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

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Further thoughts on Choosing the Right Journal

In my last post, I gave a list of things to consider when choosing a journal. After a few conversations, I've decided to expound on this a bit and add in some more thoughts. So this is just an extension of my previous post, really. It can be accessed here: Choosing the Right Journal.

1) Have a look at the articles that you use in your research – in which journals do they appear? How long ago were they published and is that journal still following the same aims & scope? Journal practices change over time, especially with an editor or publisher change. {“my” journal, for example, has changed drastically due to a change in editor}

 Aims & Scope are really, really important. I've mentioned these several times before in previous posts. They are usually only a paragraph or so long, so take the time to read through them. Editors don't write these for fun, and they can spark quite a heated debate at editorial board meetings. The Aims & Scope of a journal will tell you what the editors want to publish and who makes up their audience. You will normally find out how often the journal is published, whether they accept proposals for special issues, and what their review policy is. 

As well as the published Aims & Scope, you should look at the most recent volumes of the journal to see what sort of articles and papers are being published by the current editorial team. Looking at what was published in the early 2000s is often no longer an indication of what is going on with the editorial direction or even the publishing house. Journals can change publisher, which can change several aspects of the way the journal is administered.

2) Really think about your audience. Who is your target? Theorists, practitioners, researchers, policy makers..? Who reads this journal and why?

I go into a bit more detail here about this. Your best chance of getting published is to target a specific journal. This means ensuring your paper is targeted to the journal's specific readership, or submitting to a journal that targets the audience for whom you are writing. You can normally find this information in the Aims & Scope.

3) Who is the editor? Also take a look through the editorial board – are they relevant and active?

You might be surprised how many people neglect to glance at the editor and the editorial board. How relevant are the journal's advisors to the subject area and your field? Some editors have been editing the same journal for eons. Whilst in some cases, this works out well, in other cases, a journal will lose relevance if it doesn't keep up with trends in the field. So just do a bit of research. All this information should be available on a journal's website and in the print copies. 

My personal bit of advice is to look and see if the editor is research active. This has to do with knowledge transfer as research is quite an intangible thing - how can you recognize valuable research if you don't know what research is and endeavor to keep your research methods and practices relevant? 

4) Ask your supervisors, mentors, and peers for their opinions and advice. Supervisors are especially helpful in this area, as are academic mentors for those past the PhD stage.

Somewhat self-explanatory. Supervisors and mentors are meant to have more experience than you. Use it. Mentors are an extremely important resource for early career researchers. Don't have one currently? Find one. I have several who I've picked up along the way.  Not all of them are in my field, but they are equally knowledgeable and have encouraged (and challenged) me in different ways.

What it's like when you find the right mentor (Despicable Me/giphy.com)

5) Look for calls for papers – this will often be around special issues and special topics, so it’s worth keeping an eye out and signing up for announcement emails from publishers.

Calls for papers go out every now and then, usually through publishers and on journal's websites. Conferences are an equally important resource for finding these. If you think your paper might be relevant for a special issue, then submit it!  It might not get in, but you'll have a good chance of getting some very good and specialized feedback from the reviewers.

6) Is the journal international or just regional? Is this important?

There is a misconception that it's "easier" to get accepted in a regional journal. This is not always true. Both international and regional journals, such as The International Historical Review vs. The Small Country Journal of History, will require going through the same processes. It can be the difference between a general and specialist journal, or it can be a matter of volume.

7) Is it peer-reviewed? How long will this take?

Peer review is always going to be a bit of a hot topic. It varies by discipline what the favoured method is at any given point. It's in your best interest to make sure that a journal does undertake peer review though. Again, this should be mentioned in the Aims & Scope. How long will it take? This also varies depending on the number of submissions and the time of year. I've previously done two posts on peer review here and here. You can always ask the administrative contact, but you should expect a few months at least.

8) Who publishes the journal? 

