KAIROS 11.1 - Logging On - Editorial Review Process

Changes to Our Editorial Review Process

Over the last several years, Kairos’ editorial team has shifted the way reviews are done, trying modifications to the original three-tier system. In that system, Features submissions would proceed in the following (summarized) manner:

Old tier-review process

Tier I: Editors review submission and, if deemed appropriate, submission would go to journal staff for review, where the staff would decide whether the submission should proceed to the editorial board. If so, the editors would send the text forward for Tier II review.

Tier II: The entire editorial board would collaboratively discuss the merits of the submission, on a closed listserv. If the consensus was to accept the webtext (or, often, accept with revisions), the webtext would proceed to Tier III review.

Tier III: Three editorial board members would be assigned to send revision requirements to the authors and would then work directly with the authors during the revision process.

In the last five years, the above system was used mainly for Features submissions, and a modified peer-review system (more traditional, less collaborative—for good or ill) was used for CoverWeb texts. In editorial discussions, however, what we discovered was that the original three-tier system had suffered some procedural breakdowns due, in part, to unavoidable changes in staff and publication process/cycles. An examination of the original peer-review system revealed that

Tier I reviews no longer included whole-staff reviews (this process was stopped in approximately 2001)

Tier III webtexts were difficult to keep track of, sometimes lingering in the process for months.

We point out these issues not to suggest that the original peer-review system didn’t work—it worked incredibly well, in most cases, especially the highly innovative and original Tier II collaborative portion—but to point out that some revision/updating was in order.

It was no loss, for instance, that the entire staff no longer reviewed every submission that came in, which was part of the original Tier I phase. The section editors have done an incredible job in providing robust texts each issue, and doing so obviously limits the amount of time they might spend reviewing webtexts that go in another of the journal’s sections. The benefit is that section editors have increased autonomy over their own sections. Our major concern, then, was adjusting—and making public—a revised Tier III phase, one that would help us keep better track of webtexts in the revision stage, which would, in turn, allow us to work more closely with authors to achieve more on-time publications. Thus, the new system was born this past spring.

Revised tier-review process

To continue to develop the collaborative reviewing of webtexts that is unique to Kairos, we are making a few changes to the review process. These changes promise to keep Kairos in a position of being among the most dynamic in journal publishing. This is now the language that all readers and authors (and tenure committees) will see when they click on the peer-review link on our Welcome page. In addition, this information will be more accessible when it becomes a major link in our navigation system (and, thus, will appear on all major pages) when we unveil the redesign in the spring. We have modified the language below from the original process whenever possible in order to retain consistency.

Tier I: When the Editors receive a submission, they evaluate it, deciding whether it is indeed appropriate for Kairos and whether it is of sufficient quality to merit entering it into our formal editorial review process. If they agree, then the text proceeds to Tier II. (This step no longer requires whole-staff review of incoming submissions).

Tier II: The entire editorial board, along with the editors who provide guidance as needed, discusses the submission on their closed listserv. This review process lasts for two weeks to encourage as much discussion as possible, during which the editorial board assesses a text’s quality and potential to be published in Kairos. Selected members of the editorial board (usually up to three) will write a formal letter summarizing their review of the submission and forward that letter to the editors. The editors will compile the reviews and respond to the author. We anticipate that turn-around time from submission to response will be approximately two months.

Tier III: In the case of acceptances (and acceptances with revisions), authors make any required revisions noted by the editors and editorial reviews and send the text back to the editors. Once revisions are accepted by the editors, the webtext is admitted to the copy-editing process.

In the case of revise-and-resubmits or rejects, authors would have the choice to be assigned to one editorial board member who can work closely with the author to offer feedback during the revision process for re-submission to Kairos. Once again, we expect that the author will resubmit to Kairos and not to another journal before a second review. Working with an editorial board member during revision does not guarantee publication/acceptance on second review although our intent is to help the author produce an excellent and publishable webtext.

To recap: The major changes to the original process include (Tier I) removing the staff from the review process; (Tier II) providing formal letters of review based on the informal/open discussion by editorial board members; and (Tier III) replacing the editorial board members–author interaction with more directed editor–author interaction, which has many benefits including better internal tracking of accepted texts, more timely publication of webtexts, and less drain on the resources of our editorial board members, all of whom read and respond to approximately 40 submissions a year.

We’d like to thank the editorial board for their suggestions and feedback as we revised this process, especially to board member Jim Kalmbach who suggested that the Tier II letters be added to the process. Once again, Kairos’ collaborative nature in providing excellent scholarship extends to even our internal processes—a sign that we try to practice what we preach and set an example, we hope, for the field as a whole. To that end, we invite authors to let us know how the process works for them by e-mailing us: <kairosed at technorhetoric dot net>.

Overview

Vol. 11 Iss. 1 Fall 2006