Speaking with Editors at Conferences

Something I've been asked quite a bit is about the presence of editors and editorial board members at conferences. We all know what the conference circuit is like - give a paper, listen to a paper, go see the sights, maybe - if you can afford it - go to the conference dinner. But what else could you do at a conference to help increase your chances of getting that conference paper published? Well, to begin with, you could actually speak to journal editors. And I mean actual academic editors, not the journal publisher's representative. Whilst the latter can certainly give you useful information about the scope of the journal (and probably some freebies), the former is who you need to speak to if you want to get your paper closer to being published.

OK theAdmin, you might say. But where to start? I mean, what about the actual speaking with editors part? Here's my top tips:

1.) Firstly, PLEASE DO. Seriously. There's very little at a conference that is more boring for an editor than not having anyone attend a Meet the Editors roundtable session. Speaking with potential authors is exactly their purpose. Forget all your insecurities and imposter syndrome issues and go and say hello, find out what the journal is like and what the editor is looking for. You might find you can save yourself quite a bit of stress (Click here for my post on the main reason for rejection) with a five minute conversation.

An editor waiting at a conference roundtable....giphy.com

2.) Don't feel unimportant. Editors attend conferences in part to find and attract new authors. If you've never published with a particular journal, or if you have and you are likely to do so again, then you are considered a potential author. Having these conversations can help direct your conference paper into a more publishable context once you find the right journal.

3.) Work the room. You can talk to as many editors as are present (You just can't submit to multiple editors at once). Find out about as many journals as possible. Why? You might discover a gem that you'd never considered - or not really heard much about (esp. true at international conferences). You might also find relevant calls for papers. Furthermore, editors are usually on several editorial boards at the same time, so just because they are there for specialist journal A doesn't mean they can't talk to you about generalist journal B if it's a better fit.

4.) Speaking of better fits, editors know their field. If you talk to one and find that maybe it's not right for you, ask if they have any suggestions. Seriously. The academic editorial world is pretty small. If they are a halfway decent editor, then they can recommend another journal that might be a better fit. But, usually, you have to ask. Think about it - if a paper clearly doesn't fit in a journal, an editor can avoid extra work by suggesting somewhere else to you quickly at a conference rather than waiting for a submission and then rejecting it and suggesting somewhere else.

5.) If you know you are interested in a specific journal, then arrange an appointment with the editor or editorial board member if you can. They may just refer you to a roundtable session, but most will consider meeting with you. Conferences are about networking - two birds, one stone. It will also give you something concrete to put on your application for a conference fund....

6.) Last - but not least - INTRODUCE YOURSELF: nobody else will. Get the ball rolling. This may not help immediately, but when you follow it up with an email or submission, you may feel more confident knowing who is on the other end of that system. I've worked with many ECRs in the past - they always seem more confident with submissions if they have met the editorial team.


And, after what feels like a decade long hiatus, those are my top tips for meeting editors at conferences. Go forth and be industrious. And look out for more material soon!

-theAdmin

The Editorial Board

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

Tweet