Lessons in the art of scientific editing

ABSTRACT

This short commemoration piece highlights dimensions of scientific publishing that the author considers relevant in all publication processes, particularly from the perspective of the science journal editor. Specifically, it shares experiences from working with Ronan Paddison for over ten years, while he was the editor-in-chief of Space and Polity.

KEYWORDS:

• Scientific publishing
• journal editing
• editorial work

This short commemoration piece wishes to highlight positive dimensions in scientific publishing. While I have directed much of my recent attention to the opposite – to the criticism of the current development in market-driven academic publishing (see Kallio, 2017; Kallio & Hyvärinen, 2017; Kallio & Metzger, 2018; Kallio & Riding, 2019; Riding et al., 2020) – here I share my experiences from working with Ronan Paddison for over 10 years, while he was the editor-in-chief of Space and Polity, to argue for what should be preserved and further developed in academic journals, be they commercial or nonprofit. During my academic career I have learned that the quality of editorial work does not depend on such matters, any more than it has to do with the indexing or impact factor of the journal, rather editorial attitude and understanding are decisive.

My first personal contact with Ronan took place in January 2007. I had just received my doctoral degree and began working as a postdoc in a new research project. During the autumn of 2006 I had been preparing for the public defense of my thesis – a monograph in Finnish (Kallio, 2006) – by writing an article that would introduce its major ideas to the international scholarly community. With great excitement, I chose to send it to the journal that had published the most important contribution thus far in my specific area of interest: the special issue edited by Chris Philo and Fiona Smith (2003) on political geographies of children and young people. From the journal’s webpage I learned that the submission should be made to the editor-in-chief via mail, including three hard copies of the manuscript. I can still remember the moment when I printed out those copies, stuffed them into an envelope and took it to the Uni mail. It was January 9, the first day of the new semester. Two weeks later, I received a brief email from Ronan:

22.1.2007 at 12.35

Dear Kirsi

Many thanks for the article which you submitted recently to Space and Polity.

I shall be getting back to you as soon as possible.

Best wishes

Ronan Paddison

For the spring of 2007, I worked in the new project that had little to do with children, geography or politics. I had applied funding to continue my PhD research however was not sure if it was the right way to go. The research field of cultural game studies seemed rather promising, and there were many interesting and important paths in human geography, too, that I could follow. My ambivalence stemmed from that, at that time children’s political geographies was not among the coolest and most esteemed scholarly contexts (notable improvement taken place since!), thus perhaps not the best choice for an early career researcher. Encouragement to take my project further instead of turning towards more (apparently) serious or fashionable issues was rare. Hence the next email from Ronan in my mailbox was a delight, even as it landed there the middle of summer holidays.

26.6.2007 at 12.34

Dear Kirsi

I have received comments on the above and am pleased to say that, providing you are able to revise the article suitably, I would be pleased to publish the article in Space and Polity. I attach the comments as a single combined document – this details the specific points for revision.

The revisions should not pose major difficulties. They centre mainly on expanding certain points and making the article ‘deeper’ in its presentation. This will increase the size of the article. I don’t see this as a problem.

If you are able to attend to this in the following weeks I would plan to include it in the next issue. With other commitments in the pipeline publication would otherwise have to wait until the next Volume in 2008.

Let me know your timetable for revising.

Thank you for submitting to Space and Polity.

Ronan Paddison

I needed no more encouragement. The paper was published 1 August 2007 and included in the next issue of the journal (Kallio, 2007). In addition to convincing me that the political geographies of childhood and youth research agenda were worth some further work, the eight-month process gave me an important lesson in academic publishing. As in question was not my first publication process, I could appreciate many things in it: direct contact with the editor-in-chief including clear communication, an easily accessible one-pager summing up peer and editorial comments as well as providing the decision at once, fast processing and publication right after acceptance – and above all, the respectful and hospitable atmosphere that characterized our encounter. No template message from an electronic system, no general instructions from the journal, and no condescending accounts about non-native writing that even experienced authors so commonly receive (Fregonese, 2017).

Over the years I have come to admire this editorial attitude and skill more and more. Among all editors that I have worked with – as author, peer reviewer, special issue editor, editor-in-chief, publisher of a journal – to me it seems that Ronan had a pretty good idea of what scholarly publishing is about. That is, what we should try to do as scholars when involved in these processes in different roles, even if we can’t always achieve the best outcome or control the process as much as we’d like to.

