the countries with the highest submissions.

Be sure to try various sort options so that it makes the data points easier to compare. Additionally, think about how people logically read data (e.g., left to right, top to bottom, usually meaning from largest to smallest or oldest to newest).

It is important to add labels to show totals so that your reader can readily interpret the data. For three variable charts, you should also add segment labels to facilitate direct comparisons between the groups. Origin Reports make it easy to add these labels.

To reduce reader fatigue, you should reasonably vary the types of charts used in your report. That said, perhaps you should use the same chart types when reporting out across a certain type of data (such as, bar charts for submission totals, line charts for turnaround times, and maps for countries). This will ensure your reader stays focused on the data being presented rather than on just trying to get to the end of the report.

Though you hope to create an editorial report that is interesting as well as informative, it is best not to create a report that is too distracting. The use of a unified color scheme helps create a uniform look. Origin Reports offers set color palettes depending on whether you want subtle or more distinct variations. Be sure to keep the same text font throughout the report and standardize the font size as much as is reasonable. Spending time to work on the visual aspects of your report can help your reader more easily understand the data you are presenting and retain the key data points for decision making.

Though there are many different aspects to consider when creating your editorial reports, Origin Reports makes it easy to create custom charts, which can be saved into MyCharts for use in future. Additionally, your customized charts can also be saved into a custom report in MyReports which can be downloaded as a single document.

If you are unsure what data you might want to present, you can use one of our Standard Reports, such as the Essential Editorial Report, which can be found in the MyReports section of the Origin Reports.

For more information on customizing charts or using MyCharts or MyReports, please check out additional articles in the Help Center.