There comes a time when journals should consider elevating their editorial standards, but this does run the risk of alienating authors. Change is one of those things that is both necessary, but not always welcomed.
But many journals aim to grow, and because of the nature of growth, change is almost always guaranteed. Here, we’re going to take a look at why a journal would want to elevate its editorial standards, how to do it, and how to do so without alienating authors.
Why you should elevate your editorial standards
While not all journals aim to expand and grow, many do. But this is not something that will happen by accident. Many journals have, over time, grown into vastly influential sources of research. Yet, they didn’t start that way. Over time, many of these journals have changed and refined the way in which they handle applications, process manuscripts, and more. While a journal might never change its ethos (or its fundamental character), it will definitely change things like its editorial standards and processes. This is necessary. A journal that handles five monthly submissions cannot operate in the same way when trying to handle five hundred monthly applications.
Over many articles, we’ve stressed the importance of the reputation of your journal. Importantly, over time, your journal’s reputation can stagnate if you never change. Times change. Technology changes. And being able to stay on top of change over time is crucial. A failure to grow and change can turn a good journal into a mediocre one.
For any journal with an eye on growth, determining the best way to balance out “ambition” and “the need to maintain volume” is important. For example, if you increase your standards so much that you eliminate half your submission volume, you’re also eliminating half your income. This is why it’s important to consider how you go about doing things.
How to update editorial standards
Importantly, you do not want to do all your changes all at once. This will amplify confusion and irritation (including amongst your team). There is a simple three-step process that you can apply to updates of this type that can help to smooth the process over:
- Identify updates as either crucial or non-crucial;
- Plan rollout and inform team;
- Give authors notice of changes (if possible).
By approaching updates using these three steps, you can minimize the odds of alienating authors due to the changes.
Identifying changes
First of all, you need to identify if a change is a crucial or necessary change. Changes to how many peer-review reports a manuscript will need to be published might feel important (and it is), but it is not a critical change. A change to your company’s payment system to address security vulnerabilities is incredibly important as it deals with identity security. The former example might be something you can roll out over a few months, while the latter requires immediate and urgent attention.
With the second example, your relevant team(s) would need to be notified as soon as the issue is discovered. The issue would need to be addressed before notifying users. After the issue has been corrected (or as soon as possible if there will be a delay), authors would need to be notified of the updates.
This is why it is very important to identify how urgent changes are. When it comes to editorial standards, these might seem less important than a problem with security vulnerabilities, but they can happen. A problem with your existing management systems could result in security vulnerabilities as well.
Planning and rolling out changes
Once you’ve identified the changes you want to make to your editorial standards (whether it is increasing the expected quality of submissions, changing the scope, or any other number of possible changes), you need to roll them out.
A good rollout of changes will start by making a public announcement. This should be easily found and understood. Any changes, ideally, will also be accompanied by an explanation of why the changes are being made in the first place. One of the best ways to ensure a smooth transition to editorial changes is to give yourself a lot of time. If you set a rollout to be a couple of days from the decision, you might find that there are unintended consequences or problems. Make sure that you engage with stakeholders throughout your company during the planning stage. If a proposed change will affect submissions, talk to your team members that handle submissions.
Your team might be able to identify problems before editorial standards are changed. Remember, making a change and then needing to reverse that change publicly isn’t going to positively impact your reputation.
Giving authors notice
We touched on this a little bit above, but here we’ll go into more depth. Your authors are the bread and butter of your journal. Making sure that they are informed of changes, well in advance where possible, is critical. At some point, however, you will need to just make the change.
Depending on the importance of the change, you will be able to give authors more or less notice.
When you make the first announcement, it’s important to make sure that you don’t just mention it once and on only one channel. If you have social media accounts, this message should be repeated there as well. Make it point to mention the upcoming change often. If it is a month away, you might want to mention it weekly. In the final week, you may want to consider daily updates. If a change is six months away, then a few times a month before getting closer to the change is probably sufficient.
Using other forms of indirect communication, like signatures in emails is a good way to ensure that you’re doing your due diligence to inform your authors.
Why you might need to update your editorial standards
As noted above, a journal the handles five manuscripts a month is vastly different from one that has five hundred submissions a month. As your journal grows, your reputation will change. Best practices for very small journals might not work for (even) slightly bigger small journals. It’s important to monitor the academic publishing landscape to ensure that you’re staying on top of changes.
Another time that you might find your editorial standards lacking is if you are not seeing results that you are aiming for. For example, if you are hoping to achieve an impact factor for your journal, you might need stricter editorial standards than when you first started. While not all journals are focused on impact factors, these can have a major impact on your journal’s reputation.
Updating and improving your editorial standards also tells your author community that you are interested in improving the visibility and success of their work. Authors generally prefer to publish in more prestigious journals where possible, so making your journal more reputable is a tangible benefit to authors as well.
When improving standards, there are a myriad of benefits. Reviewers will be more inclined to participate in the peer-review process of a more reputable journal. Not only that, but the overall quality of feedback may increase as a result. This results in stronger research publications.
While one needs to make sure to balance growth and submissions, being assertive and forward-moving when it comes to standards can also be a powerful tool to foster a solid reputation.
How to avoid alienating authors
Because authors are one of the single most important considerations in your entire business, making sure that they’re happy is critical. It’s not possible to please 100% of people, 100% of the time. But you can still keep a lot of people happy. And oftentimes, you just need to be upfront with them.
As we noted above, communication is key. Make sure that any notices are professional, timely, and easy to understand. These three things can have a major impact on the perception of your decisions. Also, explaining why is a great way to ensure authors stand with your decisions. If an author understands that higher standards is a benefit to them, they will likely support the choice. At the very least, they will understand why you made the choice.
A grace period may also be a huge benefit to your team. If your changes will take place on June 1st, be clear about it. But also, having June 1st be a “soft” date can allow for flexibility. August 1st, two months later, might be the “unofficial” hard date.
Being able to be both understanding, but also have firm dates is a good position to have.
As always though, you need to make choices that make sense for your journal. Remember your goals and make sure you produce the best journal you can!