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Editor Profile: Professor Richard Welford

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October 01, 2018

Professor Richard Welford is the Founder of CSR Asia, a consultancy and think-tank with offices across the Asia-Pacific region known for its pioneering work around corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability. He has over 30 years’ experience working with the business sector, United Nations, NGOs and other international agencies in the field of CSR with an emphasis on social justice, human rights, governance issues, community development and environmental management.

Richard is currently an adjunct Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is the author of 15 books and co-owner, along with Professor Andy Gouldson (Leeds, UK), of European Research Press Ltd. (ERP), which co-owns with Wiley five internationally recognized academic journals, developing and promoting research around business and sustainable development. Richard is also Editor of four of those journals: Business Strategy & Development, Business Strategy and the Environment, Corporate Social Responsibility & Environmental Management and Sustainable Development. 


 

You have worked with Wiley for quite some years now. Can you offer a brief history of your involvement with the company, and how that came about?
I started the journals while still a young and ambitious academic. I started them with two other people: Andy Gouldson, who is still involved now as co-owner of ERP and the Editor of Environmental Policy & Governance, and Jonathan Wilson, who had a background in publishing. We launched the journals and ran conferences to support them but, to be honest, while they were not losing money they were certainly not making much money. This was in the days before e-mail when we were still sending out stamped envelopes to distribute Calls for Papers! I remember sitting in my lounge and sticking stamps on envelopes. We realized after four or five years that we were pretty good at editorial work, but we weren’t able to take care of the publishing—proofreading, typesetting, and, in those days, binding and distributing print copies. We met a Wiley colleague at a conference who introduced the subject of a partnership—she simply asked how we might work together and things moved very quickly from there. We ended up with a co-ownership agreement which worked well for us. Wiley took on everything that we were no good at, enabling us to focus on our strength: getting papers. In the early days we ran conferences to feed papers into the journals and it really helped with copy flow. We don’t need to do that anymore, but when you’re launching a new journal you have to find ways in which you can get the copy flowing through. 
 
What are the major changes you have witnessed in the publishing landscape during your years acting as an Editor?
The biggest change over the past 10-15 years is that so many libraries have moved to licenses and away from individual subscriptions. For us, that has been quite helpful because we started out in minority subject areas: environmental issues, sustainability, corporate social responsibility—so licenses helped us a lot because it meant that libraries that might have overlooked our journals gained access to them. These are no longer minority subject areas—Business Strategy & the Environment is now ranked in the top 15 journals in both the mainstream Business and Management JCR categories—but it certainly was a help in the early days. People are not going to libraries now to read our journals’ content in print—they access journals sitting at their desks. It’s hard to believe that people used to make a trip to the library to scan the contents of a print copy. 
 
The second most notable change is the speed with which we now work: the production side of things moves much more quickly now.
 
What inspired you, as a young academic, to launch your own journals?
There were three reasons: first, I wanted to make some money—I’ve always been an entrepreneur! Second, this was a shortcut to career advancement. I was 28 when I launched Business Strategy & the Environment—it seems precocious now to have launched a journal at that age! The third reason is that it was fun. I was friends with my partners in this venture before we were colleagues; we thought it would be fun to launch a publishing business. 
 
What excited you then about being a journal editor? Does it still excite you now, or are your motivations different?
Even twenty years on, it’s nice to see a journal issue come together; it’s satisfying to see that contents page. I still feel a sense of satisfaction when I go to the journal homepage and think we’re making a contribution and see the finished product come to life. This year, it was great to see the first issue of our newest journal, Business Strategy & Development, published. It has been a struggle for copy, as always with a new journal, but I am confident that by the end of the first year we will have produced four good-quality issues.
 
When we started these journals, nobody was talking about business in the context of the environment, or corporate social responsibility. There were no dedicated journals or large-scale academic studies in the subject area, but it was rapidly growing. There was a feeling that we could put this on the business agenda, and I believe we did; most business schools now offer courses in social responsibility or sustainability and the environment. Our journals contributed to that. 
 
With the benefit of several decades’ experience, if you had only one piece of advice to give to a new, incoming journal editor, what would it be?
If you don’t enjoy it, you shouldn’t do it. If it becomes a chore, you should stop doing it—I’ve seen Editors burn themselves out. That leads to a second piece of advice: make sure you can delegate. You have to trust your Editorial Board because you can’t read every submitted article thoroughly from first to last page. You should look at every paper—I always do an initial review—but then you have to trust your Editorial Board and reviewers, and not try to control their decisions. You must also be prepared to stand by them—very occasionally, you have to defend reviewers’ decisions to unsatisfied authors. 

What are you most proud of in your time as editor of the ERP Journals?
We made a difference: that’s what I’m really proud of. I genuinely think we put business strategy and the environment, and corporate social responsibility, on the map. We’ve given the subject area credibility. Our conferences in the early days created an academic community that has grown and become much more sophisticated, but it still exists around the journals. We have many authors who write more than once for us, so there’s still a great degree of loyalty. Now it’s more of an online community, but in the old days we came together on a regular basis. The field would have progressed anyway without the journals—we would still have been talking about these subject areas—but the journals have made a major contribution. They now have high impact factors, and that is the result of a lot of hard work. The fact that they have high IFs is good for the credibility of the subject areas—it makes me really happy that 25 years ago, people thought Business Strategy & the Environment was a niche journal that wasn’t terribly important, but now it is part of the mainstream as a result of its high rankings in generalist categories like Business and Management.
 
What is the main challenge you have faced during your time as Editor?
In the early days, getting copy was always a challenge—now we have the opposite problem, and we are desk rejecting more articles without entering them into the peer review process. Things are changing now with the elimination of page budgets—the positive outcome is that we can publish more good material. The challenge is finding the time to handle all of those papers, which has at least doubled over the past three to five years. That is a challenge shared by everyone in the editorial team for the journals.
 
How would you describe your relationship with your publisher? What works well? What improvements or changes would you like to see? 
It’s a relationship where there was almost never any need for a contract. Both sides benefit, so it’s a win-win on both sides. We have a very trusting relationship and have been lucky to work with some really good Wiley colleagues over the years. The culture at Wiley has always been very trusting—there has never been a conflict, or even a disagreement, between us. Wiley trusts us to get on with the job; we trust them to fulfil their side of the agreement. It has always worked. I don’t know if that’s part of the culture at Wiley or if we have been fortunate. My only frustration is the universal problem of finding reviewers and securing reviews in a timely way! That’s typical for all Editors though.
 
How important is service to authors in running a successful journal?
It has changed a lot—we’re not as connected with authors as we were in the past. In the early days we knew our authors very well, because they often came to the events we ran to generate copy. I feel that the connection has disappeared a little, but perhaps that’s inevitable in an online environment. The fact that the whole process, from submission onwards, is online means you risk losing something in that relationship. Our Managing Editor has a very personal approach, though—he still writes personal messages to many authors to avoid ‘over-automation’, and I like that we have been able to retain that personal touch. Also, the size of the journals and the number of articles we receive means you can’t have that same relationship, which I think is a pity. We still have Editorial Board members who were on the Board 20 years ago and they still contribute articles to the journal, so those historical linkages have been important to us. 
 
What inspires you to carry on?
I have no intention of giving this up any time soon because I enjoy it so much. The day that stops is the day I should hand over to someone else. I still believe we’re making a difference; I still go to the journal homepages and browse the latest issues and think to myself, yes, that really looks good. We’re achieving something by putting out there a product that is worthwhile.

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