A Day in the Life of a Journal Editor

Since this blog is linked to GW's policy journal Policy Perspectives, I thought it might be useful for people interested in working for the journal to know just what it is we do. So here's a day of my work as this year's Managing Editor.

11:15
Meet with Micah at the office for our weekly catch-up. We discuss where we're at--three of our four articles are in layout and all five book reviews have been laid out--and figure out what we need to do to keep the team on-track. He e-mails the three article teams a reminder to have their layout edits done by tomorrow so I can incorporate them. I tell him I still need to point the hideous old website to the glorious new address. We also talk about the submissions we got for next year's EIC and Managing Editor and how/when we'll do the hand-off.

12:00
Micah and I meet with librarian/associate editor Caroline in the library. We go over the work we still need to do to get the journal's archives online by mid-May: finish tagging metadata (article subjects and keywords for online searches), use her XML procedure to upload all the PDFs, check the site to make sure the links work and everything's how we want, e-mail past authors to inform them what we're doing, write a press release announcing the new site and the digital archives.

1:30
Lunch

1:45
Call the ISS Help Desk to get password for old GW website access. Talk with Glenn, who is amazingly helpful, and resets the password in ten minutes.

2:00
Respond to e-mails from book reviewers and editors about metadata assignment, the layout QC, and due dates. Route old website to new one. Discuss web access citation standards with Micah: we agree to set the style at full access date (i.e., month day, year). I update the style guide.

2:15
Start blog post.

2:30
E-mail Caroline master metadata spreadsheet. Sift through inbox, answering additional assorted questions.

3:15
Lay out editor biographies; incorporate final book review edits into journal layout.

4:00
Download and start reading applications for Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor.

4:30
Run into Lauren, one of our authors. We talk about proper citation, the timeline to publication, and her final edits.

4:45
E-mail Teresa, another of our authors, about data for some of the figures in her piece. Format one of her graphs in Illustrator and lay it out in the journal.

5:15
Receive Linnea's final edits to the layout of Amanda's article (i.e., the QC). Put them in backpack to incorporate later.

5:30
Finish up blog post and start packing up for class.

6:10
Class!