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You're listening to Veterinary Vertex , a podcast of the APMA Journals . In this episode , we chat with our publishing editor , Michelle Krieger . Michelle , thank you so much for joining me on the podcast .
Hi , sarah , thanks so much for having me .
Michelle , can you please share with our listeners your professional background ?
Yeah , sure thing . So , actually going a little bit before professional , I'll go back to college , where I graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University with a degree in history and English literature , and I actually served multiple years as lead editor for the Creative Arts Journal on campus , which really set me up with a great foundation for my future in editing .
And then from there , I worked as a journal assistant at a publishing service company which was responsible for the journal management of multiple Elsevier health science journals , which was responsible for the journal management of multiple Elsevier health science journals , and that experience is what led me to joining the AVMA as a copy editor in 2015 , which is a
position I held until 2022 , when I was promoted to the newly created position of publishing editor .
That's super cool . I actually did not know that you were a editor . That's awesome . Yeah , very cool . So currently you are the publishing editor for Jabma and AJPR . What's the job of a publishing editor ?
So what's great about the role of publishing editor is that it's something very unique that we created here that other journals don't necessarily have , and we've been able to grow and evolve that position as needed in just the two years that I've been doing it .
And as publishing editor , I see manuscripts as soon as they get greenlit from our editor-in-chief , dr Lisa Fortier , to go through peer review .
So before a manuscript gets assigned to an editor and goes through the peer review process , I run quality control , or QC , on every manuscript and what that entails is checking not only the files themselves , like the Word documents , the figure files , et cetera , and that they adhere to our guidelines and requirements , but that the formatting of a manuscript follows
our instructions for authors , also known as our IFAs . So this means that when an author submits their manuscript and it gets the go ahead to proceed to peer review , I review the submitted document and ensure that the contents of the submission and the manuscript document follow our IFAs for that specific manuscript type that the author has submitted .
Um , so if they've submitted an original research , I check that they have a proper structured abstract that's under 250 words words , that they have the correct headings throughout the body , that the references are in AMA style and all the other components follow our requirements , just as an example .
And if there are any larger components that don't follow our IFAs , I'll return the manuscript back to the author to fix it . Turn the manuscript back to the author to fix it . But if there's something small , like there are no line numbers in the Word document , I'll go ahead and do those myself on behalf of the authors just to make it a little bit easier .
So this is all done prior to peer review , but it really ensures a much smoother peer review process overall for the authors . So it doesn't have to go back and forth so many times with revision , especially for minor things that can be addressed earlier on .
As an associate editor , I really appreciate your work . It makes my job so much easier to not have to worry about the technical nuances of the manuscripts adhering to the IFAs . So thank you so much , Michelle , for all that you do . I really appreciate it .
Yeah , no problem .
So , like you said before , before you had this role you were a copy editor . So how did your training as a copy editor prepare you to be a publishing editor ?
a copy editor prepare you to be a publishing editor . Yeah , so , having been a copy editor first for seven years here , I really gained an intimate knowledge of the articles that we publish , from how a manuscript should be formatted to how references should look , for example , and everything in between .
And that intimate knowledge is what kind of sparked the conversation for a new role the role that became publishing editor to the quality control , to really give our authors a better and faster peer review process .
So having that knowledge of what the end goal is in a sense with copyediting and how we want everything to look when it's published helps me catch things up front that the authors can fix , such as like out of order references , things like that . That can really save everyone a lot of time throughout the entire pre-production and production process .
The author doesn't have to make as many changes , like I said , at revision or either , or even later at the galley stage , and catching things earlier in the process just makes it so much faster from submission to publication .
But having that more , like I said , intimate knowledge of our style guide , of AMA style , and really knowing how each manuscript type is going to look when it's published , gives me that bit of an edge , I guess , to catch those things early on .
Yeah , we definitely rely on you too , especially when we're talking about changes we want to make to our IFH .
Just having you , too , have like the institutional knowledge is super , super important , and not many journals have someone in your role and I've really been able to bridge the gap between the pre-production and the production and post-production um that not many other people in the department have .
So just kind of knowing from the initial submission but also to when things are published and kind of being able to help people with both of those areas .
Awesome . Well , thank you so much again for all that you do . What sparked your interest in helping authors with quality control for their manuscripts ?
So I know in the past we had some issues with longer publication times for authors .