Publisher's policies and practices vary. So do their software and interfaces. It's always good to know who publishes the journal you're submitting to so that you know what to expect after publication regarding marketing, copyright, and embargoes. Also, it'll be much easier to find the open access policies if you know which publisher.

9) What are the Open Access and repository policies? This is why it's important to know who actually publishes the journal.  How does this affect your options (grant requirements, etc.) ?


Open Access is a minefield. I'm putting together a post on some common questions about Open Access that I hope will be of help. You should be aware of the policies for any journal you are considering, especially if you are funded and your funder requires that you publish in an open access journal. Many journals are currently offering a hybrid policy, which is traditional publishing methods unless you opt for open access and pay the fee. Others are purely open access, and some offer no open access. Don't leave it until your paper is accepted and about to be published to find out that you have to pay for open access that is required. Most publishers have their policies posted on their websites and have contact details for queries. To be blunt, it's usually considered the fault of the author not to ask about access until the very last stage.  I get very, very annoyed when published authors badger me for weeks or months about when they can publish in a repository or when they can publish on their own websites when the policy is clearly articulated.

10) Is the journal ranked? Is this important to you? How does your discipline rank journals?


Each year, there are rankings released for journals. These are done by discipline and show where they sit amongst comparable journals and concern citations. Does this matter to you? Some "top" journals are lower ranked than expected because impact factors are an imperfect measurement. Specialist journals tend to have higher rankings. It's important to find out how your discipline ranks journals and then decide if this is important. 

11) Is it available online and/or print? How important is each of these? Some publishing markets still heavily rely on print journals.


Yes, there are specific markets that still heavily rely on print copies of journals over electronic copies. Most will be electronic these days, but some journals don't have the resources to host an archive. Alternatively, some journals are solely online as they don't have the resources to print and distribute hardcopy. Online publishing is becoming the norm and electronic versions of practically all journals are becoming common. Just be aware of how accessible your article is. It will affect the ways in which you can disseminate your research.

12) Impact Factor – does this make a difference?


Another problematic factor. Importantly, not all disciplines use impact factors, which are released every June and compare citations from the preceding two years against the number of total papers published in a journal. That being said, there are clear pro- and anti- Impact Factor camps out there. If you are in a discipline that uses IF, then you need to research and decide if this is important to you and your career. But keep in mind that IF are just statistical comparisons, which can actually be manipulated by the way journals place highly citable papers. 


I'll post something original next time. Promise.

-theAdmin

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Choosing the Right Journal (The No. 1 Reason For Rejection)

Finally going to finish this series of the top reasons for rejection. The main reason we reject papers outright is extremely easy to avoid – the paper simply does not belong in the journal. You’ve chosen the wrong journal. It’s that simple.

theAdmin's face when we receive papers that don't belong

 reactiongifs.com

  

Usually, the situation is one of the two scenarios below, though there are of course lots of exceptions:

The journal is a general research journal, and your paper deals with a topic that is far too specific for the journal’s audience.

This generally means that, for example, you are writing about the minutiae of a specific methodology  that a handful of people use in a small area of literature research, but you’ve submitted to the Interdisciplinary Journal of Eighteenth Century Studies. Unless you are able to make a very strong and concrete argument that would appeal to the wider audience, you’d be better off looking for the Journal of Literature Minutiae.

One of my favourite real life examples of this was when “my” journal received a submission with beautiful pictures and artwork of a regional variety of architecture. Don’t get me wrong, the pictures were very pretty, but the journal is not an architecture journal, nor does it specialise in the particular region. We’re also not an art journal and do not publish coloured photographs. Another was about the specifics of training for Turkish traffic enforcement – no relevancy whatsoever for what we actually publish.

The journal is a specialist journal and your paper deals with a topic that is far too general for the journal’s audience.

This would be the opposite of the above scenario – you submit something about the broad implications of Eighteenth Century literature to the Journal of Literature Minutiae without making the argument for relevancy at the micro level.