Hence, in the spirit of politics of care, I wish to finish this short recognition piece by portraying some lessons that I have learned in the art of scientific editing, provided in a very practical form by Ronan and other wise scholars with whom I have had the privilege to work with over the past fifteen years or so. I hope that these principles and attitudes will continue in the editorial practices of new generations who cannot learn directly from Ronan what this work is – or should be – about.

Lessons about interpretation: Substantial expertise is not needed for appreciating the work of other scholars. Any subject matter, any geographical context, any methodological approach, any theoretical framework, any philosophical basis can be interesting and worth publishing if the paper involves potential to an adequate scholarly contribution. Yet the quality of research cannot be assessed without substantial expertise. Therefore, especially when working with papers concerning topics and approaches that the editor knows little about, it is essential to seek good advice. A common false notion is that the peer review practice used for this purpose by and of itself works as quality assurance. It does not. The editor’s active agency is needed in the process, in choosing suitable reviewers, interpreting the review reports and advising the authors in the revision. In cases where the first task proves challenging, the latter two become ever more important. Especially when finding agreeing reviewers is hard (i.e. majority of publication processes), the editor should not act as a transmitter between the reviewers and the authors – this work could easily be carried out by an electronic system. First and foremost, the editor is an interpreter.

Lessons about decision-making: All participants in a publication process have a specific role and, ideally, each does their job well. While the authors should follow the guidelines and seek to provide as good a contribution as they can, and the reviewers should assess the quality of the submission in a justified manner, the role of the editor is to make decisions. Decisions regarding papers’ suitability to the journal, decisions regarding whom to invite as peer reviewers, decisions regarding the suggestions in peer review reports, decisions regarding the acceptability of the revisions, decisions regarding the publication of the paper … Sometimes editors do not feel comfortable in such a powerful role and rather leave some of the decisions unmade. This does not make the power of decision-making disappear but, instead, shifts it to other players in the process, possibly creating power imbalance between them. The most common decision that editors elude concerns the peer review reports that, as material artefacts, may then start to dominate the whole process. If left uninterpreted, they may end up ruling the show instead of providing advice, and thus take the position of a decision-maker. This should be avoided as material artefacts lack the human capacity to reflection, which makes them inept actors in scholarly publishing. Secondly then, I have learned that the editor is a decision-maker.

Lesson about agenda setting: Every journal has a formal agenda, typically negotiated between the editors and the publisher, but what the agenda means is defined in publication processes. The editor can mobilize and even shift the journal’s agenda by, for example, inviting certain kind of work to the journal from conferences and expressing less interest in other types of potential contributions. Yet most importantly, the editor can keep the journal open to new research agendas. However, as the journal has an agenda that the editor has agreed to follow, the practical work of agenda setting is of course highly political. For this reason, exactly, it is crucial that editors realize and enact their dual agenda-setter role and, thus, take responsibility for developing the field. New research agendas emerge subtly, through submissions that do not seem to fit in any journal, through special issue proposals that bring together a motley crew, through ideas that may first appear irrelevant, unattractive, minute – or even childish. For such to arise, journals with an open attitude are needed. Therefore, as a political actor of the scholarly community, the editor is an agenda-setter.

My last exchange with Ronan took place in 16 April 2019. The topic of our discussion was Space and Polity editorial board where we considered new members. He wrote: ‘Hi Kirsi, Many thanks for these suggestions – they look varied and interesting. It is important, as you say, that they be good people to work with.’ Unsurprisingly, it was easy for him to agree with me on this one as he had emphasized the importance of ‘good people’ throughout our collaboration.

Ps. Space and Polity is publishing a special issue on ‘Youth Politics in Urban Asia’ in the present volume (Lam-Knott & Cheng, 2020). Following the special issues edited by Philo and Smith (2003) and Kallio and Häkli (2013), this places the journal unquestionably as the leading publication in the field of political geographies of childhood and youth. Quite an achievement!

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Kirsi Pauliina Kallio is Professor of Environmental Pedagogy at the Tampere University. Her research focuses on contextual political agency and subjectivity, spatial socialisation and subject formation, refugeeness and humanitarian governance, and lived citizenship. She is actively involved in the development ethical open scientific publishing policies and practices, as the editor-in-chief of Fennia and as associate editor of Space and Polity.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland: [Grant Number 307348].