There are many challenges in and around academic or scholarly publishing – open access, firewalls, plagiarism, etc. Editing is at the heart of scholarly publishing, yet it rarely gets mentioned. Editing is the work that takes research into a legible, creditable publication. The Scholarly Kitchen brought this interesting topic to us in their article, “Editing is at the Heart of Scholarly Publishing.”
The article author shared insights from Kent Anderson’s survey of 102 (and counting) “Things Journal Publishers Do”, where he found that editors are engaged with at least 38. For smaller publishers, editors may be doing a much larger share of the total. For society publishers, where we see responsiveness to the community of researchers as mission critical, editorial work is mission central.
Any organization, individual, or groups involved in publishing should understand the role that editors play in their final product and moving research into publication.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
