EES Retention Policy The Elsevier Editorial System (EES) Retention Policy outlines how long files are

retained in EES. This applies to submissions for which a final disposition has been set, and incomplete submissions which have not been touched by the author for a given number of days. The following retention policy is in place in EES for all journals: 1. Article information (the submission metadata, including Reviewer Attachments) will be stored indefinitely in EES. 2. Source files for accepted articles will be removed from EES three months after the paper has been finalised in the system (accepted and sent to production). These are basically all the files uploaded by the author (or the editor) e.g. manuscripts, figures, tables, companion files etc. 3. Submission PDFs (PDFs created by EES) will be kept for one year, after which they will be deleted. 4. Source files for rejected and withdrawn manuscripts will be deleted three months after the manuscript reaches the appropriate final disposition status (the end of the peer review lifecycle). 5. Submissions that are removed by the Author or the Editor at the beginning of the editorial process will be deleted immediately. 6. Incomplete Submissions: Author will receive an alert after 60 days of inactivity. After 90 days of inactivity, the PDF and source files will be deleted.

When an incomplete submission remains inactive after 60 days, the following alert is sent out automatically from EES: Dear Author, We recently detected a paper entitled "Article Title" for which you started the submission process more than 60 days ago but for which you did not complete all the submission steps. Therefore, this paper has not yet been submitted to the journal. If this paper is a duplicate of a manuscript already submitted to the journal, you may disregard this message. We will delete this duplicate submission in 30 days in accordance with our archiving policy. If you no longer wish to submit your manuscript, you may disregard this message. The manuscript will be automatically deleted in 30 days. No further action is required on your part. If you still want to submit this manuscript to the journal, please complete your submission within the next 30 days. If your manuscript is not received within 30 days it will be deleted in

accordance with our archiving policy. To complete the submission process, please log onto Journal URL as an Author, locate the paper in either your "Incomplete Submissions" or "Submissions Waiting for Author's Approval" folder, and edit and approve the submission. Please accept our apologies in the event that you receive multiple copies of this message. Each duplicate incomplete submission on your EES menu will automatically generate a copy of this message. For further assistance, please visit our customer support site at http://support.elsevier.com. Here you can search for solutions on a range of topics, find answers to frequently asked questions and learn more about EES via interactive tutorials. You will also find our 24/7 support contact details should you need any further assistance from one of our customer support representatives.