Leading scholarship: A guide to editing academic journals in the humanities, arts and social sciences

This book emerged from the experiences of two of its editors (Butler and Szili)
who found themselves for the first time responsible for an academic journal
in the humanities, arts and social sciences. While we were both experienced
in publishing academic articles across a range of disciplines, we had little
preparation, direction, or knowledge of the 'back end' processes and expectations involved in an editorial role. As you would expect of scholars and
budding editors, we each sought information and guidance on best practice
from academic literature, only to find a distinct absence of an accessible,
cohesive and reputable repository on how to successfully manage academic
journals. A wealth of information certainly existed, ranging from articles that
addressed how to manage e-journals around the early 1990s to mid-2000s (see,
for example, Stoller, 1992; Hovav & Gray, 2004) to more recent discussions
around how to navigate the increasingly competitive space of journal impact
factors (Krell, 2010), and successfully balancing the workload of editorial
work in often time-poor academic roles (Starfield & Paltridge, 2019; Times
Higher Education Supplement, 2017), but there seemed little that answered the
particular and difficult questions posed by the editors. For instance, in terms of
journal mechanics and day-to-day operations, we wondered 'how best to build
an effective editorial board?' and 'how to manage the increasing volumes of
submissions at a time when many academics have less time to peer review?'
Moreover, we also considered some of the bigger questions, including 'how
best to make a difference to society and practice through our journal?’ and
'how to navigate the many different forms of publishing available and improve
author and reader access?' In discussions with the third member of this book’s
editorial team (Hay), who had experience of starting and editing a variety of
journals, the idea of putting together a book providing advice for aspiring and
seasoned journal editors alike emerged. This book is the result of that discussion and subsequent collaboration.