Are you part of an editorial team for an accredited academic journal, or do you want to become part of one? In this blog, I share how I used familiar guidelines to cope with the unfamiliar editorial demands of a double-blind peer review process, acting as guest editor for one issue of a journal.
What helped me cope with everybody’s ‘great expectations’?
Communication is the name of the game
I had to wait for the editorial team to introduce me as editor to all authors and peer reviewers before I began communicating with them. Introductions over, I shared the journal’s style guide and specifications with everyone. In this case, the style guide was based on the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition (2020).
I also used my first email to double-check the list of article titles, authors, peer reviewers and email addresses provided by the editorial team, rediscovering the value of absolute accuracy for clear communication. There were errors, necessitating a revision of the contact list for eight authors and sixteen peer reviewers. Of course, this list had to be updated regularly to accommodate changes in peer reviewers.
A reality check: My content tracker
In my first email to the authors, I shared the submission dates for their articles, the timeframes for the double-blind peer review process and the final submission date for their reviewed and edited articles. The hope was to ensure that the review process started at the same time and ended when it was supposed to end – great expectations shared by all the role players! However, as the reality of the authors’ and peer reviewers’ work overload and personal challenges came into play, each followed their own timetable for submissions and reviews. My content tracker, provided by the journal’s editor, was the proverbial ‘stitch in time’, saving me from losing track of individual progress. This tracker was in an MS Word document; I kept track of each author’s and peer reviewer’s progress in an Excel spreadsheet and regularly copied the data into the content tracker.
Consistency: My PEG style sheet
Another saving grace was my PEG style sheet, which I used to ensure consistency in spelling, punctuation, formatting and referencing across the eight articles. Since I started editing, I have been following John Linnegar’s guidelines, ‘Achieving consistency: The role of a house style and style sheets’ on the Editorial Aids web page of the PEG website. I used my familiar style sheet template to handle the wide variety of formats, font sizes and styles in which the articles arrived, rather than the APA conventions used in the professional paper that I provided as a sample in my first email. My style sheet entries grew as the authors submitted their corrected articles after each review cycle. Consequently, my style sheet became like a trusted friend, guiding me from the first to the final edit in making and communicating consistent editorial decisions.
Time to say goodbye
After seven months of communication with the editorial team, the authors, the peer reviewers, the articles and my style sheet, my role as editor had come to an end. I submitted the final edits of the articles and the Editorial Note to the editorial team. Although all the great expectations were not fully met, the reality remained that the articles would convey clear and meaningful messages to the readers in their various academic disciplines.
It is also time to say goodbye to you, as my guest. Thank you for joining me in experiencing the risks and joys of being or becoming an editor of an accredited academic journal’s guest-edited issue.
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