Panel 7 - Workshop - Professional Development Workshop: Journal Editing - Heather Sparling, Cape Breton University

[ CHAIR: Heather Sparling, Cape Breton University ]

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The purpose of this professional development workshop is to build both writing and editing capacity among CSTM and IASPM-Canada members. It was requested and endorsed by the MUSICultures Editorial Board. A greater understanding of the journal editing process will benefit both writers and potential editors. Participants will have the opportunity to imagine themselves as journal editors and work through a number of typical editorial tasks and challenges. In the first half of the workshop, we will scan an actual manuscript submitted to (and later published by) MUSICultures, identifying the various strategies and processes an editor uses to begin evaluating a submission. In the second half, I will identify a number of challenges I have faced as the editor of MUSICultures for six years (e.g., what do you do if a peer reviewer doesn’t supply a promised review? what do you do if a call for papers for a special guest-edited issue only elicits five submissions?) and the group will brainstorm possible solutions. This workshop has several professional benefits: 1) it will demystify the editing process for both writers and potential editors; 2) writers will have a better understanding of how to prepare a manuscript for consideration by a journal; and 3) participants will be better equipped to undertake editing projects, whether special issues, anthologies, or scholarly journals.