So doing anything that we can now to help speed up the process , not keep authors waiting is one of the things that really got me interested in doing QC to make the entire process easier , more understandable and faster for authors to get their important work out there , because their work is so important to the veterinary profession .
So getting things published faster , getting their questions answered and making it a much smoother and easier process is something that I'm really happy doing .
Yeah , whatever we can do to make it easier for our authors , we definitely try to so . Again , thank you . And what is one of the most surprising aspects of your role ?
Oh , and so I think , working on a lot of the behind the scenes things like delving into Manuscript Central and helping make it a better system , not just for our authors to submit their manuscripts but also for our reviewers , our editors and all of our staff here I didn't expect that when I was first starting this position . It's definitely a lot .
There's a lot of technical things that I had no idea about that I've been learning and still learning and will continue to learn , I'm sure .
but it's been fascinating to kind of learn those ins and outs of the system and how it all works yeah , it's definitely a beast , that's for sure , and there's nuances of every manuscript submission system from what I've learned at the different conferences . But I really appreciate you and Karen and Stacey doing work with Manuscript Central for us .
Yeah , it's definitely something that was not in my wheelhouse before , but so what advice would you share with authors that are hoping to submit manuscripts to Javmont AJBR ?
So the first thing I'll say is please , please , please , read our IFAs on our website . Is , please , please , please , read our IFAs on our website . Our website is such a great tool , our journal's website . You can see our editor-in-chief's editorials , which she includes a lot of information in there on how we want to tailor things to our authors' needs .
You can find previously published manuscripts , you can see how they look , and then you can also see our entire instructions for authors and you know every little bit of information that you might need , whether it's the type of manuscript that you want to submit and trying to figure out which one works best for you , or even just you know , perusing the journal
itself , like , for example , if you didn't already know , that we have video manuscripts , now called technical tutorial videos . Uh , you can find all the pertinent information on those , uh , on our journals website .
So you know from how long a video should be , how big the file should be , you know what should be included , um , and please feel free to reach out to us . We're always more than happy to help answer any questions and do what we can to support you .
So Very sage advice . So definitely read those IFAs if you're listening and want to submit a manuscript to Javmar HABR . So artificial intelligence is definitely a hot topic in the world , but especially in scholarly publishing . Do you see a role for AI in quality control ?
I can see how some AI can be beneficial in certain aspects of publishing in general .
You know , when it comes to grammar checking , especially for authors whose primary language is not English , or checking for plagiarism , I think there are definitely useful ways that AI can be utilized for assistance and supplementation without actually using it for content and generating that stuff .
So I think for certain things , like I said , like plagiarism I think there can be a very important role to make sure that we're not publishing things that have already been published and having a whole issue with copyright and things like that .
Yeah , I know we've kind of dived a little bit into it , using authenticate for our manuscripts , which is , I know , part of your role too , which we're really thankful that you took on for us . So , thank you .
We make sure that plagiarism is not present in manuscripts submitted to our journals so that we can do our best to ensure research integrity is best for you . So now we move on to the more fun part of our podcast , michelle . So if you could have a superpower .
what would it be and why ? Right , it would be a tie between flight and teleportation . Just something that would get me to travel faster would be the superpower I would choose . Just because I do want to travel and see the world .
And if I could do it in a moment's notice and just , you know , pop over to London or something , just for a weekend , or even just for the day , you know , walking around because I don't have to pay for a hotel , you know something like that , that would be the superpower I would choose .
What about yourself . That's a great choice . Honestly , at this point in time I think I would also choose either flying or teleportation , just so I could somehow manage to get myself to the AERIS tour in Europe before Taylor Swift goes back to the US . Actually , one of my friend's friends had a free ticket to go see her in Vienna in a few weeks . Oh wow .
And I was like , oh , if only I could teleport there , I totally would go . So I agree with the teleportation and thank you so much again , michelle . I really appreciate you for all that you do as our publishing editor and also for taking the time to talk about your role on this podcast .
Yeah , no problem . Thank you so much for having me and I'm glad that I can shed a little more light on the process . And you know I'm here . If any authors have any questions , I'm happy to help .
Awesome . Well , thank you so much again . I'm Sarah Wright and I want to thank each of you for joining us on this episode of the Veterinary Vertex podcast . We love sharing cutting edge veterinary research with you and we want to hear from you . Be sure to leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you listen to .