So, in other words, you most likely haven’t researched the journal’s audience and you haven’t gone through the Aims & Scope of the journal to find out what they are and- equally as important – are not looking to publish. This also applies to the internationalism versus regionalism of the journal.

How do you select  an appropriate journal and what should you be considering?

1) Have a look at the articles that you use in your research – in which journals do they appear? How long ago were they published and is that journal still following the same aims & scope? Journal practices change over time, especially with an editor or publisher change. {“my” journal, for example, has changed drastically due to a change in editor}

2) Really think about your audience. Who is your target? Theorists, practitioners, researchers, policy makers..? Who reads this journal and why?

3) Who is the editor? Also take a look through the editorial board – are they relevant and active?

4) Ask your supervisors, mentors, and peers for their opinions and advice. Supervisors are especially helpful in this area, as are academic mentors for those past the PhD stage.

5) Look for calls for papers – this will often be around special issues and special topics, so it’s worth keeping an eye out and signing up for announcement emails from publishers.

6) Is the journal international or just regional? Is this important?

7) Is it peer-reviewed? How long will this take?

8) Who publishes the journal?

9) What are the Open Access and repository policies? This is why it's important to know who actually publishes the journal.  How does this affect your options (grant requirements, etc.) ?

10) Is the journal ranked? Is this important to you? How does your discipline rank journals?

11) Is it available online and/or print? How important is each of these? Some publishing markets still heavily rely on print journals.

12) Impact Factor – does this make a difference?

13) If you’re still not sure if your paper fits, ASK THE EDITOR.

What if you find out you’ve been rejected for this reason?

Sometimes, if the editor is worthwhile, s/he will suggest another, more suitable journal for you to consider. It was theEditor’s practice to be as supportive as possible (again, all editors, journal policies, and publishers are different) in suggesting other avenues as it also works in the journal’s best interest and creates academic goodwill. The editors of those other journals tend to be appreciative of having good papers pointed in their direction.

 

Editors often comment on good papers sent their way - this is how I like to imagine it. gifphy.com

  

But if this is the reason you are rejected, then you need to do more research about where to submit. You might think your paper is very general, but if you’ve had tunnel-vision (often developed during PhD writing), then you might not realise how very specific your paper actually is. Take it as a positive to have a quick rejection due to this reason. It means you were trying the wrong places and can now target better.

Realistically, how long does it take an editor to determine if it’s a good fit or not?

Usually, a single read through. If that. I’ve seen it happen from the abstract or the first page. You need to start and demonstrate relevance rather quickly in articles. Waxing lyrical for a few pages is a massive disadvantage, especially if your paper is borderline of interest. Never underestimate the power of a good and concise abstract.

Sometimes, an editor will give you a chance to rewrite a paper to fit their journal's audience a bit better. If they offer you this option, then by all means take it - it means there is merit in your work and are willing to spend a bit of time in helping you avoid rejection.

**

And there ends my series of the top reasons for rejection. (Click here for Parts I, II, and III). I'm going to be working on a series of smaller questions/FAQs for some future posts, as well as having a few guest posts on specific topics. If you have any questions, comments, or thoughts you'd like to contribute, please do get in touch. 

-theAdmin

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Reasons for Rejection (Part III)

Finally, some more reasons for rejection! Again, these have very little to do with the academic content of your paper. In fact reasons 4, 3, and 2 have one thing in common: following the guidelines. I'll do a separate post on the number one reason for rejection because it's a standalone post. 

So, what do I think are three of the top reasons that papers are rejected? It's pretty simple: you haven't followed our guidelines. Every journal posts "Instructions for Authors" of some sort. Follow them. Exactly. We don't write these guidelines for fun. In fact, they are quite carefully constructed and have reasons behind every seemingly bizarre thing we ask. (For example, sometimes we ask that tables be uploaded as separate documents to the main text. Why? Because the system we use imports them differently, and it's much easier for editing and typesetting). 

