Scholarpedia talk:Become an editor
Increasing the number of editors in Scholarpedia is vital to monitor its quality and to insure its growth and its survival.
Ideally, each editor should invite/recruit 2-3 new editors, and invite 50-100 new authors.
Riccardo Guida (Ric) suggested that we try to speed up the editors' recruiting process (so that the project grows exponentially) by establishing a mechanism to inform, choose, and recruit new editors of high experience.
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Suggested requirements for new editors
- Have a PhD or MD.
- Be an experienced and acknowledged expert in his or her field.
- Be recommended by at least two curators of Scholarpedia.
- Be willing to spend a few hours per week performing editorial duties: inviting authors and reviewers and recruiting other editors.
Editors without a category - Advisory Editorial Board
Some users of Scholarpedia have editorial privileges, but they are not assigned to any particular category. Such editors are "advisory editors". They will not need to be involved in peer-review and other editorial chores, but they will be responsible for making good suggestions of whom to invite. These people should be the most prominent stars in their fields, such as Nobel laureates, so that we can use their names and their status/expertise in our invitation to attract other stars.
They should be listed on Encyclopedia pages as belonging to the "advisory editorial board" (there could be many of them for each category, and the same editorial advisor could be on many category pages.
Who chooses editors among different competing candidates?
- Proposal: The editor in chief has the last word, advised by editors of nearest categories -- Ric
How to advertise the opening?
- In any case before opening editorial positions in any category there should be some reflection to avoid overlapping categories and to prepare an overall plan of development (see the wide categories I've prepared for physics http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Category:Physics: the same should be done for mathematics, biology....) -- Ric
- To start I propose to create a visible page "How to contribute" and adding in that page a section "Become an editor" -- Ric
How to dismiss editors who abandon their category?
An editors is invited for one year and then has an automatic extension every year if he or she is still active and has not abandoned his or her authors and articles. If an editor is non-active, he or she would not even notice that editorial privileges disappeared (they could always be restored later, if needed).
- I think that some specification of what "active" means should be included.... (FKS)
