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Editorials have earned a special place among many practices, tools, and policies available to editors for journal advancement. Despite the vital and diverse roles of editorials in academic journals, they have rarely been systematically analysed for common characteristics or patterns. In this study, I approached editorials as a leadership practice of journal editors. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to understand how editors use editorials to lead their journals. To render a manageable set of editorials and, at the same time, to capture the latest trends, I focused on editorials published in 2022 in top journals in the field of organizational behaviour/human resource management indexed by Scopus. The sample consisted of 120 editorials found in 103 journals managed by 21 publishers. I analysed the editorials using qualitative content analysis that was guided by two research questions: (1) How commonly do editors use editorials? (2) What objectives do editors pursue in their editorials? The analyses showed that editorials appear to be neither a regular nor a common practice. An overwhelming majority of editorials were written to validate existing knowledge. The findings raise several important issues, including an unclear contribution of editorials, perceived or factual, to academic journals and the editor's role in the journal development process. Journal editors, editorial board members, publishers, universities, and organizations associated with journals should consider revisiting their policies and practices to ensure a purposeful, meaningful, and systematic use of editorials.

Undergraduate students benefit from writing for publication and co‐authoring with faculty, who in turn find value in collaborating with students. Yet, compared to graduate students and novice researchers, undergraduates are rarely in the focus of research and practice around scholarly writing and co‐authorship. Furthermore, this limited knowledge is primarily, if not exclusively, produced by scholars in countries that dominate the international publication landscape. How faculty and undergraduates from countries in the semi‐periphery of the world of science collaborate to co‐author scholarly publications is not clear. This paper describes a process that has led to publishing articles with undergraduate students in the semi‐periphery in English language journals indexed in Web of Science (SSCI), Scopus, and the AJG guide. The process consists of two phases that differ across such dimensions as goals, length, key steps, and contributors' roles. The process demonstrates that collaboration with talented undergraduates is not different from co‐authoring with novice and experienced scholars in its final outcome, a high‐quality article, and its process of creative ideation, rigorous execution, and collective contribution. I discuss how journal editors, universities, and other researchers in the semi‐periphery could change the ways in which they approach publication collaborations with undergraduate students.

The purpose of this study was to examine communication clarity in calls for papers issued by peer reviewed journals for special issues. I wanted to explore what could hinder and help guest editors to communicate their intent to potential contributors. I searched peer reviewed journals in the field of human resource management published by five leading publishers, including Emerald, Sage, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and Elsevier. Forty‐seven journals were identified, and the sample included 33 calls for papers that I examined using content analysis. The results showed that many guest editors include a problem statement; purpose statement including explicative statements and specifications; and research questions, topics, or themes. Based on this result, I created a composite profile that describes how guest editors typically craft their calls, including the average number of sources, topics, and paragraphs. I also identified eight additional tools guest editors use to increase clarity of their calls. Additionally, my analysis indicated that guest editors vary greatly in their approaches to crafting calls for papers. I identified a number of inconsistencies, inaccuracies, omissions, and redundancies that could confuse or discourage potential contributors. Journal editors could use the results of this study to examine their editorial strategies and practices and revise and improve their guidelines and templates related to special issues and their calls. Special issue guest editors might use the study results to increase the chances of receiving quality submissions.

An informational interview, also known as the exploratory meeting or networking interview, “is a chance to pick someone's brain about a profession, business, or industry” (Decarie, 2010, p. 306). The purpose of the study was to explore whether, when modified, this assignment could benefit second-year management education students in understanding of the profession of a manager. This assignment provides students an opportunity to interact with a professional in a business setting on a variety of topics that help students understand what it is like to work in this industry, type of company, or a position. While informational interviews have been used in communication courses in management education programs, nothing is known about the use or usefulness of this assignment in other management courses. One hundred eleven students in a human resource management course were asked to complete a modified version of the informational interview assignment. Data were collected using a survey from 89 students. The results show that overall students learned more about the profession of a manager and got an insight into careers in the chosen industries and companies. Implications for teaching are provided along with the discussion of each main result.

To help graduate students with academic writing, a college of education at a large university implemented a new service, Writing Support Circles. Based on the results of the first series of this service, we changed its design. The purpose of this article is to share how changes in the design affected these adult learners’ writing self-efficacy and workshop satisfaction.

Most students come to their graduate programs with academic writing skills insufficient to excel in their studies. A lack of academic writing skills among graduate students has been a problem in a college of education at a large southeastern public research university where the project described in this article was implemented. To address this lack of academic writing skills, a new service, Writing Support Circles (WSCs), was designed and implemented for a small group of Latina students supported by a grant as a pilot program. WSCs are a series of workshops intended to create a community of learners who work together on improving their academic writing with guidance of a facilitator. The purpose of this article is to share the author’s experiences with designing and implementing WSCs with adult learners in a nonformal education setting at a university.