Policy Update: New editorial onboarding and review procedures
Dear Quantum Community,
We wanted to provide an update and announce a new attempt to improve the quality of peer review procedures in Quantum.
TL;DR: from now on, instead of having regular editorial calls, we will consider applications on a rolling basis, based only on CV and endorsement of at least two members of Quantum. In addition, we will implement an editorial feedback procedure to ensure our editors get support in providing an overall coherent and consistent review experience.
Before we go on to explain the details, let us briefly reflect on the motivation behind the changes. First of all, our editors are volunteers and while we believe that everyone volunteering has the best of intentions, unforeseen circumstances often come about that can limit their availability, thus suddenly leaving certain areas with insufficient editors for the large volume of submissions we keep receiving. The previous process was a lot of work behind the scenes and usually took a couple of months to conclude, creating unwanted delays.
The new policy will allow us to on-board new editors more quickly and flexibly, and ensure a better matching of demand and editorial availability.
This will exacerbate another challenge, however. With such a large editorial board and frequent changes in the board, we need to make sure that there is a coherent and consistent understanding of the expectations of Quantum, the editorial procedures and policies, and thus ensure constant quality, independent of subtopic and which editor the manuscript ends up with. In Quantum, this is mostly achieved through frequent, behind the scenes, editorial discussions on every submission and decision. By discussing every critical decision in groups of editors, we percolate knowledge, expectations and standards through the board and from more seasoned editors to the newly onboarded.
To help our editorial board with this challenge we will implement an editorial feedback system to regularly communicate the needs and expectations of the journal at any given moment, and to evaluate how editorial performance compares to that expectation. The goal of such a feedback framework is to:
- ensure consistent standards in editorial policies, decisions, decision times, and communication with authors, reviewers, and within the editorial board itself;
- set expectations for current and future editors on the number of handled manuscripts, timeframes for dealing with manuscripts, participation in editorial discussions, and to thus enable current and potential future editors to realistically gauge their time commitment to the journal;
- provide feedback to the editors that will help them to make the best out of their invested time by providing guidance for handling manuscripts more consistently and/or more efficiently if necessary;
- enable the journal staff, editorial board, steering board, and executive board to better gauge how many editors are needed and in which topical areas they are needed to handle the rising number of submissions without overburdening the editors and/or creating unreasonably long processing times for manuscripts.
The changes have been voted on by the steering board and will come into effect immediately.
The simplified application and onboarding procedure is as follows:
Application: Email info@quantum-journal.org. Include:
- a list of topics/keywords you are confident in handling submissions in;
- the names of at least two board members (steering and/or editorial board of Quantum) that endorse your application (and indicate whether you only think they might endorse you if queried or whether you were in contact with them about it before);
- and a CV with a link to your google-scholar profile.
Afterwards we’ll confirm the receipt of your application, confirm with endorsers and put you on a ‘ready to go list’. As soon as there is need in relevant area(s) of expertise we will be in touch to “activate” you as an editor and proceed with onboarding.
With best wishes,
The executive board of Quantum