All 3 entries tagged Communications

Out of Office, and into a New One

It's all change in the Exchanges editorial office this week - or rather, it's all change forthe Exchanges editorial office this week. Myself, along with my colleagues in the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) are relocating to some lovely new offices closer to the heart of Warwick's campus. And in my case, nearer to the local wild fowl too. I'm writing this message off-site today, having packed up my entire office into three crates which will be moved at the start of the next week to my new office.

This might mean a slight blip in communications, while I get my computer and phone transferred and set up, but hopefully it will be so brief most readers probably won't even notice. Rest assured though, the Exchanges servers will remain fully operational and accessible throughout, so you'll be able to read, submit and interact with the journal as normal.

I'm very excited about the move, as it's introduced some new possibilities for engaging with the local early career community that I'm in the process of developing. Naturally, more about these once I'm ready to announce.

In the meanwhile, don't forget about all our various open calls for contributions and participation - the editorial team are waiting to hear from you!

Gareth Johnson : 05 Sep 2019 09:24 |  Tags: Announcements Communications Move Office Relocation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Ghosting & Peer Review

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

This summer if you happened to be listening to one of my talks about the importance of peer review, and the associated challenges around it, you’ll have probably heard me mention the biggest issue for me as a journal editor-in-chief: ghosting peer reviewers. A suitable topic for a Halloween post, I thought.

When we initially locate and approach prospective peer reviewers for Exchanges, part of the subsequent discussion is making them aware of the timescale within which we’d expect them to be able to complete the review. We’ve a nominal month set as standard for a review turnaround, as we’ve found that seems to have suited most of our reviewers and authors over the years. However, peer reviewing is not a time trivial task for anyone to take on, for example with have a a guestimate that it will take at least 5 hours to peer review a single Exchanges article. Other titles can put the anticipated commitment even higher still. This is one of the reasons why the COPE ethical guidelines for peer reviewers state, individuals should ‘only agree to review manuscripts for which they have the subject expertise required to carry out a proper assessment and which they can assess in a timely manner’ [1]. Unsurprisingly, this time commitment is why some reviewers we approach, decline to participate.

Nevertheless, from the outset there’s an expectation on reviewers once they’ve agreed to conduct a review that they’ll carry it out. Naturally, as an editor it is important to understand how real life can get in the way, with peoples’ circumstances liable to change without prior warning. That’s why you have to ensure there’s an accommodation for individuals who suddenly need a little more time to conduct the review or who might need to drop out altogether. This is quite understandable, and as a journal we have our share of reviewers who have to drop out.

For us though, a problem arises when reviewers run silent, deep and dark. Typically, we spot this when they pass the review deadline without producing their review, and yet also stop responding to messages from the Editorial Board. There’s a tricky balancing act here for my team, we don’t want to bombard tardy reviewers with too many communications least we risk wreaking our relationship with them. Yet, reviewers have made a commitment to contribute to our quality assurance processes that we’d ideally like to see honoured. To borrow a term from the dating sphere, being ghosted, ‘The act of suddenly ceasing all communication with someone’ [2] has never represented a favourable turn of events, in either life or journal communications. Certainly, being ghosted as an editor can be a deeply frustrating experience. Even more so, the delays it creates in the editorial workflow present a bugbear for our authors, who end up waiting far longer than they’d reasonably expect to receive feedback or a decision on their work.

You might think being ghosted by reviewers was a rare occurrence, and yet over my 6 months as editor I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve spotted one or more of my editors having to deal with it. On some submissions it’s been known to happen multiple times. While, as I said, I can appreciate life is rarely straight forward, I retain an optimistic view that scholars would have the requisite professionalism to let me know if suddenly being a reviewer is no longer a task they can satisfy. I’m never offended by a big, bold and honest ‘No, I can’t do this anymore’, as it is far better to know for certain than be left in the dark. Yet, sadly, I have no easy solution to reviewers who choose to start ghosting the editorial team. Beyond that is, taking reviewers who fail to respond off our call sheets for future assignments, albeit a move I’m loathed to take, given the diversity and spread of our reviewers’ pool importance to myself and the title.

