Managing Editor Handover

Notes on: responsibilities, recruitment, onboarding, and handover for Managing Editors

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Each of our journals benefits from the leadership of a Managing Editor. The Managing Editor is a first point of contact for prospective authors and collaborators, and a source of guidance and support for their editorial team.

Key details:

Salary: Voluntary
Hours: ~0.5 days per fortnight
Place: Remote home-working
Time: ideally no less than 2 years, including ~6 months handover

Responsibilities:

• Receiving lesson proposals, coordinating feedback, directing selection
• Overseeing the editorial process: from submission, through peer-review to publication
• Facilitating and supporting the work of editorial team
• Championing the project's community values of openness, inclusivity and achievement through collaboration

Recruitment (internal):

• It is advised that ~6 months before a Managing Editor's active term ends, they email their team to seek expressions of interest in becoming Assistant Managing Editor and later Managing Editor
• If there is one person interested/available:
  • Seek agreement from the team to elect that person for the role
• If there are two (or more) people interested/available:
  • Devise a system for voting within the team to elect one person for the role
• If there is no-one interested/available:
  • Set the process for an external call for applications into motion

Recruitment (external):

• We publish vacancies on our website [/en/vacancies, /es/vacantes, /fr/postes-vacants, /pt/vagas] in the language appropriate to the vacant position.
• A recent Call for applications: Editors which can be used as a template is available here
• A recent Call for applications: Managing Editors which can be used as a template is available here
• We publicise vacancies using our social media channels (Twitter: @ProgHist and Mastodon: @[email protected]).
• We encourage the editorial team to work together to receive, process and evaluate applications then organise interviews.
• Decisions about who to appoint should be made in consultation with the whole team, and in alignment with our commitments to accessibility and diversity.
• We ask Managing Editors to join us for no less than 2 years. A timeframe of 2-3 years is ideal, as it can include a handover period of ~6 months beyond the initial 2-year commitment.

Onboarding:

• A recent Onboarding Issue which can be used as a template is available here.

Handover:

Our key objectives in the handover phase is to support continuity of practice, and to create space for the transfer of knowledge.

• Share the team email credentials: so incoming Managing Editors can review the dialogue/discussions that are ongoing and begin to participate
• Organise 1-to-1 training with our Publishing Assistant
• Invite incoming Managing Editors to shadow key workflows
• Outgoing Managing Editors should try to complete tasks and close or re-assign the Issues they are responsible for

Sabbatical:

• Outgoing Managing Editors are encouraged to take a 3-month sabbatical from the project following their active term.

Off-boarding:

• Outgoing Managing Editors can choose whether or not to remain on the team as an editor
• If they choose to step down entirely, a recent Off-boarding Issue which can be used as a template is available here.

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Administration

Upon handover, our Publishing Assistant will support the incoming Managing Editor to complete the following administrational tasks:

1. Update the field team_roles: in ph_authors.yml as follows:

  team_roles:
    - managing

2. Update the name provided on the appropriate line of the field managing_editor: in snippets.yml as follows:

managing_editor:
  en: Forename Surname
  es: Forename Surname
  fr: Forename Surname
  pt: Forename Surname

3. Update the name provided on our Lesson Query forms:

• EN https://programminghistorian.org/assets/forms/Lesson.Query.Form.txt
• ES https://programminghistorian.org/assets/forms/Formulario.Consulta.Leccion.txt
• FR https://programminghistorian.org/assets/forms/Formulaire.Tutoriel.txt
• PT https://programminghistorian.org/assets/forms/formulario.proposta.licao.txt

4. Update the Managing Editor's name across our Wikipedia entries:

• EN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_Historian
• ES https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_Historian
• FR https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_Historian
• PT https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_Historian

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Contacts

The following people have acted as Managing Editor in the past and may be consulted for advice:

English:

• Adam Crymble (2012-2015)
• Ian Milligan (2015-2016)
• Jeri Wieringa (2016-2017)
• Jessica Parr (2017-2018)
• Anandi Silva Knuppel (2018-2019)
• Sarah Melton (2019-2022)
• Alex Wermer-Colan (2023-Present)

Spanish:

• Antonio Rojas (2017-2018)
• Maria José Afanador-Llach (2018-2019)
• Riva Quiroga (2019-2023)
• Jennifer Isasi (2023-Present)

French

• Sofia Papastamkou (2018-2022)
• Marie Flesh (2022-Present)

Portuguese

• Daniel Alves (2021-2024)
• Eric Brasil (2024-Present)

Current Managing Editors' contact information is available on the Project Team pages across EN, ES, FR and PT.