Tuesday, 27 January 2009
Always on holiday...
Many apologies for the delay on my next post, been a little busy and a little under the weather along with the rest of the country. Which brings me onto holiday cover on your journals, I hear that some journals just close down for the time the office admin is on holiday (vacation for you US guys), with a message saying we are away but will be back in 2 weeks. This is what we used to do but thought, hang on if I try to order something off the internet I am not usually told that the office is closed for two weeks, come back then. So why should an editorial office close down? We have a pool of people working on our journals and allow a certain amount of people to be off at the same time, we also keep a strict holiday chart for people to look at before they book anything big like that trip to Blackpool or Disney, we also keep a set of holiday cover notes in the form of a manual (online) for people to access to cover the journal. We have many checklists and sets of guidelines per journal which helps a great deal for our cover and has worked reasonably well for 2 years now. We also try to do the same if people go off sick as papers still need to be given out and emails need to be answered. I wonder how others do it. I know I touched on this at Christmas but holidays are a problem and unfortunately we can’t ban them. I know you Americans only get a few minutes holiday a year and us Brits get 10 months holiday a year (ha).
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I don't think we Americans are the ones to ask - we just take the lap top with!
ReplyDeleteThis really is an important issue. With just 2 FTEs in our office we decided (along with our Editor) to close the week of Christmas, and to "check in" briefly (electronically) each day, save official holidays for our society. While I'm surprised each year by the number of submissions that come in over the holidays, we did not receive complaints from authors about the closure, which was noted in our automated emails and voicemail.
ReplyDelete--Let's not forget that delays in review are not only due to ed office closure, but also to everyone's declining to review!!
I totally agree, Elizabeth. I commented on Gary's earlier post regarding reviewers and holidays! When they are not working, our hands are tied! Consequently, we put a note up on MC that says "due to the holidays, there may be a delay in processing your ms blah blah blah..." This seems to work well for us.
ReplyDeleteAlso an American and from small journals with no other staff, I can't see ever "closing" the office. The lap top and I are constant companions. I'm afraid authors would definitely move on to the competition if they didn't receive timely responses. The personal "customer service" is how we lure authors.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I've learned something from these posts about putting up notes on MC to let authors know when there might be a slow down. Very helpful.