With this in mind, I was interested to read today about technological solutions for ghosting [3]. OJS, the platform we run Exchanges on, does have the ability to send automatic and manual prompts to reviewers [4], but perhaps we’ve not been using these as systematically as we could. Perhaps too, we could think again about how and when we send out reminders to reviewers. I’m not sure I have any immediate solutions to the issue, but it is one that’s going to occupy me for some time to come, long after the last pumpkin has been consigned to the compost heap!

[1] Hames, I., 2013. COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Committee on Publication Ethics. https://publicationethics.org/files/Peer%20review%20guidelines.pdf

[2]: Illa, G., 2013. Ghosting. Urban Dictionary. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Ghosting

[3] Hern, A., 2018. Ghosting Busters: why tech companies are trying to stop us blanking each other. Guardian, 31 October. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/31/ghosting-busters-why-tech-companies-trying-stop-blanking-each-other

[4] And authors too – authors ghosting us is also a problem

Gareth Johnson : 31 Oct 2018 12:21 |  Tags: Communications Cope Ghosting Halloween Peer Professional Review Silence Standards |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Contributor Communications

Communication is at the heart of what Exchanges does, and for the Editors the core tool we use to manage this process effectively and systematically is the Open Journal System (OJS) platform. Now, within this platform there are many automated email templates, which are normally activated, for example, when an article shifts to review or copyediting, or when an editorial decision is made during a submission’s editorial journey. From a Senior Editor’s point of view, there’s a marked advantage in using the platform’s email system too. Every message or reply is associated with its respective submission, creating an audit trail, which allows me to judge how well the editorial process for article is progressing.

One of the things which my Editorial Board made me aware about when I came on-board last month, was how some of the language templates were…well let’s say ‘less than ideal’. I understand more than one of our reader, reviewer and author community have been reportedly been a little taken aback as a result. While it is possible for Editors to adapt and edit the text to create a bespoke message, repeatedly altering templates emails isn’t the most efficient use of their, or my own, time.

I’m unsure how much prior Senior Editors tinkered with these templates, or if many have remained configured as the OJS standard boilerplate outlines which come with the system. Nevertheless, once I started looking more closely at these messages, it didn’t take long for my eyebrows to nearly pop off at times! The language, while arguably perfectly accurate, clearly lacked a sufficient degree of humanity in places. Others could be read as being rather too brusque, for example addressing authors as simply ‘Name’ rather than opening with the politer ‘Dear Name,’.

Details such as these might seem like simple points to agonise over, but a journal runs on the generosity of its authors and reviewers, informed by the effectiveness of our communication and enabled through an unspoken contract mutual professional respect. Hence, at the very least, my Editorial Board and I should ensure our default communication instruments address our contributors appropriately.

Hence, last week I started working through a process of reviewing and revising all of the 59 template emails our OJS system utilises. I’m, perhaps understandably, firstly concentrating on revising those we send out the most often, so my apologies to our reader community if you keep receiving some less than perfect mailshots from the system for the time being. I am working on it, and always welcome any feedback or suggestions as to where they might be made even better. Hopefully, the end point will be mildly enhanced set of communications, and a more satisfied reader community.

New Name

Incidentally, following on from my last entry, it’s been agreed by my Editorial Board to make the change to the journal’s name. Henceforth, from Vol5(2), we’ll officially be shifting the full title to Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal. I’m in the process of updating the various online mentions of the title, so you might see a mix for a few weeks until I’ve tracked them down. I hope you like our new name, and agree with me that it far better reflects the titles’ scholastic mission.

Gareth Johnson : 21 May 2018 10:38 |  Tags: Communications Emails Messages Systems Templates |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem