Procedure for Proposing and Editing Articles
We ask that you join us as a Gardener before serving as an editor for SoS (visit the Gardeners page to learn more) because it will be difficult for you to guide an article through the editorial process unless you have observed or participated in our community-based review and are familiar with how our publication criteria work in practice.
Send us an email (info@theseedsofscience.org) with the link to the article and we will tell you if we are interested in publishing it. We recommend doing this before you contact the author as of course we wouldn't want to get their hopes up before rejecting them.
Please reach out if you have an author/article that we might be interested in publishing even if you do not wish to serve as an editor — we will consider payment for article "scouting" as well. Conversely, please reach out if you are interested in serving as an editor but have no article to propose, we will consider you when we have a submission which might be a good fit for your expertise.
Reach out to the author and see if they would be interested in publishing their article with Seeds of Science. We recommend referring them to the Guide for Potential Authors for details about our format and review process.
If both parties agree, then the next step will be preparing the manuscript to be sent out for review. While we allow authors to write informally or use non-traditional styles/formatting (e.g. hyperlinks are allowed), we still expect articles to exhibit a level of rigor and writing quality appropriate to a scientific journal. Articles must also stand on their own in a way that more informal internet writing sometimes does not; for example, ambiguous or oblique references should be removed/modified (it should be clear what every hyperlink is redirecting to), and the article shouldn't require knowledge of the author’s previous work/thinking. Additionally, everything should be cited as it would be for any other scientific article (including images), but we aren't picky about how you do it (hyperlinks, footnotes, a standard reference section). We recommend that editors and authors work together in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or some equivalent in order to prepare the manuscript. When the manuscript is ready, please email it to us as a word document (info@theseedsofscience.org).
The article will go through the review process as described on the “How to Publish” page. The SoS management team will make a decision (accept/accept with revisions/reject) based on the comments from the gardener community. The editor is responsible for working with the author during the revision process (addressing specific critiques, improving clarity/structure as needed), deciding which gardener comments to publish and in what order, and putting the article in the SoS format (a general template is provided, but some details are left up to editorial discretion).
Editors and authors are encouraged to reach out to us with questions/concerns at any time and we will do what we can to ensure the publication process goes as smooth as possible. Seeds of Science reserves the right to reject publication if we feel that the requested revisions are not adequately addressed.
Compensation
Editors are paid $25 per article (payments made through PayPal). In addition, editors will receive an editing credit (noted in the article and on our website) and a dedicated editor page featuring a biography and links to edited papers. Note: authors are paid $25 per article as well.