Beyond the Masthead: Journal Efforts Pay Vital Dividends

Their work is found between the covers of publications exploring subjects as disparate as Turkish studies and fuzzy mathematics.Their names are sprinkled, from masthead to inside pages and index, through academic journals read and cited worldwide.

In McMicken's mathematical sciences department alone, seven faculty members hold down almost two dozen editorships or associate editorships of mathematical journals.

It’s about much more than a credit line, though, for dozens of College of Arts and Sciences faculty who serve varied journals as journal editors, associate editors or editorial board members.

Those efforts, along with their written work, boost professional visibility and the college’s image on an international level in their fields of expertise, they say. And that exposure, they add, can be a linchpin in career enhancement.

“Professionally, it is absolutely crucial,” said John Bickle, professor and head of the Department of Philosophy.

“Despite what anybody tells you, success in academia is still based on the ‘publish or perish’ principle, especially at research universities like UC. The currency in our profession is name recognition and journal publication is a required route to that.”

In the late 1990s, Bickle was approached by an acquisitions editor from Kluwer Academic Publishers (now Springer) about starting a journal combining philosophy and cognitive science.

“I convinced them that the journal should be more narrowly focused, on philosophy and neuroscience. They offered me a contract and the journal, Brain and Mind: A Transdisciplinary Journal of Neuroscience and Neurophilosophy, began publishing in 2000,” he said.

“We published four annual volumes, three issues each, and then made the decision that we weren’t getting enough submissions. But Kluwer still liked the idea of a journal that combined philosophy and neuroscience.”

So, starting in 2004, Bickle became editor of an annual special issue of the prestigious philosophy of science journal, Synthese. The special issue, due out for the third time this year, is on “Neuroscience and its Philosophy” and has the same aims and scope as did Brain and Mind, said Bickle.

Years into publishing and editing, Bickle still likes seeing his own work in print and “considering discussions and objections raised to my arguments.”

“It can be a bit annoying when you work very hard to be as clear as you can, and then somebody publishes something that misses your point,” he said. “But you get used to it.”

For another McMicken-based editor, the work is not all personal – commitment to her journal means a major commitment to others.

“I do not think that anyone takes up a journal editorship only for career advancement because editing uses up so much of the time and energy that you could use for your own writing and research,” said Norma Jenckes, associate English professor and founder of American Drama.

“I started American Drama because I was ambitious for the entire field – I wanted to move the entire area into the world of post-structural literary theory and to show that it was a huge body of work that deserved serious and rigorous study and research. There was no journal devoted to American drama and I wanted to fill that lack. And I did.”

One of several journals produced inside A&S, American Drama draws attention, submissions and subscriptions from an international base.

The twice-yearly, 16-year-old publication is funded by the Helen Weinberger Center for the Study of Drama and Playwriting and by the College of Arts and Sciences.

Being seen in American Drama, in a word, matters.

“Since publishing is the engine that drives most careers and reputations, I do hear from people when they get promoted and get tenure, thanking me for publishing their work,” said Jenckes.

“People accost me at conferences – sometimes an anti-theory person might ask me if I would ever publish a simple essay that gave a straightforward reading of a play, and I say, probably not, and laugh with them.

“I guess that is kind of an affirmation that everyone in the field is reading the journal. Also, since we took as one of our objectives the more thorough application of theory to dramatic literature, this means we are succeeding.”

Jenckes finds her compensation in potential American Drama pieces.

“The reward for me is that I get to read every submission and so I am on the cutting edge of research in my field,” she said.

“I become myself a kind of repository of information about who is there and what kind of work they are all doing. Also, my passion to raise the level of scholarship in the entire field has met with success. This has been affirmed in several reviews and book mentions and in the publication of a book-length collection of the best essays from the first 10 years of our publication.”

She’d like to see a meeting of the minds for editors inside A&S, in a group that could act as both a support group and a clearinghouse for information.

Her membership in the Council of Editors of Learned Journals has served her well, Jenckes said.

“I find their list serve extremely helpful on such questions as how much to charge for permission to reprint or what to do about cases of plagiarism, for example,” she said.

“A journal editors group within UC could help with more local issues. We should not all be reinventing the wheel but could benefit from the experience of others.”

Click here for a list of A&S editors, associate editors and board members.