All entries for Wednesday 15 June 2022

June 15, 2022

Team Pluralities Sits Down For a Chat

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/special-issues

A few thoughts stemming from today’s small editorial meeting

Today I hosted my first on campus meeting in well over two years. It’s great to be back on campus for once and to see actual real people in the flesh too [1]. Of course, as all my editors are scattered around the country [2] technically I could have hosted this meeting from my home office, as no one other than myself was here in person. Nevertheless, I will admit, it was a real treat to sit down at my office meeting table for once and conduct a meeting like the pre-COVID days. My home office is nice enough, but it certainly doesn’t have the same ambiance as my campus dwelling.

Today’s meeting was a chance for the associate editors working on the gestating pluralities of translation special issue to catch up along with exchanging advice and offering insight into the progression of their respective manuscripts. Thanks to special issue lead Melissa Pawelski, we were treated to a detailed exploration of reviewer feedback formatting. Given the linguistic scholarship in the meeting (not so much me) we also had a chat about the importance of shaping the affect of feedback through subtle changes in phraseology.

Initial reviewer feedback to authors from Exchanges has always been lightly mediated. This helps ensure clarity and priority of focus and task for authors is paramount. Additionally, through this operational approach we can help ensure any, inadvertently, abrasive statements from reviewers can be modestly ameliorated. ‘Reviewer 2’, we are looking at you here.[3]

It was certainly good to hear that usual issues with locating and recruiting reviewers aside [4], things seem to be progressing well on each of the manuscripts for the issue. We are perhaps still a way from being able to name a publication date - all the papers are currently going through the review phase – but I’m hopeful as we move towards the back end of 2022 a destination date might well come into view.

It was also good to have a chance to interact with some of my editors – it always is frankly – and connect a little more with them as people. Hopefully all the associate editors benefitted from the discussions, and for my own part I certainly came away feeling I’d learned one or two new things about my team too.

My thanks as always to all our reviewing community for their valued contributions to the journal!

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Endnotes

[1] With apologies to my family who are also real, but I have rather seen a lot of them.

[2] And indeed the world, if we consider all of them

[3] There have likely been reviews I’ve written that I suspect I was clearly ‘reviewer 2’ for some authors – sorry!

[4] Pretty much Exchanges SOP for editors.