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Randy Schekman
University of California,
Berkeley

The Role of an Editor:

A Delicate Balancing Act

A

cademic and professional journal editors are

honest and hard-working people who have

busy days and much more important things to

do than to hatch plots to suppress the careers of eager,

young authors. Why is it, then, that a colleague who on

the one hand is a collaborator or friend becomes an

opponent to be vanquished when he/she conveys bad

tidings of critical referee reports on a manuscript for

publication? In fact, in spite of near universal grouchi-

ness, particularly about the most selective journals, the

system works quite well to promote the publication of

the fruits of our labor.

Perhaps a few words of advice to budding authors,

referees, and editorial board members will help smooth

some of the wrinkles that add unnecessarily to the bur-

den of publication.

Editorial Advice to the Author

Even a perfect article, one that reports an original

observation clearly and concisely, suffers if an editor is

unable to understand the significance of the work. An

editor will almost always rely on the title and abstract

of a manuscript to make a preliminary decision about

the appropriateness of the work for the journal in ques-

tion and to choose referees. The title and abstract must

convey the experimental approach, key results, and

novel conclusions of the work. Excessively long and

CHAPTER 4 • WRITING AND PUBLISHING 161

Journal editors are honest and hard-

working people who have busy days

and much more important things to do

than to hatch plots to suppress the

careers of eager, young authors.