Dear Authors: Editors Have Final Say Whether you Like It Or Not!

IN RESPONSE TO: “The Hysterical Writer Who Said Fuck You When I Edited His Precious Article,” by DC Palter.

Quite a few people have reacted to this article with rather weighty chips on their shoulders — which indicates that they actually have no idea what an editor’s job entails.

An editor EDITS. Gee, what a concept.

I’ve been an editor for two different scholarly publications The Journal of Communication Inquiry (Executive Editor), and Social Problems (official publication of The Society for the Study of Social Problems).

The review process is far more complex with academic journals as opposed to general publications, but this explanation of the rigorous submission process academic journals require of authors gives an idea of the extent to which authors need to concede to the editors’ knowledge of publishing as well as editors’ legitimate expectations of authors who sumbit. the editors’ expectations.

A publication ALWAYS belongs to the publisher — in the case of most Medium publications, the publisher and editor are usually the same person.

This is the process required of authors who submit to a respected academic publication:

Every article submitted has to go through peer review.
Three to five readers for a submission are selected for their expertise in the general subject area of the submission. This step is essential to ensure the subject matter is dealt with in a way that reflects knowledge of the current literature in the subject area, and offers something new to add to that literature. It is also evaluated for its writing quality and conformity to academic expectations.

The reviewers then evaluate the content according to those expectations, and give one of the following numerical assessments.

(NOTE: these steps are usually skipped for non-academic publications)

The following assessments by reviewers, however, can be adapted to non-academic magazines:

1. Accept with minor revisions.
   Everyone has to revise something. Nobody ever gets anything perfect. Editors and reviewers are there to help save good writers / researchers from embarrassing themselves. The editor suggests the minor revisions and the author…