All entries for March 2020

Keeping In Touch and Engaged with Exchanges

Good morning Exchanges contributors, readers and wider community. I thought it was worth briefly highlighting the various ways you can engage with Exchanges and our team, especially given the currently complex and changing international situation. Albeit currently, we’re limited to these being all at a distance.

Firstly, and most importantly, for potential authors looking to talk over a submission, then our Editorial Board members can always be contacted for initial discussions (https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/about/editorialTeam). Naturally, you can come straight to myself as Chief Editor, especially if you’ve got something more unusual in mind (e.g. a potential special issue!).

Secondly, if you’re a Linked.In user, and you’re looking to bolster your personal career profile and information on publishing opportunities, then you should join our group (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12162247/). It’s where all the key announcements from Exchanges are regularly posted, and importantly it’s a fairly low traffic group, with maybe a post a week, so you won’t be overwhelmed with information.

Undoubtably, the best way to get with the journal involved is contribute material for future issues. You’ll find our current calls on our announcement pages (https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/announcement). Remember, Exchanges take peer-reviewed articles but also interviews, essays and critical reflections, which while they are still subject to editorial scrutiny before acceptance can see publication faster. They’re also incredibly popular items with our diverse, global audience too, and a great way for new authors to add a publication in a quality title.

We also have a twitter feed: suitable for scholars of all disciplines & interests (http://www.twitter.com/ExchangesIAS). It’ll keep you at the forefront of news, views and opportunities at the journal. Hopefully, you already follow us, but we’re always keen for more early career and post-graduate researchers to join us. We’re stronger together, and it’s a really engaged community we’re building.

Then there’s this blog…which you’re currently reading (https://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/exchangesias/)! Every other week (and more frequently as time allows) our EIC writes about the journal and developments behind the scenes. Comments and discussion are always welcome on our open forum.

It’s worth remembering too, that Exchanges is published through our existence as part of Warwick’s Institute of Advanced Study (https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/ias/). This means there are many other ways to get involved with activities within the IAS and Exchanges, albeit virtually for the time being).

Finally, we’ve also introduced the opportunity to engage with the Editor-in-chief via video conferencing. So, if you talk over publishing matters, opportunities or potential future projects you’d like to work with us on, then you can still talk directly to a friendly face. Get in touch to set up an appropriate time: UK office hours Tue/Thur normally available (https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/about/contact) .

Stay safe, stay strong and stay in touch in these uncertain and extremely challenging times

Gareth Johnson : 24 Mar 2020 10:12 |  Tags: Communication Contribution Discussion Engagement Interaction Video |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Journal Management in Challenging Times

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/

When I took over running Exchanges back in early 2018, I expected to deal with various challenges. Getting to grip with the journal system, learning to work with my team of editors, tackling intricate author questions and resolving ethical publishing dilemmas: these were anticipated and, to be fair, encountered. Conversely, dealing with an unprecedented public health crisis necessitating personal isolation and remote working for an extended period of time wasn’t even at the back of my mind. Perhaps it should have been, but I suspect I wasn’t alone in my assumptions.

As readers will know, Exchanges is a scholar-led, editor-mediated academic journal, run by and for early career researchers. My editorial team, scholars all, are scattered around the globe in four different times zones and at least five countries. The Corvid-19 outbreak is also a global event, meaning each of us is dealing with unexpected challenging personal and professional circumstances of varying levels of severity. As of writing, this week the outbreak has especially impacted on the UK and its universities, and I’ve now been advised to work from home for the foreseeable future. Luckily, this is something I do on a regular basis, although I’m going to miss my frequent personal interactions with the Institute of Advanced Study’s staff, fellows and the rest of the Warwick university community. Not to mention my lovely office!

We are though, an international journal with contributors around the globe who are also likely finding their lives and work impacted by illness, closures and disruptions. We have always prided ourselves as a journal with an ethical empathy and understanding of challenges faced by our contributors, embedded within our professional ethos. Nevertheless, my team and I understand that our normal timescales for contributor responses may need to be more flexible for the time being. Personal and family health and well-being must come first.

What does this mean for the journal? I am thankful virtually all of Exchanges’ core editorial work can be conducted remotely, which means the journal can continue to function as close to normal as we can manage. However, there is no denying that through the uncertainties introduced into all our daily working lives, that our anticipated future issue timescales will have to be treated with a little caution. I’m hopeful that we will still produce the anticipated Spring volume of Exchanges on or close to our regular April publication date, but right now I’m treating this with a little caution.

