Editorial boards are absolutely critical to the success of any peer-reviewed journal. It doesn’t matter if the journal is open access or legacy, they all need a strong editorial board for a number of reasons.
An editorial board can be an invaluable resource for you. Not only do your editorial board members (EBMs) experts in the field (or fields) that your journal addresses, but they also have years (if not decades) of experience when it comes to publishing. Many, if not all, of your editorial board members will have published manuscripts over the years and have experienced different facets of the publishing industry. They will have had good experiences and bad experiences, and these can help to make your journal more successful.
Recruiting a strong editorial board
Recruitment of editorial board members isn’t always easy. Experts in any given field usually have a lot going on. But editorial boards are crucial to the success of your journal, so you want to make sure you get it right.
So, how do you convince them to join your journal? One of the easiest ways to create a favourable first impression is to avoid using templates and form letters. If your letter is the same form letter that you send to every potential member, it will be obvious to your potential editorial board member that you didn’t spend any time on them. Learning about the specifics of an academic’s career, how their area of expertise overlaps with your journal, and how your journal’s plans will help them in their career will help them to understand your journal.
The more personal you make your request, the more likely you will be to receive a positive response.
In addition to a personal request, making an academic an offer that will be in their best interests can help. Importantly, this might mean that you’ll need to consider this in advance. Your editorial board member will not likely be happy serving as a “rubber stamp” for manuscripts. They will want to be involved (to varying degrees) and understanding how much someone can contribute to your journal is crucial. If someone wants to serve on your editorial board, but can only commit to a few hours of work, you need to know how flexible you’re willing to be. Researchers and academics might be at very different stages in their careers, so being flexible is critical.
Involving your editorial board
As noted above, not all members of your editorial board will want to be rubber stamps and nothing else. Your editorial board is a group of experts in the field. And they are an incredibly valuable source of information and experience that you can tap.
Keeping your editorial board motivated might be as simple as keeping them in the loop with ongoing projects your journal is working on. Not only that, but you may have the opportunity to have your editorial board members to lead the way on these projects. Regardless of whether they are making suggestions for potential authors that might want to submit to your journal, or providing broader directions for your journal to move in, they have great ideas.
Getting your editorial board involved in an important way to make your journal stronger. There are many different ways in which to get an editorial board member involved. For example, define their roles and stay on top of communication to get them involved.
Defining roles
By being clear about the roles you expect your editorial board to fulfill, and having them agree to it, you can engage with them regularly without feeling like a burden. Sometimes if roles are unclear, there can be friction in the relationship between the publisher and the editorial board. If expectations aren’t clear from the beginning, then neither the board member nor the journal will have a clear understanding of what the relationship is. How many peer reviews is too many in a week, or in a month? Two? Twenty?
A strong editorial board is one that knows what it is doing. It knows what to expect from you, the publisher, and what is expected of them.
Will they be reaching out to other academics on your behalf? Will the by organizing special volumes of the journal? Are they going to be with you for a determined period of time or is tenure on the board open ended and indefinite?
Make sure that, before you start contacting potential board members, you have a clear set of expectations you are starting from. These can always be negotiated (and should always be flexible), but making sure that these issues are discussed at the beginning is critical to a good relationship.
If you make changes to the “standard” relationship to accommodate a new board member, make sure that you keep records and that your team are aware of these arrangements.
Communicate
Good communication is the backbone to a strong foundation. In the same way that you have defined clear roles and expectations for your editorial board members, clear communication will help to reinforce those roles.
Imagine you’re an academic who has agreed to join an editorial board. You’ve notified the journal that you’re willing to review up to five manuscripts per week. And then nothing comes. For weeks on end. A few months later, you’ve forgotten about the journal because nothing ever comes, so you make other arrangements to spend that valuable time.
Then the manuscripts start to come. In fact, too many all at once.
This is a failure in communication. The journal should have communicated more clearly when they were going to start. They also should have communicated how much work they had, and so on.
Diversity makes a stronger board
Any business needs customers. Appealing to a single segment of a population means that the appeal of a company’s product will be limited. And journals are no different.
Diversifying your editorial board only makes it stronger. Having a wide range of knowledge, life experience, and even when your members come from different countries around the world can offer vastly different perspectives that can help your journal. For example, if all your editorial board members come from North America, then you might lose a great deal of perspective of what it might be like to be an academic in the Global South. Having a diverse editorial board can help you to identify pain points in the publishing process that might exist in certain regions of the world, but not in others.
This will give your journals a bit of a global perspective. It will also diversify your editorial board and lead to a diversification of the content of your publications.
Diversity and inclusion has been growing over time. Now, it is baked into the way that many journals and institutions view editorial boards. COPE, for example, focuses on promoting integrity and publishing. They have also discussed how important diversity is in the industry.
Recognition
There are lots of reasons why an editorial board member will want to be involved in a journal. Most of the time, these relate directly to a board member’s career.
But at the end of the day, editorial board members are helping you and your journal. As such, giving them some kind of recognition is important. There are lots of different forms that this recognition can take. You might send them a certificate or a small gift during the holidays. You might also have an assortment of different “rewards”. That way you can give them something based on their tenure on your editorial board. Perhaps a certificate the first year and a small gift in the second year, and so on.
However you go about doing it, making sure that your board members feel recognition is important.
It goes without saying that their names should always be listed on your journal’s website. In addition to all of these things, you might want to consider sending them a letter.
Mail your editorial board members and thank them for their work. Don’t use templates and form letters. Make sure that you send them a personal message. It should be written for the specific person, and thank them for all they’ve done.
Strong editorial boards make for strong journals
You can easily see how important a strong editorial board is to a journal. As such, making sure that you are doing what you can to develop a strong and competent board is very important. Take your time to find qualified members, and follow this advice to help secure a strong working relationship with your board. A good board can help you create an amazing journal.