Happy new year to you all, I do hope you all had much fun and games with the latest of festivities and many apologies to you if you were working over the festive period. (Ha, that’s your own fault, get on a time management course).
Don’t know about you lot but my office was like the Mary Celeste between Christmas and New Year, everyone must be out shopping or recovering from hangovers or just sitting watching the Queens speech. Hmm I wonder which.
The trouble is though it is all very nice taking the time off having fun, but look at the mess you come back to. Hundreds of emails, loads of voice mails, list of to do’s have grown ten fold. How do you cope with the world of email? I mean we never used to have it and we all coped reasonably well. Whenever I go on a course now some bright spark always throws a spanner in the works by saying ‘I do not get time to do that because I have 5 million emails to answer’. My answer to them is usually ‘use that trash button a little more pal and get on with your day job’. Email has become a mine field now, what needs to be prioritised? How long do I spend on email a day? What needs answering? What needs trashing? It is all quite difficult to manage and I am sure there are courses for people to go on ‘how to handle emails’. At least I do not get spammed emails on Viagra or extensions anymore and I am not talking hair extensions.
January is a bit of a dull month, it is dark, wet, cold, blimey don’t I moan in my old age. Some exciting stuff coming though. The EON newsletter has just gone out, and again what a great issue, I really must say that this newsletter is worth the membership alone, well done all those involved. You can also get a free one day trial now with ISMTE at http://ismte.org/amember/signup.php you may wish to have a look first to get a feel of what the ISMTE is about. You can now also register for the 2 conferences being held in August. Lastly I want to know who is reading this blog, you can make comments even if you are not a member (nothing rude). Just to get a feel of who you are and what you do. Talk to me or are you too busy with emails :o)
Toodle pip.
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Hi, Gary,
ReplyDeleteGlad you're back. Missed you while you were vacationing. Someday Americans may learn to vacation; until then, we'll envy you.
How do your authors/reviewers handle the silence while you're away? I feel a fair amount of my time is spent doing "customer service" and guiding authors/reviewers through submissions and reviews in the systems. They don't like to wait overnight for a response let alone a week or more!
Kristie
@ Kristie,
ReplyDeleteWhat we do each year before Xmas is to put a notice on the log-in page of our online submission site to thank our authors and reviewers for their support and to tell them that the EO will be closed from date x to date y, manuscripts and reviews can still be submitted but won’t be checked or processed, or queries answered until the EO reopens. It works well and keeps everyone sane, and we catch up very quickly when we get back to work in January.
We also prepare the way before the holiday break by letting reviewers know in our invite and assignment letters that after a certain date the EO will be closed - that gives them a heads up so they can contact us before we close if they have any problems, need any information, etc.
Online systems are 24/7, but EOs and the review process are still run by humans – the human element is even more important nowadays - and they can’t, and shouldn’t attempt to, work 24/7. A real break gives everyone the chance to recharge their batteries and come back refreshed, ready to enter the fray again …
@ Gary,
Yes, emails can be a big problem. But can be dealt with from anywhere – which is both a good thing and a bad thing - so why were you in your Marie Celeste office when you could have been home watching another rerun of The Great Escape and eating mince pies? An essential trick is to learn to not feel guilty about not even opening up email some days. But how many people can do that? And I hear that some bloggers get addicted to posting so take care!
I receive over a thousand emails a day now. My management technique is three-fold: first I try to forward if at all possible. Second, I try to delete if I can justify. Third, when all else fails I give in and reply!
ReplyDeleteDuring the holiday season, we simply add a note to MC that says something like "due to the busy holiday season, the review process may take longer..." Very tricky, as it says nothing about staff being away. We like to think it instead suggests that delays are the fault of the reviewers and academic community at large taking time off (especially the Europeans reviewers LOL).