Scholarpedia:Editor
An Editor is a set of privileges given to a user who has demonstrated adequate scholarly qualifications and has made a commitment to develop a topic category within Scholarpedia.
Each article has a single Curator (or simply "curator") who is ultimately responsible for the article's contents. Each article's curator is a world-recognized authority on the topic covered by the article .
When an article is first published, its (most) established expert becomes the article's curator. After publication, the curator can be changed based on the decision of the contributors to each article, in which case the article's curator need not have been among the article's original authors.
Scholarpedia relies its curators to ensure the integrity and quality of its articles by requiring that each article be publicly approved (or anonymously rejected) by a Scholarpedia curator.
Permissions
Scholarpedia-wide, an Editor has all the same permissions as a Curator. They are able to:
- Sponsor a proposed article, thereby vouching for the credibility and authority of the article's authorship, and
- Approve a Scholarpedia article for publication.
Editors have additional capabilities, however:
- An Editor can endow Scholar capabilities to non-Curator users, allowing those users to approve articles for publication.
- They can invite any user to act as a reviewer for any in-progress article
- They can revert any article to pre-sponsorship stage
Rationale
Endowing Scholar capabilities
This is in line with the traditional peer-review process, in which a journal editor controls the publication process. Scholarpedia Editors are assumed to be as qualified as journal editors at finding appropriate individuals to act as reviewers.
Inviting any user to act as a reviewer for any in-progress article
This serves two functions:
- Allows Editors to assist teams of authors with the publication of their article
- Increases the uncertainty as to who may have been responsible for rejecting/reverting an article
Revert any article to pre-sponsorship stage
This allows editors to serve as a "last line of defense" in preventing the publication of unscholarly articles.
