Through the Editor's Lens: Understanding the Editorial Role Through Metaphor

• Published date: 01 March 2021
• Author: Jeremy L. Hall
• Date: 01 March 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13377

Through the Editor’s Lens: Understanding the Editorial Role Through Metaphor 185

Welcome to issue 81(2) of Public

Administration Review (PAR). I would like

to start this issue a little differently than

usual if you will permit some introspection. There

is something about change that makes me reflect

more on the reasons I do the things I do. Editors

make difficult decisions, and it is not always possible

to convey the exact reasons, so I thought it might

be useful to present our readers with some of the

metaphors I have used to understand my own role as

editor in chief and my perspective on the value of that

role for documenting a cross section of history. In so

doing, I will, by necessity, share some of my concerns

about historical preservation in light of recent events.

The next several sections each represent a unique

metaphor for understanding the editorial role.

The Organizer

Let us begin with the obvious. An editor organizes a

process that supports the intake of manuscripts, pairs

them with compatible reviewers, and monitors the

process to ensure it delivers substantive reviews in a

timely fashion. This process must be scaled to meet

the demands the journal faces in terms of manuscript

submission rates and space constraints such as

page budgets. A hallmark of PAR’s organizational

structure under my editorship is a flat organization

characterized by a large number of subject matter

experts operating in a framework characterized

by informal information flows across nodes of the

editorial network. The editor is at the center of this

structure, directing those flows and coordinating

discussions.

The Decision Maker

Equally obvious, the editor must form an opinion

based on his or her own interpretation of a manuscript

coupled with the advice of substantive experts on

the topic. Several editors recently coauthored a piece

in the Journal of Public Affairs Education where

we explored, among other things, the rationale

for selecting reviewers (Hall et al.2019). While a

concerted effort can be made to extract the sort of

information desired from a review, experts seldom

agree on the merit of a particular piece. Reviews

commonly come back with mixed recommendations,

requiring editorial insight and discretion to make

the final decision. Fortunately, the gut-wrenching

nature of such decisions can be mitigated by the

“second chance” option of a revise and resubmit. The

culmination of that process and subsequent review

usually leaves little doubt about the up or down

decision.

The most important decision heuristic is the editor’s

perspective on what is or is not appropriate for the

journal—what is within its scope. For PAR, this

means thinking about the novelty of the topic or

approach, the rigor of the methodology, the reliability

and validity of the findings, the significance of

the findings from a practical standpoint, and the

appeal to a generalist readership representing public

administration research around the globe. I often

report that, to appear in PAR, a manuscript must

appeal to an audience broader than the subfield, level

of government, or nation from which it originates.

Reviewers are not always thinking about the

manuscripts they read from this perspective, although

most will be frank when they feel a manuscript is

not appropriate for the journal. The sheer volume of

manuscripts has led to an increase in the use of the

“desk reject” decision, where manuscripts are turned

away prior to review for failing to meet one of these

important preconditions. It is more ethical to turn

a manuscript away quickly so that its authors can

pursue publication elsewhere than it would be to

engage reviewers, making poor use of their time and

forcing a three-month delay in an inevitable decision.

Knowing that such decisions are possible should

motivate writers to submit more carefully developed

manuscripts.

The Responsive Administrator

The editor of a journal, PAR included, is not the final

arbiter of authority. The editor serves at the pleasure

of the body or entity that appoints them. For PAR,

Through the Editor’s Lens: Understanding the Editorial Role

Through Metaphor

Jeremy L. Hall

University of Central Florida

Editorial

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 81, Iss. 2, pp. 185–190. © 2021 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13377.