Firstly, apologies for the delay in posting. Since my last post, I've had
a trans-continental move and adopted a new office assistant. She’s a
border collie mix who has strong feelings about footnotes vs. endnotes and the
Oxford comma.
But I digress.
A few months ago, we had the spring editorial board meeting for the journal I'm currently managing. I’m usually
enthusiastic about these for one reason – there is always cake. But the more I
think about it, the more I thought that it might be something worth explaining.
What goes on behind those closed doors? What does a board of editors discuss?
Do they talk about specific authors? So, as I usually do, I decided to blog
about it.
 |
| Clearly a group of embryonic professors engaging in their first official academic reaction to cake at a meeting. |
So what do we do in those meetings?
Here’s a typical agenda:
A.) Welcome and Apologies
Yes, this is a ubiquitous part of any
meeting. But for a national editorial board, it allows us to talk about the
research interests of any new members, chat about any new developments with the
expansion/contraction of the editorial board, and reacquaint ourselves with
each other’s specialities, positions, and research centres.
B.) Minutes from the last meeting
Another uniform item. Usually the
bit where I realise I’ve forgotten to do something. Oops. Also a great way to
see what’s developed since the last time we all met for cake.
C.) Editor’s Report
Paperwork from the Editor/Editorial Manager
about the journal from an editing perspective.
D.) Publisher’s Report
Paperwork from the Publisher about the
journal from a publishing and marketing perspective.
E.) Events, Seminars, Conferences, Award, etc.
Pretty much just anything else project-wise
the journal has going
F.) Any other Business
More ubiquitous meeting jargon. Though this
can get interesting with a group of academics…I’ve seen everything from future
meetings to interesting conferences and scholarship ideas to resignations
happen in this part of the meeting.
So, basically, paperwork. It seems to be mostly papers.
 |
| Actual image of someone preparing for an editorial board meeting giphy.com |
We
talk about submission trends and rejection rates. It’s basically a forum for
the Main/Executive/Head editor to report to the wider editorial board what’s
happening. How is the journal fairing? What does the backlog look like? Where
does the journal need to focus its attention? What sort of papers is it receiving? How is the reviewing process
going?
 |
| Exactly what answering that random statistic question feels like |
This includes looking at statistics of where the authors are from and
who they are – is there a significant number of papers coming from a certain
country? If so, why? We also try to find problems like a high number of
submissions from a country but an extraordinarily high rejection rate for these
papers – why are we getting such low
quality submissions? What can we do to encourage higher quality papers from
this audience? This is one reason why when you submit a paper, you have to
provide so much information about your institution and country – the information
gets separated from the paper and goes into our reporting. It’s also why you
usually have to provide X number of keywords.
Side rant: Don’t get me started on keywords. PLEASE FOR THE
LOVE OF ALL ADMINISTRATORS AND EDITORS EVERYWHERE, follow the instructions on
keywords. If it says pick from a list, PICK FROM THE LIST. If it says to type
them in, type them in. And use as broad keywords as possible. Why? Well, we use
them to match reviewers (the better and more uniform the keyword system, the
faster we can find a broader pool of reviewers, which means the faster your
paper goes through the system, which means the faster you get a decision and
the quicker our turnaround time). We also use keywords to compile listings and
reports about what topics are being submitted and what areas are being
researched. It’s an important part of the system with which most people just
get frustrated. With theEditor, I once trimmed down an inherited system that
had thousands of keywords to 125. And then we were able to get the turnaround
time down to 21 days. THAT. IS. FAST. (And I might be seriously proud of it).
 |
| Seeing your turnaround time work plotted on the publisher's line graph giphy.com |
What else do we do at these meetings?
Some smaller, specialist journals rely heavily (or even
solely) on their editorial board for reviewing. If that’s the case, then
specifics are discussed about papers and whether they should be accepted. If
that’s not the case, then the speed and quality of reviews usually comes up.
Why? Because one of the single most visible parts of a journal’s reputation is
the reviewing experience. [shameless plug alert] Check out this post – and this one! – on what journals face with reviewers. We suggest new reviewers if we
have a need for an area, and new board members if we have a significant
omission in research interests.
Money. We talk about money too. Not the publisher’s money
(that’s another debate for another time), but the trends in royalties, which is
a good way to see changes in subscriptions and circulation. Some journals are
owned by the publisher, so this is less of a discussion point. Some are owned
by societies or institutions, so this forms an important part of the editorial
board’s role – allocation of funds to events, awards, scholarships, and other
development endeavours. It’s usually a section that varies from paint-dryingly
boring to hotly contentious.
Other than the Editor reporting to the editorial board, the
meeting serves as a place for the Publisher to report their end of the process.
The Production schedules, statistics, queries, and results all come out. We
receive a Confidential Publishing Report every meeting with lots of fancy
graphs and charts. It lets us know where the journal sits in context to other
journals in the field. For example, we might have identified that our
submission rates are down, but the Publisher’s Report tells us if it’s a
cross-discipline dip or just us. It also compares subscription rates and
downloads to our past as well as other journals in their catalogue. This can be
really helpful in providing the context behind whether the journal needs to be
more proactive in approaching authors or whether the rejection rate is about to
jump because we simply don’t have room for all the papers on a given topic. Speaking
of rejection rate, we usually breakdown the rejection reasons and have a whole
section of statistics that separates papers rejected for non-research based
reasons listed here, here, here, and here. It’s hard to evaluate the quality of the
papers if we add in ones that get rejected for things like being totally the
wrong subject area.
Journals usually also discuss their rankings and impact
factor, if relevant to the discipline. These are statistics usually associated
with citation rates rather than readership. I’ve always considered them 50%
statistics and 50% magic, but they get discussed ad nauseum since every few
years, academics and promotion committees seem to be obsessed with journal
rankings.
And then we talk about development opportunities –
conference attendance, scholarships, awards and prizes, and the like. This can
be an interesting brainstorming session for new ideas on how to use these
opportunities to develop the journal and reach a broader audience. Would having
a graduate/postgraduate conference sponsored by the journal help to reach a new
group of early career researchers? Or are we already getting plenty of ECR
submissions? What can we do to encourage better papers from ECRs? Could we plan
a workshop on the art of reviewing?
And that’s pretty much it. There’s always topics of interest
or institutional politics to discuss, but these usually happen over coffee at
the end. Some meetings are plain and simply a very boring waste of time. But some
are really interesting, and some are highly political and highly contentious.
It all depends on what’s going on with the journal, the academics and
publishers involved, and the state of affairs in the academic world. But
mostly, I go for the cake.
So, when you are invited to be on an editorial board for the
first time, it’s safe to say that it probably won’t be exactly as you are
expecting. Except for small journals, you rarely discuss individual papers, and
it’s more about management. It can really be eye-opening and transform your
perspective on academic publishing to see it so bluntly discussed from a
management point of view. It can also help with your own submissions to hear a
group of editors discussing why they reject papers and what, exactly, they are
hoping to find in a submission, especially from ECRs.
Anyway, I hope this helped enlighten the area around
editorial boards a bit. If you’re ever asked to join one, make sure you ask
exactly what is expected of you because as with everything in journal
publishing: each journal is different.
Take care
-theAdmin
