All 6 entries tagged Issue

Après Nous, Le Déluge

The title of this post, drawn from an expression attributed to Madame de Pompadour, traditionally refers to a tipping point, a moment after which unremitting chaos will rain down. Truth be told, it’s actually nothing as disastrous as that in the world of Exchanges today (thankfully). Rather it’s the delight of opening up the OJS submissions list and discovering a large number of new manuscript submissions awaiting me and my editorial team’s scrutiny. I was rather expecting these, given they’re all manuscripts linked to one of our forthcoming special issues, as we have just passed the submission deadline last week.

Nevertheless, it’s a bit more than our normal weekly ingest of new works. Not to mention I’m aware of at least four more authors for the issue who’ve been in touch to ask for brief extensions. Hence, I’m anticipating a few more works as part of the tail end of the ‘deluge’ still to come.

For a relatively small academic journal like Exchanges, getting a large number of manuscripts submissions in a short period of time represents both a blessing and a challenge; in that our processes don’t normally have to cope with this level of new works. However, I’m more confident that myself and the rest of the team will rise to the occasion splendidly, and really is a genuine pleasure to see all this new scholarship potentially heading for our pages.

I do find myself musing though, that I hope the start of every week from hereon out won’t be like this…as I might need to do some drastic rethinking on how we operate the journal.

Gareth Johnson : 04 Jun 2019 11:12 |  Tags: Cannibalism Ingest Issue Special Submissions |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Issue 6.2 of Exchanges Now Available

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/issue/view/25

Regular readers will have already spotted it, but last week marked our biannual publication of the latest issue of Exchanges (vol 6.2). My thanks as always to all contributors, reviewers and editors alike. While it was never our intention, for the most part there’s a rather eastern focus to the articles in the issue. Aspects of life and work in Greece, Indonesia, Vietnam and China are all the focus of a number of articles, which I think is fantastic in terms of my hopes towards increasing Exchanges’ international scope. We’ve not forgotten work closer to home, as there’s an article from and about an event here at Warwick in the pages too.

There’s always a sense of satisfaction and regret when we publish a new issue. Satisfaction, as it represents the publicly visible cumulation of the past 6 months of behind the scenes work. Regret, because there are always those articles which are so close to competition but don’t make it in time for the publication deadline. In the previous issue, I quite literally had an article completed and signed off by the author on the day of publication. In that case, the author was lucky as I had enough time to rework the issue and include it in the pages. This time, perhaps more thankfully for myself, there wasn’t a repeated late delivery. None of the remaining articles my editorial team are still working away on at the moment are quite ready for publication, although with any luck, many of them should be completed over the next month or so.

Incidentally, transit time of articles from submission to publication, remains one aspect of our journal publication processes that remains extremely variable. Some articles are well prepared by authors, favourably received by external reviewers and relatively straight-forward to copyedit. Some need a lot more heavy-lifting by authors and editors in terms of language, syntax, content and formatting or are more challenging to move through the reviewing process in a timely manner. I think our recent record for identifying scholars willing to review an article was 22 people approached, making reviewing a process which takes a lot of time and effort by the editorial team before reviewers even commence their work. I’ll confess the speed at which authors respond and action requests for revisions is the other of the two biggest factors, in terms of how soon we can get a new article to publication.

To illustrate this practically, one of the articles this issue is actually a relatively recent submission, and was blessed by responsive reviewers and author alike, along with some top-notch editorial work by one of my team. I wish every article we accept for publication could have such an easy journey. Conversely, at least one of the other articles had a far longer traversal through pre-publication. Regrettably some articles do take longer to reach the endpoint, but be assured, we do everything possible at Exchanges HQ to expediate their publication journeys. We encourage all our contributors to do likewise.

Of course, there is the slight artificiality of twice-yearly publication dates, at least in part a result of the software but also our own preferred approaches to issue construction. Part of me keeps considering if there are ways in which we could revise this approach and build issues up as articles become publication ready. I remain unconvinced, given the volume of submissions we currently have to the title and the editorial labour available to us, that this would convey sufficient advantages over our current system. Then again, never say never to shifting the pattern of how Exchanges appears. Were we to become a much more favoured destination for scholarly outputs than we currently are, then, well, I think the time might then be ripe for a rethink.

In the meantime, please enjoy the latest issue, and let us know any comments, thoughts, suggestions or indeed article proposals you may have for the next one.

Gareth Johnson : 08 May 2019 11:43 |  Tags: Exchanges Issue Journal Article New Publication |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Welcoming our Special Edition Associate Editors

I had the pleasure this morning of spending a couple of hours training my newest members of my Exchanges Editorial Team. Sophie, Giulia and Fiona are post-graduate researchers based here at Warwick who will be supporting the production of our forthcoming Cannibalism: Bites Here & There special issue, scheduled for publication in early 2020. My hope is, like the members of the Editorial Board, that these three will not only contribute to Exchanges but have an excellent learning experience at the sharp end of publication. They’ll be working alongside and supplementing the work of my regular Board members, whom I’m sure will be supportive and grateful in equal measure for the newcomers’ contributions.

