The Mom and Pop Editorial Shop

Corresponding author: Jan Drake, Laboratory of Molecular Genetics E3-01, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2233, drake{at}niehs.nih.gov (E-mail).

ONE afternoon early in 1981, BURKE JUDD strolled into my office at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Burke had recently ascended from Vice President to President of the Genetics Society of America. He asked if I might care to take over GENETICS from soon-to-retire Editor GEORGE LEFEVRE. I said, "Sure." The matter was settled.

Busy learning National Institutes of Health (NIH) survival tactics, I was paying little attention to the affairs of either the GSA or GENETICS. Having served on the Editorial Board since 1975, I dutifully handled the review of my allotment of papers and was aware only that the journal was coming out a little late. I had not noticed just how late.

My first educational experience in this matter had nothing directly to do with editing. I stopped by the office of the NIEHS Scientific Director, mentioned my new task, and asked if he could loan me a room for a few years. No other cost would accrue, I assured him, because the GSA would pay for the services of an assistant, and the association with a journal like GENETICS would be good publicity for the Institute. He was unenthusiastic. The only way this could be handled, he explained, was to conduct the hiring in a competitive manner through the Institute's personnel office. (At that time, but not now, we dreaded the personnel office. The staff lost a substantial proportion of all documents sent them and had developed powerful methods for obstructing rational and humane actions.) In addition, said the Scientific Director, all the files, including the reviews, would be public documents. He asked suspiciously whether I was to receive an honorarium. I replied that I would not (although I did later, subject to federal restrictions). Nevertheless, he explained, it would be best if this clearly threatening matter were treated as an outside activity (Form 520). I immediately acquiesced.

As it happened, I already had in mind a bilingual assistant with substantial experience in several cities of the world and a knack both for organization and for handling complex and sometimes difficult situations. She would be the perfect assistant. In addition, we were married. Pam, too, acquiesced. GSA finances were not good at that time, so instead of renting, we set up an office in our own house, an arrangement that also melded well with the federal requirement that my editorial work be conducted in evenings and on weekends. Thus was born what MIKE RESNICK later christened the Mom and Pop Editorial Shop.

I soon learned from BURKE that, despite LEFEVRE's substantial editing abilities, matters were unravelling with the printer. Delays accrued endlessly. For instance, the January 1982 issue was not mailed until April 28. At that time, GENETICS was produced by the Printing Division of the University of Texas at Austin. This was not the University Press, presumably an admirable entity, but an internal facility where items such as course catalogs were printed. It had been selected in some earlier year as an inexpensive way to produce the journal and had been quite satisfactory for awhile. No longer, however. Proofs arrived late, revised proofs arrived even later, and issues were printed and mailed latest. This led eventually to a curious dilemma. After a frustrating several months with the Texas operation, we conducted a painstaking and ultimately successful search for a new printer. The switch to Waverly Press was to become effective with the September 1982 issue, to be mailed towards the end of August. However, the preceding combined July/August 1982 issue from Texas would not be mailed until much later. "No problem," I said, the overlap will convince our readers that the publication delay is about to end. "Problem," said the new printer, the U.S. Post Office will not allow such an inversion. In the end, we mailed anyway, and nobody in any official position seemed to notice.

While probing the financial aspects of the operation, I noticed a curiosity. The GSA was making what seemed to me a healthy several thousand dollars a year selling back issues. In 1981, however, we paid substantially more for storage of back issues than we received from their sale. A few inquiries revealed that we had accumulated a lot of stock in an Austin warehouse. How many, and what to do? I rang up a colleague at the University of Texas, ELDON SUTTON, and inquired if he knew of an impoverished student who would like to earn a little money. He suggested a graduate student in his lab, BARBARA GUSSE (now DUPONT). Her first task was to take inventory. All immediately became clear: we had in storage some 25,000 back volumes of GENETICS. We decided to have a sale and duly announced that most issues and volumes all the way back to 1916 were available at cut-rate prices for a limited time only. There was a strong response, and Pam was busy for a few months mediating these sales. Barbara next arranged the shipment of an adequate number of back issues to the new printer for subsequently very inexpensive storage. Finally, she sold the remaining stock as scrap. The receipts from the scrap dealer just covered what we owed her. Since then, the GSA has enjoyed a steady net income from the sale of back issues.

In the early 1980s, the journal was becoming increasingly unpopular with authors because of its publication lag; indeed, many years passed before potential authors became aware of the improvement. GSA membership was also falling, perhaps for the same reason. The financial reserves of the Society were weak and matters looked a little uncertain. Not to worry. ART CHOVNICK was the GSA Treasurer, and we plotted to raise prices to levels commensurate with those of journals considered our peers. (A few years later, I discovered that biological journals published by scholarly societies tend to cost on the order of tenfold less than journals put out by commercial publishers. This is still usually true.) Within a few years the GSA regained its financial health and has retained it. GENETICS remains a bargain for both members and libraries.

I had a preference for what I sometimes called a bathtub journal, namely one of sufficiently small format to be read comfortably almost anywhere away from a desk. Since its inception in 1916, the trim size of GENETICS had been 9³/₄ x 6³/₄ inches. However, we had entered a world of photocopying machines, and many otherwise excellent journals had switched to 8¹/₂ x 11 inches. The GSA Board of Directors was worried. Although they usually left such arcane matters to me, they eventually lost patience and voted to change our fundamental dimensions. The Board was probably correct: membership increased.

