Editors of ISA-sponsored journals interface with ISA in four critical ways:

• Journal editors serve as voting members of the Governing Council in order to represent the interests of their respective journals;
• Journal editors serve as members of ISA's Publications Committee;
• Journal editors meet annually for an editorial summit to discuss publication issues, resolve overlapping missions, and develop collective strategies; and
• Journal editors submit an annual report to the Publications Committee regarding the state of the journal.

For those interested in applying for an ISA editorship position, please see preliminary application guidelines and home institution resource guidelines.

Journal Editors' General Responsibilities

While the responsibilities of ISA Journal Editorial teams range across the board, they can be generally subdivided between editorial and administrative tasks. The normal term of editorship for all ISA journals is five years.

Editorial

• Receive and manage new manuscripts each week, year round. The number of new manuscripts varies by journal, from (approximately) 100 to 450 per year. Once a manuscript is received, editors select multiple reviewers for each submission (dependent on individual journal criteria), and track slow-moving reviewers to produce reviews for you within 4-6 weeks of receipt (on average).
• With those reviews in hand, editors judge the present or future publishability of each manuscript and communicate that decision to the author. Among first-time submissions of a manuscript, perhaps some will receive a "Revise and Resubmit” judgment. Hence editors track these “R&R” manuscripts through a second round.
• Assemble accepted pieces into an issue (4 per year) and work with the publisher to bring this into print. Editors edit the substance of the piece through suggestions to the author during the review process, and the publisher will perform the copy editing (punctuation, footnote style, etc.). But it is the editors who must push the authors to get their revisions done in a timely way so you have a full package of articles to send to publisher 4 times per year.

Administrative

• Compile an annual report to circulate among members of the respective journal’s editorial board, the Publications Committee, the Executive Committee and the Governing Council. This report will be due some months prior to the annual meeting. (See Guidelines for Annual Reports)
• Participate as a voting member on the ISA Governing Council and as an active ex-officio member of the ISA Publications Committee throughout your tenure.
• At the ISA Annual Convention, attend the Governing Council meeting, and meet with the editorial board to discuss issues before the journal and receive feedback from the board.