Space and Culture

Being an editor of an academic journal is one of the most under-appreciated activities in universities. It is closer to pure academic work in that it involves continual immersion in debates and in the nuances of argument. Yet it is usually not remunerated, nor do many universities support the day-to-day operation of journals. Strategic-thinking faculty narrow their eyes if one suggests getting involved in a journal. Why undertake this activity? What’s in it for me?

We cannot have vital universities without editors. Editors are constantly reaching out to beyond the current boundaries of debates, listening for new voices. They promote careers, they bridge the national to the international. Successful journals are the result of audiences that have been built, not through some facile ‘networking’ but the building of networks of others.

At the same time, editors are in continual correspondence with referees and also intimately engaged in evaluating manuscripts, in convening editorial meetings and then in communicating decisions to authors. They carry social networks into evaluation and decision-making into doing, sometimes even being involved in the actual production of publications. The end result is that abstract ideas and research reports become tested publications. These testimonials enter into the ongoing archive of information and of human sense-making.

Editors make the conversation which stretches across time that we call ‘academia’. At the heart of the academic enterprise is not a building, nor a particular publication, association or place. It is the invisible college which editors bring to life.