I'm the managing editor for a new, graduate student journal. We are beginning our third year. At first we had a high level of participation among our students serving as primary and secondary reviewers for the journal. Recently, we've been having trouble fostering continued student involvement as senior students finish the program and start to move on. As a result, recent submissions sit in our queue waiting to be reviewed and time's a waistin'. Anyone have any advice? Do you think students from other institutions would be interested in getting involved? I'm worried about our lag time between submissions and when author's hear back from us. I'm interested to hear how others have approached this problem.
Finding reviewers
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Thanks so much, Brian! Super helpful. I'm sure the response will assist others, too, in their own process of getting and sustaining reviewers.
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Here are a few ideas:
- Speak with your faculty about integrating involvement with your journal into professional development activities at your school (e.g. workshops, professionalization courses, etc.). Similarly, some advisors love to encourage their advisees to participant in professional activities like conferences, working on journals, etc.
- Contact faculty program advisors at peer graduate programs and ask them to share your call for reviewers with their students.
- Reach out to student government groups at relevant grad programs and setup a call to see if they could send out a request to their email listserv.
- Ask your faculty to send out appeals to their colleagues at other departments/schools asking for them to distribute your call for reviewers to their students.
- Reach out to graduate student journals for their advice on recruiting reviewers and sustaining interest (e.g. the Berkeley Journal of Sociology - http://bjsonline.org/2011/06/contact-bjs/)