Veterinary Vertex
Veterinary Vertex is a weekly podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the clinical and research discoveries published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) and the American Journal of Veterinary Research (AJVR). Tune in to learn about cutting-edge veterinary research and gain in-depth insights you won’t find anywhere else. Come away with knowledge you can put to use in your own practice – along with a healthy dose of inspiration to remind you what you love about veterinary medicine.
Veterinary Vertex
Minisode: Meet Publishing Editor Michelle Krieger
Ever wondered what it takes to produce top-tier veterinary journals? Prepare to uncover the intricate world of scholarly publishing with Michelle Krieger, the exceptional Publishing Editor for JAVMA and AJVR, on this episode of Veterinary Vertex. Michelle, who transitioned from a copy editor to her current role in 2022, walks us through her role in streamlining the publication process and offering a valuable service to authors. Michelle offers an insider's look at the critical quality control processes manuscripts undergo before peer review, ensuring they adhere to the instructions for authors and minimizing revision cycles.
Discover the unique challenges and rewards of Michelle's role and gain valuable insights into the behind-the-scenes efforts that contribute to the creation of high-quality veterinary research. If you're curious about what it takes to maintain excellence in scholarly publishing, this episode is a treasure trove of knowledge and inspiration.
INTERESTED IN SUBMITTING YOUR MANUSCRIPT TO JAVMA ® OR AJVR ® ?
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Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 3:Hi, sarah, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2:Michelle, can you please share with our listeners your professional background?
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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?
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no problem.
Speaker 2: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?
Speaker 3:a copy editor prepare you to be a publishing editor.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we definitely rely on you too, especially when we're talking about changes we want to make to our IFH.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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?
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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?
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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?
Speaker 3:So the first thing I'll say is please, please, please, read our IFAs on our website.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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?
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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.
