Working with a team of 100,000

At Elsevier, my colleagues and I are passionate about supporting researchers and healthcare professionals in advancing science and improving health. Our community of dedicated Elsevier editors is key to that end — they ensure society can rely on published scientific and medical content to expand our knowledge and support critical decisions.

Having edited journals for many years myself, I understand the challenges editors face. There is the increasing inflow of submissions that does not stop when the weekend begins — and the ongoing need to make fair decisions and promptly communicate them to authors, all the while ensuring that the journal is successful and developing.

This can be a lot to contend with — especially if the editor’s day job is that of a researcher.

That’s why I now focus on supporting Elsevier’s academic editors and improving how we work together to achieve our shared mission.

A remarkable 30,000 Elsevier editors are actively involved in selecting, reviewing and curating research manuscripts, and an additional 80,000 editorial board members plus an even greater number of peer reviewers support these efforts. Needless to say, such a diverse community spanning different areas of research — and coming from various backgrounds and geographies — presents a unique challenge when aiming to improve working partnerships.

To prioritize where we focus our efforts, we use feedback from editors, authors and reviewers through our feedback programs, along with direct communications we receive through their publishing contacts. We receive a lot of feedback, but there are a few consistently recurrent themes:

• Editors regularly ask for better support to manage high editorial workloads and finding peer reviewers.

• Authors like to hear back promptly and greatly appreciate when their work is treated respectfully, especially when the outcome is a disappointing rejection.

Here is a selection of editor-focused initiatives my colleagues and I are working on:

• Easing the workload. Several projects aim to ease the editor workload burden and in turn improve the experience for authors — recruiting additional editors, providing additional or improved in-house support, and enhancing the editorial system to make it easier to find peer reviewers and support the decision process.

• Recruitment and diversity. Continual recruitment for a group of 100,000 experts is not an easy task. We are developing a new digital solution to make the journey from researcher to editor simple, transparent and open to all to improve diversity of the editorial teams.

• Online training. Most editors learn on the job, which can be a daunting task. To help new editors get started and provide seasoned editors with resources to learn more, we have developed Editor Essentials opens in new tab/window, an editorial training program that is continuing to evolve.

• Improving communication. Our editors would like to know more about us, what we do and why. We are currently developing a new communication plan to share our mission and provide updates on initiatives to improve how we support researchers and research.

Elsevier is a great place to work because of our people and values, and academic editors are a vital part of our culture. It is a privilege to support them in their important work.