I ran a one-day conference on the later music of Ligeti in March of this year at London University, and had arranged for the papers to be published by Contemporary Music Review (this has just come out, click Ligeti's Later Music). As I hadn't edited a journal before I was both excited and rather nervous. I asked a friend of mine with some experience of book editing for advice, and what he said was very helpful - he said that you need to be quite firm with contributors and if you feel something is not quite quite right, then you must say something sooner rather than later. It is perhaps too easy to try to be too relaxed and laissez-faire. I also decided to ask one of the presenters to be a co-editor to lessen the load - it was a good idea as you have someone to look over your own contribution.
The main issue was that we had been given relatively a tight amount of space for each article, and quite understandably contributors wanted to provide full examples which often went beyond this allocated space (the journal was very understanding and allowed more space to accommodate this). Another issue was concerning footnotes and references, and what might be the optimal length for these. I had successful (if slightly protracted) discussions about reducing these in one case where the footnotes gradually expanded to become nearly as long as the article. This is perhaps more a matter of style, which I think is the editor's responsibility. Another issue was getting colleagues to get the final copy in on time (I suspect that this is common)- so it is important to set a deadline well before the final deadline given by the journal. We also had a delay caused by the copyright fees charged by the composer's publisher which seemed rather large given likely sales, and beyond the relatively modest budget. It seemed a little curious that a publisher would want to potentially jeopardise the publication of an academic journal covering one of their composers. This was thankfully resolved by the publisher of the journal and it was a relief (and a joy!) to finally see a hard copy of the issue. I have learned one thing through the process, and that is that editing a journal issue takes a lot more time, effort, and emotional energy than you would think.
The main issue was that we had been given relatively a tight amount of space for each article, and quite understandably contributors wanted to provide full examples which often went beyond this allocated space (the journal was very understanding and allowed more space to accommodate this). Another issue was concerning footnotes and references, and what might be the optimal length for these. I had successful (if slightly protracted) discussions about reducing these in one case where the footnotes gradually expanded to become nearly as long as the article. This is perhaps more a matter of style, which I think is the editor's responsibility. Another issue was getting colleagues to get the final copy in on time (I suspect that this is common)- so it is important to set a deadline well before the final deadline given by the journal. We also had a delay caused by the copyright fees charged by the composer's publisher which seemed rather large given likely sales, and beyond the relatively modest budget. It seemed a little curious that a publisher would want to potentially jeopardise the publication of an academic journal covering one of their composers. This was thankfully resolved by the publisher of the journal and it was a relief (and a joy!) to finally see a hard copy of the issue. I have learned one thing through the process, and that is that editing a journal issue takes a lot more time, effort, and emotional energy than you would think.
