How to Edit a Journal by E-Mail

How to Edit a Journal by E-mail Andrew W. Appel Department of Computer Science Princeton University [email protected] CS-TR-494-95 May 1995 Abstract copying and printing papers. They should just The editor of a refereed scientific journal must respond to each e-mail message sent them, and somehow get unpaid referees and unpaid asso- not have other worries. ciate editors to provide prompt evaluations of technical papers. The use of electronic mail, • There should be one single person (a traffic with a well organized management system— manager) whose job is to ensure that the par- and the software and staff to support it— ticipants adhere to schedule. This task should make this possible, without unduly burdening not be fragmented among all the Associate Ed- either the editor, associate editors, or referees. itors’ secretaries, for none of whom is it a high Some refereed scientific journals have long delays priority. from submission to publication. Others achieve fast • turnaround at the cost of burdening their editors Electronic mail can replace all paper commu- and associate editors with a heavy workload. nications, and electronic databases can replace I have had an opportunity to observe the oper- all paper files. ation of several journals, some from the vantage point of author, others as associate editor, and one The participants in the editorial process are: as editor in chief. I have also talked to the editors EIC Editor in chief. and production managers of journals in other disci- plines. Since my appointment as editor in chief in TM Traffic Manager: the EIC’s editorial assistant. December 1992, I have run TOPLAS (ACM Trans- This system requires a very competent traf- actions on Programming Languages and Systems, fic manager who can handle routine correspon- published by the Association for Computing Ma- dence independently and will refer any unusual chinery) according to a well organized system that situations to the EIC. I put together by borrowing the best ideas from as many places as possible. The result is that sub- To use the software system I have devised, the missions are refereed quickly without taking too TM must be reasonably computer literate and much of my time or the associate editors’ time. I have some familiarity with Unix. Facility with can use the time saved to work on editorial policy the Xmh mail system[2] (a window-oriented matters, negotiate page budgets with the publisher, version of the Unix MH mail reader) is nec- handle special cases, discuss specific editorial deci- essary, but can be learned easily on the job. sions with associate editors, and (sometimes) even Knowledge of common Unix tools such as com- do my own research. press, uncompress, ghostview, tar, gzip is use- The fundamental principles of this system are: ful. If the software were to be implemented on another platform, such as Microsoft Windows, • Associate editors and referees are happy to pro- then Unix knowledge would not be necessary. vide their scientific judgement and expertise; but they do not want to spend their time on The TM should have a diplomatic personality, clerical or organizational tasks. Associate ed- to remind referees repeatedly without arous- itors should not be responsible for remember- ing resentment. Familiarity with the journal’s ing who owes referee reports by what date, re- scientific subject matter is not necessary, but minding referees, formatting e-mail messages, familiarity with journal protocol is useful. 1 For TOPLAS, which receives about 140 sub- then the tracking software can alert the TM to prod missions per year, the TM is a half-time tech- Dobchinsky for a reply. In this case, the TM has nical secretary. written “Action: query” into the message sent to Dobchinksy; Dobchinksy will reply without using AE Associate Editors (TOPLAS has eight to ten). an Action header, and the TM will insert the “Ac- AE’s must be knowledgeable in their research tion: answer” line into Dobchinksy’s response using fields so that they can judge papers and choose the e-mail system’s text editor. referees, but (and this is very important) they The Xmh mail reader is used as a message need not be well organized—the TM reminds database. Xmh is a window-oriented interface to them what needs to be done next, and all they the MH e-mail filing system, and in fact any in- need to do is respond to the TM’s messages. terface to MH could be used. Xmh (or MH) orga- nizes mail messages by “folders”; each folder con- Referee The referees should be accessible by tains mail messages numbered 1, 2, 3,... and may e-mail; fortunately, in the field served by also contain subfolders. Our folders are: TOPLAS, over 99% of them are on the In- ternet. The others can be accommodated inbox in which incoming