Op/Ed

JASIST Editorial Note: 25 October 2023

JASIST Editorial Note: 25 October 2023

Thanking reviewers, announcing board changes and a new decision option

Steve Sawyer

In this editorial update we celebrate our reviewers, highlight changes to the Editorial Board and share that there are changes to the decisions we can render for a manuscript.

We begin by listing 2022’s top reviewers. Peer review requires expert reviewers voluntarily sharing their valuable insights with too little recognition. This voluntary expertise continues to be one of the scarcest resources for journals, even as this is at the core of what an academic Journal provides. Indeed, the value of an academic journal is more visible in the reviews than in any statements an editor makes.

To this point, in 2022, 438 people reviewed a manuscript for JASIST. About 120 people reviewed two or more manuscripts. Thank you!  Reviewers: please feel free to update your CV to reflect that you have completed a review for JASIST!; we are always happy to confirm this for others should you need us to do so. You might consider getting credit using Publons (and linking this to your ORCID account.

—every review matters and we honor and value everyone who has contributed their expertise—

This acknowledgment of our colleagues who have generously reviewed manuscripts reflects a first attempt to say “thank you.” To achieve this recognition these reviewers needed to complete at least four reviews and receive high ratings for their review work. This exceptional work noted, every review matters and we honor and value everyone who has contributed their expertise. Our top reviewers hail from 12 different countries and reflect the impressive diversity of JASIST and contemporary information science. Nine of these reviewers are either serving on, or have served on, either the Journal’s Editorial  or AdvisoryBoard.

JASIST’s top reviewers for 2022, in alphabetical order by last name:

David Bawden | United Kingdom | City University, London

Wade Bishop | United States |  University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Kevin Boyack | United States | Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque 

Yi BU | China | Peking University, Beijing, China

James Cortada | United States| University of Minnesota 

Andrew Cox | United Kingdom| University of Sheffield

Peter Darch | United States | University of California

Fereshteh Didegah | Canada | Simon Fraser University, Vancouver 

Árni Einarsson | Denmark | University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Dion Goh | Singapore | Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Tim Gorichanaz | United States | Drexel University 

Saeed-Ul Hassan | Pakistan | Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester UK

Guoxiu He | China – | East China Normal University

Bryan Heidorn | United States | University of Arizona 

Aira Huttunen | Finland | University of Oulu, Faculty of Humanities, Oulu, Finland

Isto Huvila | Sweden | Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

Kyle Jones | United States | Indiana University-Indianapolis

Vanessa Kitzie | United States | University of South Carolina 

Kyungwon Koh | United States | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Michael Kurtz | United States | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Kai Li | China | Renmin University of China

Jing Li | Singapore | Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Kun Lu | United States | University of Oklahoma

Yuanye Ma | United States | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Jin Mao | China | Wuhan University

Irene V. Pasquetto | United States | University of Michigan 

JIaxin Pei | United States | University of Michigan 

Nicolás Robinson-Garcia | Spain | Universidad de Granada, Spain

Shijie Song | China | Wuhan University, China

Olof Sundin | Sweden | Lund University, Lund, Sweden

Mike Thelwall | United Kingdom | University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK

Vincent Traag | Netherlands | Leiden University

Jian Wang | Netherlands | Pufendorf Institute, Lund University

Chenwei ZHANG | Hong Kong | The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Alesia Zuccala | Denmark | University of Copenhagen, Denmark

We also celebrate the service of a number of colleagues who have stepped off the Editorial Board this year.  Thank you to Coye Cheshire; Sally Jo Cunningham; Lorraine Goeuriot; Heather O’Brien; Elaine Toms; and, Adam Worrall for your service to the Journal and to our colleagues. A special thanks to Elaine Toms for her additional service as a Senior Editor. These five scholars were invited on to the board before my time as editor began. They chose to stay on, and Elaine to continue taking on the extra work as Senior Editor, for several years. Their contributions to the Journal are missed.

Looking to keep the Journal’s Editorial Board to around 60 people, delighted to report that Katriina Byström (Oslo Metropolitan University, NO); Andrea Thomer (University of Arizona, US); and Frans van der Sluis (University of Copenhagen, DK). Katriina’s expertise includes workplace information; information behavior and information practices; information needs and uses; digital workplaces; task-based information searching; and qualitative/ ethnographic/ practice-based research. Andrea brings to the Journal additional expertise with data curation, data practices, knowledge infrastructures, natural history collections, biodiversity informatics, earth science informatics, metadata, and information organization. Frans’ expertise Frans’ expertise includes human-information interaction, epistemic emotions, information quality, human interest and curiosity, reading comprehension, eye-tracking, user experience, affective computing, and knowledge modeling.

I am delighted to announce that Heidi Julien has agreed to take on the role of senior editor. In this role she will have a greater say in papers that overlap her scholarly interests and to have more input in shaping the flow of reviews. In this role she joins Mike Thelwall, giving the Journal greater depth and more scholarly heft. You can see these changes, and the names of all editorial board and advisory board members, on the Journal’s web presence.

We continue to bring on new editorial board members and to consider adding additional senior editors.  While we value self-nominations and very much appreciate suggestions from current and prior board members, prior experience as an author and reviewer with this Journal are important considerations. It is also critical to the Journal’s value to prospective authors to balance topical coverage while ensuring the board reflects the diversity of a global scholarly community.

Finally, there is a new decision option for a submitted manuscript. Wiley—like all the large academic publishers—has worked to provide a transfer mechanism for manuscripts, leading to a new rejection option: reject with a suggestion to transfer to another journal. Authors retain control of what to do with their manuscript. And, while it is possible for me to recommend other Wiley journals, this seems more an editorial overreach than any real value and I will not be suggesting alternatives when recommending transfer consideration.

Thank you for reading, and please consider submitting your work to JASIST!

Steve Sawyer

Editor-in-Chief, JASIST

Cite this article in APA as: Sawyer, S. (2023, October 26). JASIST Editorial Note: 25 October 2023. Information Matters, Vol. 3, Issue 10. https://informationmatters.org/2023/10/jasist-editorial-note-25-october-2023/

Author

  • Steve Sawyer

    Steve Sawyer is on the faculty of Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. His research focuses on the changing forms of work and organizing enabled through uses of information and communication technologies. This is done through detailed field-based studies of scientific collaborators, software developers, real estate agents, police officers, organizational technologists, and other information-intensive work settings. He has also been active in advancing sociotechnical approaches to studying computing collectively known as social informatics and emphasizing the sociotechnical basis of digital technologies. Sawyer’s work is published in a range of venues and supported by funds from the National Science Foundation, IBM, Corning, and a number of other public and private sponsors. Prior to returning to Syracuse, Steve was a founding faculty member of the Pennsylvania State University’s College of Information Sciences and Technology. He earned his Doctorate from Boston University in 1995.

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Steve Sawyer

Steve Sawyer is on the faculty of Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. His research focuses on the changing forms of work and organizing enabled through uses of information and communication technologies. This is done through detailed field-based studies of scientific collaborators, software developers, real estate agents, police officers, organizational technologists, and other information-intensive work settings. He has also been active in advancing sociotechnical approaches to studying computing collectively known as social informatics and emphasizing the sociotechnical basis of digital technologies. Sawyer’s work is published in a range of venues and supported by funds from the National Science Foundation, IBM, Corning, and a number of other public and private sponsors. Prior to returning to Syracuse, Steve was a founding faculty member of the Pennsylvania State University’s College of Information Sciences and Technology. He earned his Doctorate from Boston University in 1995.