Interested in being an editorial board member?

It's that time of year again - time for MLA members to think about which committees they might want to participate in during the upcoming year.

The JMLA Editorial Board is one of the MLA committee options. Members of the editorial board serve 3 year terms and are typically asked to review 1-2 manuscripts per month. We also hold an editorial board meeting at each MLA Annual Meeting.

The peer reviewer serves as an invaluable adviser to the editorial team and to authors, providing commentary and critique of manuscripts that aid the team in determining the disposition of each article (i.e. acceptance or rejection) and in recommending changes for improving the clarity and quality of prospective articles.

The peer review process requires rigorous attention to detail, some familiarity with research design, an understanding of principles of logical writing, and analytical and critical thinking skills to assess arguments and theses presented in papers.

Our recently launched JMLA Reviewer Tutorial provides an overview of editorial expectations and the time commitment that comes with being part of the editorial board.

The MLA committee application form is available online in the members-only section of MLANET. If you would like to be considered for a spot on the editorial board, we encourage you to indicate your interest on the application form. It will also be very useful to the editorial team if you use Section 4 of the application, Qualifications or Special Expertise, to share with us brief details regarding your interest in the JMLA and relevant experience (writing, editing, etc.).

Please also free to contact us at jmlaeditor[at]vanderbilt[dot]edu if you have questions!

(There are also lots of other great committee opportunities with MLA, so even if the JMLA board isn't your cup of tea, consider other opportunities for getting involved with the organization!)

New JMLA reviewer tutorial launched

The editorial team of the JMLA is pleased to announce the launch of the JMLA Reviewer Tutorial.

The expected audience for the tutorial includes the JMLA Editorial Board as well as prospective authors of JMLA articles and those interested in learning more about the peer review process.

Focusing on critical appraisal skills, the tutorial is intended to:
- Provide orientation and professional development for current and incoming JMLA peer reviewers
- Facilitate development of general skills in critically assessing the literature
- Share editorial and peer review expectations for manuscript structure and content with prospective authors of JMLA articles
- Serve as a knowledge management strategy by capturing the JMLA’s peer review process

The tutorial's components include:
- An overview of the role of peer review and JMLA administrative practices and the typical submission-review-disposition workflow
- A detailed consideration of questions to consider in reviewing submitted manuscripts, focused on critiquing key sections of an article (methodology and approach, results, conclusions, implications, writing style)
- Suggestions for developing commentary on the paper and arriving at a final recommendation to the editorial team regarding the article’s disposition
- Sample review comments to illustrate content and tone/writing style
- An example manuscript to allow tutorial participants to exercise their new peer reviewing skills.

We hope it proves useful and please feel free to share any comments or questions with us.

Related:
We also presented a poster about the tutorial at this year's Medical Library Association annual meeting in Philadelphia, available online here (electronic versions of other posters from this year's meeting are also accessible via this list).