I strongly suspect that if all the papers relating to this issue for which I’ve received abstracts (30 and counting) are submitted as manuscripts, then I may well be recruiting a few more willing helpers onto the team. It’s great because this kind of community involvement really helps satisfy part of Exchanges remit as an academic training resource for emerging scholars, alongside its regular dissemination mission. I expect exciting and insightful times lie ahead for us all over the next few months as we pull the issue together.

Gareth Johnson : 10 Apr 2019 14:22 |  Tags: Cannibalism Editors Issue Special Training |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Exchanges Issue 6.1 Published

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/issue/view/19

The Institute for Advanced Study, and myself on behalf of the Editorial Board, is delighted to announce a new issue of Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journalhas been published. The autumn issue contains a number of articles, including some addressing the theme of Narrating, Nation, Sovereignty and Territory.

Exchanges, in case you didn't know, showcases peer-reviewed research articles, critical reviews and interviews with significant disciplinary figures, written primarily by early career fellows across all disciplines. Managed and published by IAS at Warwick since 2013, the Senior Editor (that'll be me) is always happy to speak to prospective authors or scholars with an interest in publishing with us. There is an open call for submissions 365 days a year.

To read the articles, contact us or find out how you can contribute to future issues go to: https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk

There's also a general call for papers you might like to read too: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/ias/activities/exchanges/cfp-exchanges_nov_2018.pdf

Gareth Johnson : 06 Nov 2018 12:38 |  Tags: Announcement Call Exchanges For Issue Journal New Papers Published |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Deadlines for October

Time marchs ever onwards, and we find ourselves rushing towards the start of a new academic year, which also means the publication date of the next issue of Exchanges isn't far away either. Behind the scenes my editors, authors and reviewers are (no doubt) working feverishly to prepare work that is publication ready. To help motivate everyone, the following are the ideal copy dates for material that will appear in the October issue of Exchanges:

• Monday 15th October: Deadline for articles to be copyediting and authors to be reviewing any final changes.
• Friday 26th October: Editorial deadline for authors to agree copyediting layout and articles to shift to production ready.
• Tuesday 30th October: New Issue of Exchanges is published.

Articles which don't quite hit these dates, may well still see publication this issue, but the later they arrive the less likely there will be time to deal with them once production is underway, which means those authors will have to wait until the next issue. So if you're an author and the editorial team has asked you to make some corrections, or we've contacted you to ask your opinion on something, please do respond as quickly as possible, so you don't miss out on being published as soon as possible!

And if you are an early career researcher, and your haven't already submitted an article with us, then why not find out more about publishing with Exchanges or drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.

Gareth Johnson : 05 Sep 2018 15:09 |  Tags: Deadline Issue October Publication |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Exchanges Vol 5(2) is here!

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/issue/view/17

I’m delighted to announce the (slightly delayed) launch of the newest issue of the Exchanges journal. The cause of delay has been (mostly) down to your friendly neighbourhood Senior Editor getting to grips with the systems, workflows and people who contribute to making Exchanges into a reality. That, and of course getting our authors, editors and reviewers all to the right point in our production and quality assurance processes, where I felt confident enough there was sufficient quality material to publish. The learning curve at times has been somewhat steeper than I expected, but yes, there is a sense of minor personal satisfaction rolling the issue out. Now comes the promotional side of things, as I work towards raising awareness of the new issue across our readership old and new.

As getting this issue live has filled the majority of my work-time thoughts for the past couple of months, it’s a refreshing point to have reached, as for the first time since I started working on the title, I feel I can sit back for a few moments and reflect. Naturally, next comes the pre-production on the next issue, although it is fair to say in many cases this is already more advanced than the material was when I came on board in mid-April. There’s also now the big advantage of having personally gone through the publication and production process once, and consequently amassing a much deeper understanding of how we ‘make’ Exchanges on a practical level.

Not that myself and the Editorial Board are about to rest on our laurels. Far from it! Now I’ve put the issue to bed, alongside tackling the revision of our authorial guidance and support, I’m rather hoping to be able to dedicate some more time and thought to thinking. Thinking, that is, about some of the more experimental and evolutionary elements of what we could do with Exchanges: both as a journal title and an intellectual brand. As always, I’ll be discussing elements of these thoughts in these very blog pages.

Gareth Johnson : 08 Jun 2018 14:00 |  Tags: Exchanges Issue Launch New Publication |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem