What criteria to use when deciding whether to accept an editorial role or not?

Question

For the question "Am I available as an editor for scholarly venues?", I currently have the following answer:

• Yes, if
  • I have sufficient expertise.
  • All publications in the venue are openly licensed.
  • The publishing fees are reasonable or absent.
  • The journal and/ or its publisher have signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment.
  • I can find the time.
  • I get reasonable answers to any additional questions I may have, e.g.
    • integration with Wikimedia projects
    • integration with CiTO
    • mapping of content to societal challenges
    • perks for editors

I would like to learn about criteria other people are using in such situations, and maybe we can think about some standards in this space.

Answer 1

Here are a few considerations.

* Think about the kinds of journals you recommend to others and prefer for your own work. Does this journal meet your criteria? For example, if you want journals to be open access, under CC-BY licenses, with low APCs or no APCs, does the journal check all those boxes? Make your own list, but live up to it.

* Are you ready to do the work? In my experience, it's not heavy, but it's not zero. Sometimes it's predictable, like participating in peer review. Sometimes it's unexpected and delicate, like deciding whether to retract a published piece.

* If you're well-known, the journal might say outright that you won't have to do any work. Basically, it wants to use your name on the masthead for advertising. Don't play that game. The public display of your name may be good for you and the journal. But it deceives authors and readers who will think you play a larger role in the journal's operations and quality than you actually play.

* If the journal is new and unknown to you, read a handful of the articles. Would you be proud or embarrassed to be associated with it? Scam journals often invite scholars to join their editorial boards, essentially at random. Through a mix of journal flattery and scholar desperation, they often succeed. If the journal is low in quality or honesty, it could harm your reputation. On the other hand, many new journals are unknown simply because they're new. They're founded by good people and you could help them succeed. Don't hold their relative newness and low profile against them.