Survey spurred by ‘general need for more public transparency’ sheds light on editorial leadership at imaging journals
At scientific journals focused on medical imaging, 82% of editors-in-chief and 30% of editorial board members receive financial compensation for these side jobs.
Also, about half the journals in the category, 46%, select new EICs by inviting all comers to apply and then identifying winning candidates by either committee deliberation or the judgment of the incumbent EIC.
By contrast, when offering posts to new editorial board members, about the same proportion, 49%, let the EIC handpick appointees from the EIC’s own rolodex.
These are among the findings from a survey emailed directly from radiology researchers to editorial leadership at the 134 journals listed under “Radiology, Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging” in Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports.
The team received completed responses from 33 journals (25% response rate) and report their results in a study published online Oct. 14 in JACR [1].
Corresponding author Robert Kwee, MD, PhD, of Zuyderland Medical Center in the Netherlands and colleagues state they undertook the project after recognizing a “general need for more public transparency” around editorial operations at peer-reviewed, radiology-related journals.
Quotas and Term Limits
Asking about efforts to ensure some measure of balance between male and female editorial leaders, Kwee and co-authors found 27% have quotas. This suggests “further advancement could be made in this respect,” they write.
Of the journals that aim to increase or maximize female leadership, quotas vary between 30% and 50%.
For editorial boards specifically, male-female ratios do not significantly differ between journals that used quotas and those that didn’t.
“This unexpected finding may be explained by a limited number of women available and because it may take some time to achieve gender balance in the editorial board,” the authors comment.
A bit more than three-quarters of responding journals, 76%, maintain term limits for EICs, with terms ranging between three and 10 years.
Some 64% limited terms of editorial board members to as long as six years and as short as one.
“This is in line with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, which recommend appointing editorial board members for a fixed term of office,” the authors point out.
Performance Metrics, Impact Factors and Dollar Figures
When evaluating performance of EICs, 58% of the responding journals use milestones or criteria. The rate is a little lower for appraising editorial board members, 55%.
According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the editor’s performance may be assessed using measures of readership, manuscript submissions and handling times, among others, Kwee and colleagues note.
“To our knowledge, however, there are no fixed evaluation criteria for EICs and editorial board members,” they write. “Not unexpectedly, the milestones or criteria applied by the responding journals were heterogeneous.”
For EICs among the present survey respondents, the authors report, criteria included development of the journal’s impact factor, number of downloaded articles, number of published articles, number of submitted manuscripts, manuscript turnaround times, manuscript acceptance rate, and results of satisfaction surveys among journal members.
For editorial board members, they add, criteria included number of manuscripts handled for the journal, quality of reviews, manuscript turnaround time, and “other forms of support to the journal (among which sharing views on editorial matters, assisting in widening the reviewer pool, writing commentaries, acting as guest editor and publishing in the journal).”
Drilling down into financial compensation, Kwee and colleagues found monetary rewards more commonly tied to journal impact factor for editorial board members than for EICs.
For dollar amounts, the authors refer readers to a recent survey of 140 journal editors holding various titles [2].
Conducted by Straus et al. at the University of Toronto, that study found 65% (67 men, 24 women) annually earning USD $10,000 or less from their journal work; just under 20% (20 men, 7 women) remunerated between $10,001 and $50,000; and around 16% (8 men, 14 women) receiving more than $50,000.
‘A Responsibility to Be Accountable and Transparent’
Discussing methods of editorial leadership selection, Kwee and co-authors comment that inviting all interested parties to apply for EIC posts “may be considered the fairest recruitment method because anyone can compete for the position. In addition, the ICJME recommends that EIC appointments should be based on evaluations by a panel of independent experts.”
At the same time, recruiting new editorial board members by unilateral EIC judgment also “seems sensible,” since EICs’ professional networks typically include current pools of reviewers and authors—and because “it is likely that those who actively make quality contributions to the journal over a long time would care for the success of the journal.”
Later, acknowledging their 25% response rate as a limitation, Kwee and colleagues remark that the “relatively low” participation may reflect a lack of transparency among EICs and editorial board members.
Alternatively, they suggest, it may signal that most journal representatives “did not prioritize or were not interested in participating in the survey.”
In any case, the authors comment, “EICs and managing editors have a responsibility to be accountable and transparent. The relatively low response rate may hamper the generalizability of our findings. However, journal characteristics between responding and non-responding journals were not significantly different.”
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[A]lthough our study provides informative data, we did not investigate the effect of the method of EIC and/or editorial board member selection and evaluation on the end product, namely an unbiased, fair, timely handling of submitted manuscripts and publication of high-quality manuscripts. This remains a topic for future research.”
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.