messages land; (through U.S. mail) with some extra work. drafts in which outgoing messages are kept before Author Most TOPLAS authors are on the Inter- they’re sent; net and submit papers (in Postscript R format) forms containing form letters that can be used for by e-mail. routine correspondence; there are subfolders: ME Managing Editor: supervises the production author form letters sent to authors, (typesetting, copy editing, printing) of ac- cepted papers. For TOPLAS the ME is on the editor form letters sent to associate editors, staff in the Journals department at ACM head- referee form letters sent to referees, quarters. acm form letters sent to the journal production department at ACM. E-mail tracking database papers This folder contains one subfolder for each submitted paper. The name of the subfolder The Traffic Manager uses a tracking system inte- for paper #1234 is p1234 (this its full name is grated with the electronic mail sender/reader to papers/p1234). Thus, papers contains hun- keep track of where each paper stands and what dreds or thousands of subfolders, only a few needs to be done to it. Each outgoing e-mail mes- dozen of which are in active use at once. sage is annotated with a special action keyword, such as: Action: query. p169, p170, p171 Xmh The Internet mail system ignores the Action can accommodate a folder (such as papers) header line; but a blind carbon copy of each out- with hundreds of subfolders (such as p1001, going message, with its Action header, is kept in p1002, . ), but the menu-oriented interface the database. has trouble displaying a menu with hundreds Incoming messages will not have “Action” head- of items. To work around this problem, we ers, because outside authors, referees, and associate create special “virtual” folders containing ten editors won’t put them there. Instead, the TM will papers each. The virtual folder p169 holds pa- manually annotate each incoming message to add pers numbered 1690 through 1699. We keep the appropriate Action header. only those virtual folders necessary to access By examining the Action line of each saved mes- the active papers; at any time we might have sage, the software can tell what needs to be done twenty or thirty virtual folders of ten papers next. For example, if one (outgoing) message is an- each. notated: acm Correspondence with the ACM journals de- Action: query partment. To: [email protected] ... solicit Sometimes the journal solicits specific papers from potential authors. We keep track of and there is no later message of the form the relevant correspondence in this folder. Action: answer From: dobchinksy@... eds Correspondence (not related to any specific pa- ... per) with associate editors. 2 misc Miscellaneous. receipt-q When a submission is on paper, TM sends e-mail to the author requesting an elec- Each outgoing e-mail message must have headers tronic copy, at the same time acknowledging labelled Action, To, Subject, and Fcc (folder carbon receipt and sending information about copy- copy). Here’s an example: right assignment. This message is really just the combination of a receipt message and a query message. Action: query If the author cannot send Postscript, then the To: [email protected] submission is handled by old-fashioned meth- Subject: TOPLAS 1335 ods (U.S. mail); or, TM feeds it through a scan- Fcc: papers/p1335 ner, producing a Postscript file that can be sent through e-mail. Dear John: Enclosed is a new paper, Some authors have difficulty including large NUMBER 1335 Postscript files into their e-mail messages. TITLE Circular Reflection They may instead Postscript by FTP (Internet AUTHOR Rebecca L. Weir File Transfer Protocol), by transferring their Please tell me who should referee it. Postscript into the EIC’s “incoming” FTP di- -----------------cut here------------- rectory. %!PS-Adobe ... this is the Postscript file ... query TM sends e-mail to EIC. Before assigning the paper to an associate editor, the EIC may The Subject line contains the paper number so want to know which editors are overloaded and that when the reply is received, its subject line will which editors don’t have much to do. The edi- (very likely) also contain the paper number. This tors command generates a listing of the recent saves TM the step of looking it up. papers (by month and year) assigned to each The Fcc line keeps a blind carbon copy in the editor: folder papers/p1234. The Action line doesn’t do anything when the steffen 2/95 2/95 1/95 1/95 12/94 12/94 mail is sent, but the presence of the Action line in soffa 4/95 12/94 10/94 8/94 5/94 5/94 wing 3/95 2/95 2/95 1/95 3/95 3/95 the folder carbon copy allows the tracking system mitchell 3/95 3/95 2/95 3/95 1/95 12/94 to see what’s going on.

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