journal editor models
It’s said that journal editors are the only ones with real power in academia. It’s interesting to think about the ways that editors treat their task. In no particular order:
- Editor as dictator: The editor has pretty strong opinions and selects reviewers who’ll enforce this view. They will routinely override reviewers. Pros: They can champion neat stuff and work with authors to produce good stuff. Cons: They can have quirky and bizarre opinions and ignore quality reviews.
- Editor as pollster: The editor just accepts what the reviewers like. Pros: You can get highly polished work that satisfies the average academic. Cons: Bad when reviewers have conflicting views, unable to support unconventional work,
- Collective editing: Editors meld the opinions of reviewers, board members and themselves. Pros: A more unified response to papers, often faster than other models. Cons: ???
- Editor as the extra reviewer: Sort of like editor as pollster, but writes a completely new review in addition to what the reviewers wrote. Pros: You get really extensive feedback. Cons: As Ezra said, death by a thousand paper cuts.
- There’s also the issue of laissez-faire vs. activist editing. Some editors will just “let the process work out” while others might actively intervene if a paper doesn’t have enough reviews, uninformative reviews, or they just think the reviewers got it wrong. One editor I know actually will help authors rewrite papers. Another redid some regressions to settle a dispute between reviewers and authors. Then there are those editors who let papers dangle in the wind and do nothing to settle the status of a paper. I suspect activist editors are more likely to produce more efficient and better journals, unless a journal is a flagship journal that automatically draws high quality papers.
I don’t have any strong preference and I think a discipline is served by diversity. You need different kinds of editors to pull it off. Any other editorial styles worth discussing? Strong opinions on which editorial styles produce the best work?
This is an interesting issue. I think I prefer an editor who isn’t afraid to be dictatorial (and activist), the other models relegate editorial work to a more simple administrative function (at least #2 and #3 does), while I think editors are chosen to exert some voice and even courage. #4 I think is a given in some sense, the editor ought to read the piece (as #2 editors, some editors, unfortunately, don’t even read but just write one-two sentences pointing to the reviewers comments).
tf
July 17, 2008 at 1:20 am
I wonder if the role played by the editor will depend on her own familiarity with the topic, e.g., she will likely place more weight on her own opinion if she has confidence in her own grasp of the related literature. Then again, some editors seem to reject papers outright because of some negative bias against the literature.
mikemcbride
July 17, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Mike McBride: There is some evidence for your comment. The journal Social Problems once did an analysis of the factors behind positive editorial decisions (author’s age, topic of paper, etc.) and if the paper was in the same subarea as the editor or associate editors, there was a positive effect. Now, I’m not sure if it’s selection effects, social networks or willingness to overrule fussy reviewers, but it was one of the more interesting findings of the paper.
fabiorojas
July 18, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Jay Barney was a Senior editor for an Org Science piece of mine. One of the reviewers was actually offended that my paper assumed that stakeholders were self-interested and would appropriate rent if they could. I got back a very long review explaining why I was wrong and should take more of a Connor and Prahalad approach (ignore/assume away opportunism).
Jay’s comment was telling. He figured that if a reviewer got upset, that was a sign that the paper might be on to something important. I would argue that pollsters, collective editors, and extra reviewers are most likely to reject something that will ultimately be impactful…
russcoff
July 20, 2008 at 9:11 pm
“He figured that if a reviewer got upset, that was a sign that the paper might be on to something important.”
I like that as one potential heuristic for seeing how engaging something might be. I got a strong peer review like that a few years back — the review was absolutely scathing, the reviewer was clearly upset by the arguments — thought about posting a few excerpts from the review but thats not in good taste (I may have equally strong reviews out there — don’t know). The paper though found a different outlet.
It might all of course depend on ‘reviewer draw’ (which is where editors have much control) — e.g., for certain reviewers there might be nothing controversial about your org sci paper while others may have big problems with it. Having a mix of anticipated reactions is probably a good way to go, though if an editor is simply a pollster than the composition of that mix will have much to do with whether the paper gets accepted or not.
tf
July 20, 2008 at 9:35 pm