Conversing With Editors: Strategies for Authors and Reviewers
基于作者担任《Journal of Management》编辑的经验，为作者和审稿人提供与编辑有效沟通的具体建议，帮助减少误解和焦虑。
When I was a doctoral student and a young faculty member, I dreaded dealing with editors because I was afraid I would inadvertently do or say the wrong thing. And, because I attributed to editors great power over my career, I worried about the consequences of any misstep on my part. Now that I am on the other side of the table as editor of Journal of Management, I realize that I wasted a worry. Editors are in the business of trying to publish articles, not reject them. Indeed, the major gratification of being an editor is bringing manuscripts from rough shape to final acceptance. For that reason, editors are typically more lenient than reviewers in their judgments. Moreover, after years of being beaten up as authors themselves, editors are usually quite empathic to the unhappiness authors feel when getting negative feedback, to the frustration authors feel when getting tossed about by reviewers, and to the anxiety authors feel when important tenure and promotion decisions hang in the balance. During the past 3 years, particularly in the context of conducting doctoral student and junior faculty consortia, I have received many questions about when and how authors should converse with editors. The frequency of such questions makes me realize that the tacit knowledge senior faculty have accumulated over the years on this topic is not as obvious to new entrants into our field, who are supposed to somehow “pick it up” through some vague socialization process along the way. What I thought might be instructive here is providing some fairly specific recommendations about how to most effectively communicate with editors. Obviously, there will be some style differences across journals and editors in our field, but by and large, I think most editors at most journals in the organizational sciences would agree with the basic principles outlined below. First, I address the communications between authors and editors; then, I address the communications between reviewers and editors. Reviewers play an integral role in editors’ conversa-