So, carrying on from Parts I and II, here are three more of the most common reasons for rejection:

4. DOES NOT FOLLOW GUIDELINES: Language Requirements

This specifically refers to grammar, style, punctuation, and academic language. Specifically, I'm referring to academic English, but journals in other languages will require the academic version of that language. Yes, this can be a disadvantage if English is not your first language, but more importantly, not everyone who speaks English has a command of grammar and academic English. Do not assume that you are an expert simply because it is your first language. Use a proofreader. This can be a colleague, a supervisor, or a professional proofreader. Importantly - please please please - make sure your proofreader knows how to proofread. Refer to my point about native speakers not automatically being experts.

For an idea of what is appropriate language, you should look at recent copies of the journal to which you wish to submit your paper. Does yours fit within its style? Is it formal enough language without being riddled with jargon? Some ECRs make the mistake of going too far with formal, academic English and submit papers that are nearly incomprehensible due to the amount of jargon. If you are unsure, have a colleague who is not in your specialty read through your paper. They should be able to follow even without specific subject knowledge (this may differ for science journals - if you are a science editor and wish to do a guest post, get in touch!). And stay away from contractions.

3. DOES NOT FOLLOW GUIDELINES: Word Length

Editors actually have some autonomy here, but stick to the word length as close as possible. Some journals won't even consider a paper that does not fit within their word limit (both the upper AND lower limits). Word lengths are important because they are used as a predictor of length. We have a specific page budget each year that we must meet. We can go a bit under (not advised), but we certainly can't go over. So by limiting the word count, we can predict the page length, keeping in mind that the pages of a Word document do not necessarily correlate to the pages in a journal. Aside from the actual length of papers, it lets us predict how many papers we will be able to publish per issue and per volume, as well as predict the size of our backlog.

It also keeps papers relatively uniform and encourages papers of the right kind. For example, in my discipline, there is a journal specifically dedicated to longer than average papers. If we get a paper that the author insists cannot be condensed (usually not true, but there are some studies where this applies), we recommend The Journal of Longer Papers. The lower limit of a word count helps to weed out things like book reviews, short pieces, opinion pieces, and papers that are not yet fully formed.

I frequently reject papers from my journal for not being within our limits, which is annoying because it's easy to avoid.

2. DOES NOT FOLLOW GUIDELINES: Not Blinded

This ranks as one of my top pet peeves of submitted papers. Make sure you read the policy of peer review. Usually, you will need to remove any identifying information from your paper. This means do not include a title page unless there is a way to upload one separately. Do not include your acknowledgements in the main text (either add these to a revision or the unblinded version you are asked to submit - if in doubt, ask the administrator or the editor). Do not include self-cites, especially if they give you away. It's perfectly acceptable to cite yourself as (Author, 2005), for example. Do not include contact details on the submission. Do not include your institution. If you have a study that you conducted at your institution, anonymise it in the text and edit it at the proofs stage (tip: don't forget what you've anonymised. Keep a non-anonymised version. We require you to submit this as a separate file so that our proofreaders and copy-editors can compare the two).

All of your details will be attached as metadata for the correct people to see when you submit through an online portal. Not all journals operate double blind review, but I'm a fervent believer in it. In fact, I just read a great post on it in the sciences: http://www.nature.com/news/journals-weigh-up-double-blind-peer-review-1.15564.

Follow the guidelines on blinding/anonymisation. Papers are rejected pretty quickly for this in order for you to rectify and resubmit. I've had a few emails over the years that obviously haven't followed my advice on contacting a journal and have been very patronising and rude, saying I should just anonymise their papers for them because it's such a small thing.It is indeed a small thing for the author (who doesn't have dozens of active papers at a single time).

That's all for now - next will be my post on the main reason for rejection: Choosing the wrong journal. And shortly thereafter, I'll have my first guest post.

Questions, comments, and suggestions always welcome. Email,Tweet to @ECRPublishing , or comment below.

-theAdmin

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