Once the world spread that the Little Old Lady of 1916 was back on track, submissions began to increase. Soon a bull market set in. With few pauses, growth has been inexorable to the present. The editorial board comprised 29 members at the beginning of my term. I persuaded the Board of Directors that five-year terms were intimidating to some of the people I wished to bring on board, and were difficult for me when I sought to negotiate the retirement of editors who handled the review process at trolling speed. We settled on three-year terms. By 1996, the board had grown to 56 editors.

Early in my tenure, I conducted a survey of editorial boards that revealed a paucity of female editors in most of the journals I read. This seemed particularly inappropriate for a journal of genetics. LEFEVRE had done fairly well, six of his 29 board members being women, but his ratio still did not reflect what I saw when strolling the corridors of academia and the NIH. Over the course of a few years, it was possible to increase the number of women editors to its present apparent equilibrium of roughly 40%.

When Pam set up the editorial office, she established a system for tracking papers. She numbered the first paper 1001. The last submission we recorded just before turning matters over to Pittsburgh in the fall of 1996 received number 6573. Of these submissions, roughly 65% were eventually accepted. Fortunately, I could depend on our excellent editors and did not have to read every paper. It was sufficient to check them for appropriate format and to send stern letters to the authors demanding reformatting on critical matters. In the early days, this was handled exclusively through the post, but later it became possible to send faxes and eventually e-mail messages. Thus, authors all over the world could be harassed directly from our office at any hour of the day. Some authors retaliated by phoning us during European or Australian working hours. The distant ring of the editorial office phone in the middle of our night was uncannily like a baby's cry in its ability to rouse us abruptly and fully. Once awakened, we would often stay in the editorial office, secure in the knowledge that no author could see us working in our pajamas.

While the cozy nature of our editorial office maximized efficiency, the almost daily production deadlines complicated our infrequent vacations together. Often we adopted a complicated itinerary, wherein one of us left a few days ahead of the other, and the other returned home a few days after the one. However we arranged matters, an intimidating pile of inquiries, manuscripts and proofs always awaited our return. There were usually matters of priority to be addressed even on the road. Once when an author complained about the poor quality of the phone line, we had to explain that the noise was caused by the Hawaiian surf some 50 feet from the public phone box.

I eventually learned that most editorial problems could be avoided by taking great care in selecting editors. One of the most revealing inquiries was of fellow faculty members, who were asked whether their colleague performed their departmental chores rapidly and responsibly. Another key attribute was an editor's ability to retain composure under pressure. Characteristics like these forged an editorial board that gave me deep pleasure in our interactions during 15 years, over and above my admiration for the quality of their work. I especially came to enjoy my frequent exchanges with the two editors of the Perspectives columns. The three of us were sometimes known colloquially as The Birds, but my ambition to publish a paper by CROW, DOVE and DRAKE remains unfulfilled.

One apparently insoluble problem, however, has always been the Reviewer From Hell. This creature agrees to review a paper and then doesn't, for months on end. At one time, I considered establishing a Slow List: accumulated delays by an offending reviewer would be summed, and their next submission would be held for the accumulated number of months before being sent out for review. Pam's dedication to the well-being of every geneticist in the world extended even to reviewers, and prevented this scheme from maturing. However, I still suspect that it has merit.

Despite occasional postal delays, manuscripts were almost never lost, although from time to time an editor would discover a forgotten paper in some corner of the office. Once several long-sought manuscripts were discovered in a secretary's desk drawer, subsequent to her discharge for substance abuse. I believe that only about two items out of about 3 x 10⁴ were strong candidates for having disappeared in the mail.

Ethical problems were rare, roughly one a year. Most merely reflected an author's disinclination to send out a strain, and only once did such a matter proceed past confrontation and approach a publication ban; it was fortunately resolved in time. As tenure and promotion committees gradually learned that curricula vitae are not infallible, they sometimes contacted us to see if a paper was truly in press. Sometimes it wasn't, although we had usually at least heard of it.

Checking papers for format and training rising young scientists in the use of English eventually induced in me an annoying compulsion. I can no longer read a paper for its science alone, but must reflectively apply a red pen, if only mentally.

When preparing to take leave of GENETICS, we remembered the inexperience we brought to our task in 1981 and prepared a manual for the next Editor. Over subsequent months we dumped many records into recycling bins, sending only a few to the new Editorial Office. While sorting these old files, we came across a vaguely remembered archive. In days of yore, authors were encouraged to deposit supportive data with the Editorial Office. I had removed this invitation from the Instructions for Contributors many years ago, and few authors had deposited with the Chapel Hill office. However, we had inherited a stack perhaps two feet high accumulated by previous Editors. Could this be culled? Much of it dated back to the 1960s, some to the 1950s or earlier. To my surprise, a search through the two most recent GSA Membership Directories yielded the name of at least one author for a large proportion of the papers for which data had been archived. E-mails, faxes and phone calls eventually located most of these authors. Quite a few were senior authors either still active, or retired but retaining emeritus status in the GSA; geneticists seem on average to be a long-lived species. Most were amazed that their data were still retained and all of these approved immediate destruction. However, one gentleman from a distant country requested that his decades-old data be returned. It weighed several pounds. We sent it by sea mail.