There’s a reason why now, more than ever, people are turning toward entrepreneurship. It’s an attractive concept: create something you’re passionate about, manage it according to your standards, and put a new product into the world. Something you wanted to see yourself, and something you can be proud of. Journal management hits all these key ideas. With a discipline you care deeply about and a gap in the market that needs to be filled, who better to do it than you? While this is all possible, it’s also difficult. Not everyone can start with a full team, funding, and the know-how.
Thankfully, there are plenty of tools, tips, and tricks at your disposal to help you. Even if you’re doing it all on your own, there are resources you can and should take advantage of. This will make learning on the go, supporting your journal, and providing a quality product all the more possible.
Journal management processes
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we need to briefly outline the steps of running a journal. Without defining the necessary tasks, you can’t anticipate what you’ll need to automate or delegate. Here’s a rough breakdown:
- The set up: Choosing a topic, title, your style guide and any submission standards you want to establish for your authors. Additionally, deciding on the look and layout of your journal, building a website, and determining a subscription system for future readers should be part of your initial steps.
- Production: Putting out a call for papers and managing the submissions. You’ll want to evaluate them for ethics, quality, and alignment with your journal’s content. Once you’ve accepted or rejected the paper, it’ll have to be peer reviewed, copyedited, proofread, typeset, and laid out. Communicating changes to the author and seeking necessary approvals prior to publishing the article should happen at this step, too.
- Publication: Finalize the issue, make sure all the graphics, illustrations, and page layouts are correct, and send it off into the world. Open access publishing makes this process easier by not requiring printing or legalities that come with traditional means.
- Marketing: Just because you’ve hit “publish” doesn’t mean the world knows about it. Now’s the time to invest in digital marketing campaigns and creating social media profiles. Consider paid ads if necessary, too.
Refinements at a glance
Even with this broad list of tasks, start identifying areas you may not be an expert in. Just because you’re a solopreneur doesn’t mean you have the talent or capacity to wear every single hat. If graphics aren’t your thing, don’t waste months, money on courses, and, ultimately, time trying to speed-run a gift in graphic design. Start researching your options—freelancers are going to be your likeliest bet. Gather intel on their rates and begin figuring it into your budget sooner rather than later.
Building your systems
With the amount of work involved in journal management, make the assumption that you won’t be tracking anything by hand. Not your submissions, your metrics, your budget, etc. Nothing. While you may be nervous about not having control over and a careful eye on everything, there are tools that will help you keep everything organized while minimizing mistakes. We may think we’re experts at Excel sheets, but human error is unavoidable, especially if you’re tired from working and your focus is being pulled in a million directions. Save your time and energy for the bigger items that can’t be automated.
Automation on a budget
As for what can be automated? Think of those small, time-consuming tasks. They probably seem like the thing you should be doing, since they’re generally easy and repetitive. But when you’re managing a journal solo, your focus should be on the bigger picture. Items such as planning your issues, communicating with scholars and freelancers, and sourcing funding need your human touch. The smaller stuff, like acceptance and rejection rates, assigning reviewers to manuscripts, and plagiarism scans should be automated.
Services such as JAMS, offer freemium subscriptions so that new and/or independently run journals can access tools that improve the editorial process. With the basic features free to all users, journal managers can get used to the software and integrate it into their management systems before purchasing additional support. The best part? As your journal grows, JAMS scales up alongside it, expanding your abilities as a solopreneur without overwhelming you.
When to simplify your journal management systems
When you’re running a journal on your own, the amount of papers you handle at first will be small. Your first call for papers isn’t guaranteed to rake in responses, and you may reject more papers than you accept while you determine your standards and ethical criteria. Remove potential road bumps from your path by tracking how long each task takes, from emailing scholars, reviewing papers, editing them, etc. Where are you taking the longest? Is it because the task requires that amount of time, or do you have too many steps to complete? If you’re the one editing the papers, instead of performing multiple passes, use a copyediting software first. Then, once the glaring errors have been highlighted or changed for you, you only have to read through the paper once to catch the rest of the mistakes.
Are your clients adding stress to these tasks? Are they confused and asking a lot of questions? Make sure you have guidelines for authors and freelancers that are readily accessible and easy to understand. In fact, it’s likely a good idea to have your submission guidelines, quality checks, ethical standards, and employee expectations written before you ask for any papers or sign contracts.
Time management for journal managers
Journal management isn’t going to come naturally, so expect things to take longer at the beginning. But time management practices can be practiced from the outset. Once you’re familiar with how long tasks take and how much time you realistically have in your day to complete them—because you are a person, after all, and you can’t spend every hour working on your journal—create a schedule. Assign daily tasks, weekly, monthly, etc. Choose times of the day for larger projects when you know you’re most awake and focused. For some that could be the morning or early evening. Maximize your productivity by adjusting your workflows to your personal rhythms. Don’t try to accomplish everything in the wee hours of the morning and wonder why it feels like nothing is getting done. If you’re your own boss, you can craft a routine that is tailored to your needs.
And if you have known distractions, like your phone, the TV, or even just the sight of your bed, try to find a location to work that is private and closed off from those temptations. If this means going to a cafe a few times a week, so be it.
Avoid the dreaded burnout
Journal management is no small feat. You aren’t going to follow your schedule perfectly every day. Times may not always align. Issues may pop up that need to be addressed urgently, and this could throw you off course. Or perhaps, and most likely, you’re having an off day and your productivity isn’t what you want it to be. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Understand that the ebbs and flows of solopreneurship are scary, especially when you feel like you have no lifeline, but there is always someone to ask for help. Whether that be hiring staff, even if it’s just one fulltime member or a few freelancers, or asking friends or family to get involved. You could even turn to your fellow scholars on social media platforms and pages for academics. Airing out your issues, feeling heard, and discussing similar situations others find themselves in can improve your outlook.
So today wasn’t the best, but tomorrow will be better. And if it’s not? Take some time off. Rest. Go outside, exercise, eat right, and try your best to sleep. Don’t let hiccups derail you entirely, and remember to give yourself grace. If you don’t, you may find yourself burned out before you’ve even begun. Burnout takes time to come back from, and this could set you back in your goals. Giving yourself space for rest now prevents extended breaks in the future. Ones you won’t be able to enjoy if you’re recovering from burnout rather than being intentional with your leisure time.
Managing a journal solo is going to be difficult, but it’s also going to be very rewarding. So long as you’re honest with yourself about you can and can’t do, delegate and automate accordingly, and importantly, take care of yourself, you’re going to be just fine.