Nevertheless, if you are currently or considering contributing to Exchanges and have any concerns about deadlines or timescales, please don’t hesitate to speak to your editor or myself directly. We are always happy to discuss your concerns.

I should note, all our currently calls for contributions – Nerds and Loneliness, Falsehoods as well as our general call, remain open and we look forward to reading your articles and abstract submissions.

Gareth Johnson : 19 Mar 2020 15:30 |  Tags: Covid-19 Crisis Emergency Health Public Resilience |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Editorial Entrances & Departures

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/about/editorialTeam

This week we’re witnessing a slight changing of the guard with Exchanges. Firstly, some of my associate editors who have been working on our various special issues have come off the team. My thanks to Sophie, Freya and James for their various contributions to the title, and I hope they’ve found it a useful learning experience [1].

Meanwhile, behind the scenes at Exchanges I’ve been working these past two years to gradually increase the internationalisation of the Board, by talking with Warwick’s various institutional partners. It can be tricky overseeing and supporting a distributed editorial team around the globe, and it’s a time consuming (and occasionally frustrating) task to engage with those institutions where we don’t have any direct representation for the journal. Much as I’d like to do a spot of globetrotting and make some connections in person [2], it hasn’t been practical – so I’ve been involved in extensive chains of email correspondence. It probably won’t surprise you to read that Exchanges isn’t top of many scholars’ priorities. This might be understandable, but from a Managing Editor perspective, it can make for false starts and occasional stagnation.

Nevertheless, as of today, I’m delighted to welcome aboard our newest two members of the Editorial Board as Dr Guilherme Sampaio and Dr Salvatore Monteleone join us from CY Cergy Paris Université. Guilherme is an intellectual historian, specialising in particular on the French reception of Keynes and generally on the relation between economic thought and policy in Modern France. By contrast, Salvatore is a researcher focussing on cyber-physical systems, embedded systems, and network-on-chip architectures. I’m confident they’ll both bring some much appreciated new perspectives and insights, alongside their more practical contributions to the journal.

[1] More about that in a later post and conference paper next month!

[2] Perhaps less so currently, given the current global health crisis

Gareth Johnson : 05 Mar 2020 09:48 |  Tags: Board Editors Quality Team |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Special Issue Call Announced Nerds, Culture and Loneliness

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/announcement/view/20

Hopefully by now you’ll have seen the announcement from Exchanges about our latest call for papers. This time we’re teaming up with SOAS and the University of Oxford to produce an issue with papers which ‘explore fictional representations of nerds and loneliness across various media and culture’. Naturally, those of you who know me in real life, know this is a topic very close to my heart and lived-experience. Unlike earlier calls, we’re only seeking abstracts in the first instance (300 words by 6^th April), so hopefully this’ll net us a rich range of potential contributors.

If you’ve been keeping track, this represents the third of our special issues we’ve formally launched preparations towards: with the recently published Cannibalism issue being the first and the pending CliFi issue the second. Interestingly, with each of these issues we’ve followed a slightly different pattern for submissions. For Cannibalism, we had a preselected number of authors who had already contributed to a conference, who were directly invited to submit. For CliFi, while we were associated with last year’s European Utopian Society’s conference in Prado, the call for contributions was very much open to any scholar globally. This time we’re almost blending these prior approaches, by starting with a call for abstracts, which will be followed by a workshop event (in early 2021), and then expecting contributors to the workshop to contribute a paper to Exchanges’ special issue.

In many respects, I think this last model may be my favourite, as it embeds Exchanges in the workshop processes and discourse from the outset. It’s not to say it’ll be the only model we’ll use in the future. I’d be lying if I suggested that. Certainly though, given a free hand with future collaborative special issues, I’d hope we can emulate as many elements as possible of this approach, as I believe it’ll serve to offer dividends in thematic coherency and editorial efficacy alike.

I should note at this point, my big thanks to Dr Filippo Cervelli (SOAS) and Dr Benjamin Schaper (Oxford) who came to me with this proposal a few months ago, and following some enthusiastic discussions on both sides, have helped guide us to this point. I’m very much looking forward to seeing what sort of material this call elicits, and working with Filippo and Ben over the months to come.

Gareth Johnson : 03 Mar 2020 12:13 |  Tags: Abstracts Culture Deadline Issues Nerds Special Submissions |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem