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Editor-in-Chief's Guide

Di Cook

2024-10-01

editor_in_chief_guide.Rmd

Downloading new submissions and revisions

Articles are submitted through a Google form which populates a Google sheet, and a Google drive. This sheet contains details of the submission, and also a zip file with the necessary files. You will need to have permission to see the sheet and the drive, and get_submissions() will authenticate against both.

On a regular basis, download newly submitted items:

This will create a new folder in the Submissions directory of the articles repo, and a DESCRIPTION file with the meta data.

You should check that this file has been constructed correctly, and that the zip file has unpacked into the top level of the folder. Common missing items are the Suppl: line which should list the .R files and any data needed to reproduce the paper.

Assigning articles to an EE

New articles should be assigned to one of the three EE’s. This is good to do at the time of acknowledging the submission, so that the EE can be cc’d on the email. The function acknowledge_submission() is used to generate an automatic email.

(It helps to have options(browser=Sys.getenv('R_BROWSER')) set so that your email handler pops up with the message to send.)

Workflow and operations

Workflow

Making articles available online

TO BE UPDATED WITH NEW WEB SITE DESIGN - new articles likely can get uploaded to articles tab once accepted, before being bundled into an issue.

Web site

The web site is a static html page, build from rjournal.github.io (currently dev branch). The site is built locally, using RStudio Build Website. Preview locally and if ok, push files to GitHub.

The procedure for getting the web site public has multiple steps:

  1. master branch is the sandbox to stage changes.
  2. Generate a pull request and accept it from master to published.
  3. The deploy branch is automatically built using GitHub actions to populate the web site.

Obtaining DOIs for articles in new issue

A file doi.xml is generated by the issue build process, in the folder issue number within _issues.

Note: It is easier if the December issue gets their slug BEFORE the end of the year, because the DOI links assume the issue date, which is the December the year before it actually gets published. If the slugs are in the new year, you need to update links in a tricky way.

You need to generate the xml for the DOI links by:

Then you need to login into https://doi.crossref.org/ using username rfou and password provided by previous editor.

Click on “Upload submissions”, then “Metadata” and upload the file.

Check for orphaned papers

The function active_articles() gives a long list of current papers being handled. And also tabulate_articles() can be helpful to find papers that are lagging in the system.

Archives of submissions

In the articles repo, the Proofs folder contains all the supporting files of Accepted articles. The Rejected folder contains all of the supporting files for rejected submisisons.

From time to time, papers with dates older than two years should be moved to the archive repo, to make the articles repo smaller. Recommend that this is done at the hand-over of the EiC role at the end of each year.

Building an issue

Revising wikipedia page

Search for new editorial board members

Executive editors

The EIC is responsible to navigating the search for a new EE. The search for a new editorial board member should begin in September, giving enough time to find a replacement before the outgoing member leaves at the end of December. Nominations for the new member are discussed by the editorial board first, and then preferably also with the advisory committee so that they can provide historical perspective.

Once a shortlist of candidates is created, but before approaching anyone on the list, it should be sent to the R Foundation Board members () for their feedback and approval. People on the list are then approached by the EIC or an EE, and once someone agrees, the EIC informs the members of the R Foundation (). The new editor is formally appointed by the R Foundation president.

Once a new member is found, the following steps take place:

The EIC may take on outstanding handling editor duties of the outgoing member.

Associate editors

The EIC is responsible for recruiting and setting up the GitHub repos for AEs. Ideally, keywords of submissions over the past year are summarised, and compared with keywords of current AEs. New AEs should be recruited for topics where there is the most need.