Dear all,
As the Managing Editor of a journal, I have been quite interested in the discussion (or lack of it until now) around Ilan's original post. My initial reaction was also to dismiss this as a personal and highly personalized attack on Antipode and its management. I have no comment on that particular journal and I have never had any cause to question their integrity.
However, the tone of the original post does not mean that the content was not correct, nor that it did not contain anything of value. The general issue is an important one and should cause any of us with any involvement in the Board of a journal some cause to think.
I realised that I had no reason for smugness here as my journal, Surveillance & Society, has no such official and written procedure either. We have dealt with some issues in this area in the past, both complaints against authors, and we have done so in the light of what our Board took to be tacit and accepted academic convention. One was an issue of dual submission, and one was an issue of a complaint made about the content of an article by someone who had some involvement with it. In both cases, we responded in an ad-hoc but I believe, fair manner after editorial board discussion. The first case was resolved in a manner everyone accepted. In the second case, the complaint was eventually withdrawn after multiple offers of a right-to-reply etc.! (it is a long story...). That seems not unreasonable for two cases in almost seven years.
However, we pride ourselves on being different from mainstream journals - just as high quality but non-profit, charitable, open-source and open-access with neither pay-to-publish or pay-to-read - and so I do see our lack of such an open procedure as a deficiency. If no-one can read and understand our procedures, they are not truly open and accountable. I will therefore be working to correct this with our Board - which is, by the way, thoroughly engaged.
I would hope that once people have got over the irritation felt from having esteemed friends and colleagues attacked, that they could take the underlying issue more seriously, if not here, more importantly in their work on editorial boards.
David.
PS: whoever said that having procedures is a case of the 'surveillance society' - I hardly think so. I think you might enjoy and benefit from reading Surveillance & Society!
Dr David Murakami Wood
Managing Editor
Surveillance & Society | http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/
the international journal of surveillance studies
blog: http://ubisurv.wordpress.com
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