As briefly mentioned previously in this blog, I have accepted the position of Editor in Chief (EiC) at Global Ecology and Biogeography. I, of course, think it is a fantastic journal (objectively it ranks top in my field and top 10 in all of ecology) thanks to the great work of outgoing EiC David Currie. As you might imagine taking on this new role and my ensuing contract negotiations with the journal owner (Wiley) have caused me to think a lot about exactly what the job of EiC should entail. This is a question of current relevance not just to me but all of ecology and science; the world of academic publishing is changing so quickly that everything in academic publishing is being rethought these days, including the role of EiC. The recently announced movement of the ESA journals to Wiley is a case in point. While this will not result in significant changes to the editorial staff or processes, anytime there is such major institutional change, roles and expectations will be revisited. I expect many of you have thought little if at all about the EiC at journals, but I am incented to provoke you to think about it and am curious to hear your thoughts.
First a quick review for those less familiar with publishing (skip to the poll if you know all of this). Journals typically have an EiC and a panel of associate or handling editors (hereafter AE). The typical flow is:
A paper is submitted electronically
EiC evaluates the paper for quality and goodness of fit and either issues an editorial reject without review or assigns it to a handling editor. These days the EiC editorial rejects 30-90% of all the submitted manuscripts with 50% being a quite typical number (publishing hint: cover letters didn’t use to matter much, but they are now critical in making it past this first screen)
If the EiC decides to send it to review, s/he assigns it to a specific AE (publishing hint: recommending AEs who are expert in the topic of the paper is helpful, but the EiC knows the AEs quite well so this is not particularly subject to gaming – further hint: your letter better be more snappy than your abstract, not just a rehash because that is the one other thing they will read).
The AE may choose to recommend editorial reject without review as well, although typically this is much rarer than the EiC doing it (but maybe 5-10% of all submissions).
The AE provides a list of 5 or so potential reviewers (publishing hint: this is critical to the ultimate decision, but I have no clue on how to game this aspect of who gets picked as reviewers – I don’t think it can be gamed).
An editorial assistant, increasingly often based at the publisher’s office, will contact the prospective reviewers until (usually) 2 people say yes. Sometimes it may take asking as much as 10-15 people (especially in the middle of the summer). In my experience getting reviewers to say yes has nothing to say about the quality of the paper – so don’t take it as a bad sign if you get a note saying there have been delays in finding reviewers.
Once the reviews are back, the admin will contact the AE to submit a recommendation.
The AE will read the recommendations and should read the paper in full and then make a recommendation (the dramatic accept/major/minor revision/reject that everybody pays attention to, but also a summary of the reviews and a focused list of the most important, must have changes that you should pay a lot of attention to).
The recommendation then goes to the EiC who makes a final decision. Many EiC follows the AE recommendations unless there are serious red flags, but a few insert their own evaluations into the process.
Some journals also have Deputy EiC – and at some journals these DEiC effectively act like fancy AEs while at other journals they are effectively co-EiC. Journals also have a managing editor who is responsible for the business side. In most society journals the managing editor reports to the society, but in journals owned by the publishing company the managing editor is part of the publishing company.
So, everybody who has ever submitted a paper is likely pretty clear on the roles of the reviewers and the AE. What exactly does the EiC do or should they do? I have my own opinions, which I will review in a few days in the comments, but I am curious as a reader and author, what is most important to you that the EiC devotes her/his energies on? (everything in the poll below is a job of the EiC, but obviously some are more important than others) So to put it another way, which features would make you more likely to submit to a journal if you know the EiC was prioritizing time on them?
Please take the poll below. (Note: mss=manuscripts)
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