Roles and responsibilities

The tasks associated with a professional scientific editor role may include a subset of the following activities:

• deciding whether an article is in scope of a journal and if it should be sent out to peer review. 
• supervising the entire peer review life-cycle of manuscripts.  This includes:
  • identifying potential reviewers.
  • assess reviewers reports.
  • deciding whether to publish a manuscript.
  • communicating editorial decisions to authors.
• attending editorial team meetings, where decisions are discussed.
• actively engaging with the scientific community to promote the activities of the journal/attract papers and reviewers, and keep up-to-date with changes in the scientific field and in publishing.
• identifying and approaching scientists to write reviews, books etc on specific topics.
• writing editorial pieces, short research summaries etc.

Career entry and progression

It is possible to enter scientific publishing directly from the bench. Applicants with at least one postdoc may be preferred over applicants directly from the PhD, but this depends on the publisher. The job title for the first position varies: depending on the publisher this can be ‘Assistant editor’, ‘Associate editor’, ‘Scientific editor’ or another title. To understand which title is used by a specific publisher, you can look for their editors on LinkedIn and see what position they had when they joined the journal from academia, or look for the newest editors on their website (most journals have an ‘about the editors’ page with a biosketch for each of their editors).

Many scientific publishers offer possibilities for career progression, i.e. moving to more senior roles (editor, senior editor, chief/executive editor) at the same/another journal, or moving into other management positions within publishing. After gaining experience in the role, some editors also later change career direction – for example, moving into grant or science management roles, or becoming consultants in scientific writing.

Knowledge and skills

Editors need a broad scientific knowledge and critical thinking skills to read and assess the scope of articles from a range of fields. They have to make logical decisions based on expert reviews and clearly articulate the basis of the decision to authors. A core of the job involves engaging with authors, reviewers, and the scientific community using a variety of communication channels (e.g. email, in-person meetings, phone calls, social media platforms, and scientific events). The ability to reach out and build a strong network is therefore a key aspect of the role.

In our careers and skills survey,  5 science publishing professionals told us the competencies they use most in their daily work  The most frequently selected competencies were:

• broad scientific knowledge (selected by 86% of respondents)
• effective communication (selected by 86%)
• clarity of thought( selected by 57%)
• networking (selected by 57%)
• team.work (selected by 57%)

Language requirements

For companies/societies publishing English-language journals, no additional languages are required. Scientific editors are not involved in copy editing at most journals, so while excellent communication skills are very important, you do not need to have perfect English grammar.