The ME position is not one that will bring academic laurels, or even
employment. As John noted, there is not much professional benefit in the
scut work of managing an academic journal. I find great pleasure and
great frustration in it, but I wouldn't consider it a sound investment of
time for a scholar.
Some have talked about a rotating staff of editors, who can share the work
and drop out after a few issues. I can imagine such a situation, but it's
not a pretty picture, frankly. The work is not rocket science, and
it's not difficult to answer correspondence and track submissions. But,
many of the submissions take months to get through the review process and
unless all of the editors were equally good at record keeping we would
soon have chaos. Authors are sometimes hard to reach, unsure of our
requirements, and confused by the technology. We already switch editorial
duties between the two editors, and we bring in guest editors who take on
special issues. But there is a constant flow of small tasks that need to
be handled, routine letters to be answered, and communications lines to be
maintained. The editors rarely lay eyes on each other or me, since they
are spread out all over the country (Lisa is in Chicago, Paula in
Illinois, Stuart in Baltimore, Eyal in Raleigh, and John here in
Charlottesville), and they are occupied by other work, such as
conferences, teaching, and research. The ME acts as traffic coordinator,
data base, and, hopefully, trouble-shooter.
The ME is also a reference for authors. Many authors are well-informed
and experienced in electronic publishing, and they are entirely capable of
formatting their articles. However, some don't even use their e-mail
accounts and have no idea what HTML is. It takes far more time to tag a
20 page essay then one might think, and it can take hours to pull it out
of a word processing program, especially if the disk is corrupted, or
there's a problem with an attachement, or if the internet is overloaded.
It is simply a question of paying someone to take the time to work out the
details and fuss over the little questions. I am paid as much for my
willingness to do this tasks as for my ability to do them. And,
practically speaking, it is cheaper to pay me to do it then to ask a
highly trained scholar to take time away from research and teaching to
acknowledge submissions and clean out files.
I am sympathetic of struggling universities and scholars who consider each
penny, believe me. And I understand the importance of free access and the
impact of cutting off the supply of free knowledge. But I think that the
ME's salary is necessary, at least in the current structure of the
journal.
Sarah Wells
Managing Editor