Reaching new summits with Elsevier: a report from our latest editor event

A view from our most recent Editor Summit, Oslo 2019 It’s all too easy as an editor to feel that you’re working on an island, only connected to your authors, reviewers and readers through intangible bytes and URLs. Even if you’re working as part of a multi-editor team, it’s unlikely that you will spend much face-to-face time with your peers. Similarly, though you will be in regular contact with Elsevier in the shape of (probably) daily communication with your Publisher and Journal Manager, having the opportunity to raise issues and interact directly with Elsevier’s in-house experts and management is probably not something you would expect. It’s for these reasons – as well as a recognition of the importance of in-person communication that we regularly gather our external editors together for one of our Editor Summits. In this article our “woman on the ground”, reports back from the most recent Summit and shares some insights and feedback from the event.

The importance of face-to-face

Elsevier organizes an annual series of regionally-focussed Editors' Summits for external receiving editors of Elsevier journals – those who are involved in making manuscript and strategic journal decisions. The main reason Elsevier hosts these events is to provide an opportunity for us to hear directly from our editors, but we also know that many attendees find it an invaluable chance to meet and interact with their peers. In doing so, they enjoy the ability to swap strategies and ideas for managing editorial work as well as hearing from industry experts on a range of topical issues.

"Our 21,000 editors play a unique, independent, and crucial role in the trust and relevance of every journal article – the unit of knowledge as we know it today. Every time I meet editors, I am struck by their passion, by their drive to do right for their communities. Hats off to editors!" -Philippe Terheggen, MD Elsevier Journals Throughout the day our goal is to create an open forum for sharing knowledge, networking and engaging with each other. We encourage participants to share comments, suggestions, questions and opinions throughout. These are all listened to and have on many occasions sparked change when the Elsevier staff attending the Summit have returned to their offices and reflected on what we can do to respond to the feedback. Above all, these events offer us a valuable opportunity to recognize the amazing work editors do each day to improve the quality, reputation and impact of their journals within the science and health communities. "Thanks to the arrangers for a perfect agenda and for making sure that we could all speak-up freely." -Participant at Oslo 2019 Summit

The view from the north

Fifty journal editors representing 47 journals and 32 universities travelled from 24 different cities in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark to be with us at the most recent Editors’ Summit in Oslo in September 2019. Various Elsevier staff attended as well including representatives from senior management, Elsevier industry experts and members of the journal publishing team, giving an interesting and broad representation.

As is typically the case with our Summits, we offered an interactive program, with a mix of plenary and breakout sessions where we presented topics such as: the STM landscape in transition; ethics & research integrity; innovation tools; open access developments; attracting high impact content; optimization of article transfer flows and submission systems. It was a truly interactive day with some great dialogue and engagement.

"Thank you all for such a splendid Summit in Oslo. It was really great to catch up with the Team Elsevier on the current trends in the emerging landscape of publications—It was really an interesting meeting for the editors. The summit was both friendly and well organized." -Participant at Oslo 2019 Summit

Making a (positive) impact

We surveyed participants about their experiences with this summit and received a robust response rate of 88%. Pleasingly, the overall satisfaction rating was 100% with 82% of editors “strongly agreeing” that they were satisfied with the summit. We always appreciate feedback and the opportunity to improve, however, so will be considering how best to incorporate clinic sessions for EVISE/Editorial Manager and how to enable a longer Elsevier Q&A panel session in future. At any rate, it’s clear that the summits are valued and enjoyed by attendees, so this validates our decision to hold these events. We are currently at work planning the schedule for 2020.

Get involved!

We hope, having read about our Editor Summit program, that you will be keen to participate if given the opportunity. We will be announcing the 2020 Summit calendar in due course, so stay tuned for events near you. We’ll leave you with some more nice feedback that was shared with us from the Oslo event:

"Thank you all who were involved in organizing this excellent Summit. It surely was a success, wow, and a privilege and pleasure to attend. Excellent information, useful experiences and inspiring discussions on timely topics... everything highly appreciated and directly useful!" "I want to tell you that it I really enjoyed attending the Editor´s Summit in Oslo. I think it was a great opportunity to know other editors and share experiences, ideas, as well as to hear the news from Elsevier. I fully support you organizing meetings like this again [in] the future!"

-Participants at Oslo 2019 Summit