The Editorial Office of the Future: What Will It Take to Stay Credible, Resilient, and Trusted by 2030?

Last Friday, Integra hosted a highly engaging webinar, The Editorial Office of the Future, bringing together editorial leaders from across scholarly publishing to examine how editorial offices must evolve in response to mounting operational, integrity, and stakeholder pressures. The session saw fantastic global participation, with strong audience engagement throughout the discussion and live polls that reflected the urgency of the challenges facing editorial teams today.

Moderated by Ashutosh Ghildiyal, the conversation brought together three deeply experienced voices from across society publishing and editorial operations:

• Sarah McCormack, Director of Publications, American Society for Nutrition
• Josephine E. Sciortino, Editorial Director, Canadian Science Publishing
• Meghan McDevitt, Senior Partner, A&M Editorial Solutions

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Editorial Offices at the Center of Scholarly Publishing

The webinar opened by grounding the discussion in a shared reality: editorial offices sit at the very heart of scholarly publishing. They are entrusted with safeguarding research quality and relevance, coordinating peer review, managing timelines, and ensuring a positive experience for authors and reviewers. These responsibilities are not merely operational; they are business-critical.

Yet the environment in which editorial offices operate has changed dramatically. Sustained growth in submissions, the rise of paper mills and coordinated misconduct, increasing use and misuse of AI, reviewer fatigue, and growing demands for speed and transparency have all added layers of complexity. Many of these pressures are systemic and extend beyond the direct control of editorial teams, yet editorial offices remain accountable for outcomes.

Against this backdrop, the webinar explored what it will take for editorial offices to remain credible, efficient, and resilient as the industry looks toward 2030.

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Theme 1: Integrity and Trust as Core Editorial Infrastructure

The first theme focused on integrity and trust, reframing them not as episodic checks but as embedded editorial infrastructure.

From a publisher oversight perspective, Sarah McCormack emphasized that as workflows scale and editorial operations become more distributed or outsourced, certain integrity-related decisions must remain firmly within publisher control. She noted that long-standing assumptions of trust in editorial workflows have shifted significantly, increasing the need for greater vigilance, clearer accountability, and stronger governance models.

Josephine Sciortino highlighted the importance of consistency without rigidity. Working across diverse scholarly communities requires alignment around shared values and standards, while still allowing editors to exercise judgment that reflects disciplinary norms. Throughout the discussion, the role of clear communication and shared frameworks emerged as critical enablers for editorial teams navigating increasingly complex integrity decisions.

Meghan McDevitt brought an operational lens to the conversation, noting that integrity checks often break down not due to lack of intent, but because of gaps in workflows, training, and handoffs. Making integrity routine rather than reactive, she argued, requires regular process audits, clear role definitions, and sustained investment in training and change management.

An audience poll reinforced the urgency of these issues, with respondents highlighting AI-assisted manuscripts, paper mills, and under-resourced integrity workflows as major risks for the next five years.

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Theme 2: Peer Review Quality, Sustainability, and Editorial Judgment

The conversation then shifted to peer review, a cornerstone of scholarly trust that is increasingly under strain.

Panelists discussed how heavier editorial workloads, declining reviewer availability, and evolving technologies are forcing a rethink of what “good editorial judgment” looks like in practice. Josephine Sciortino spoke about preparing editors to operate in hybrid environments where AI can support, but not replace, human judgment—underscoring once again the importance of training and confidence-building for editorial decision-makers.

Sarah McCormack emphasized the role of data and platforms in monitoring reviewer fatigue, review quality, and load distribution, particularly when peer review operations involve external editorial teams. Visibility and communication, she noted, are essential for sustaining quality at scale.

Meghan McDevitt cautioned that system changes often unintentionally harm reviewer experience when training, communication, and workflow design are treated as afterthoughts. Thoughtful change management and reviewer-centric design emerged as recurring themes across the discussion.

Audience polling revealed that reviewer fatigue and difficulty finding willing reviewers remain the most significant constraints on maintaining high-quality peer review.

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Theme 3: Author Experience, Transparency, and Editorial Design

The third theme focused on the author experience and the growing expectation for transparency.

Authors today expect clarity, communication, and predictability, yet delivering a consistent experience across journals and workflows remains challenging. Sarah McCormack discussed how publishers must define what transparency reasonably looks like by 2030 and where standardization adds value without undermining editorial independence.

Meghan McDevitt pointed to persistent author-facing friction points that survive even the most sophisticated technology implementations, often because underlying process, training, or communication gaps remain unaddressed.

Josephine Sciortino emphasized that transparency must be carefully defined in partnership with editors and societies so that it builds trust without eroding editorial authority or community norms. Across this theme, communication and judgment once again surfaced as critical human capabilities that technology alone cannot solve.

Poll responses showed that clearer communication and more consistent editorial decisions are key drivers of author trust.

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Looking Ahead: The Editorial Office of 2030

In the final reflections, panelists were asked to look beyond immediate challenges and toward the future state of editorial operations. A clear consensus emerged: the most resilient editorial offices will be those that move from being reactive to anticipatory, from managing volume to orchestrating complexity, and from relying on individual vigilance to building systems that support consistent judgment, trust, and sustainability.

The closing audience poll reinforced this direction, with participants prioritizing communication, training, and human judgment as defining capabilities of high-performing editorial offices in the decade ahead.

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Closing Thoughts

The session concluded with strong audience engagement during the Q&A, reflecting how deeply these topics resonate across the scholarly publishing community.

On behalf of Integra, we would like to thank our panelists and everyone who joined us for contributing to such a thoughtful and forward-looking discussion. As last Friday’s conversation made clear, the future of editorial offices will be shaped not by tools alone, but by how intentionally people, processes, governance, and technology are designed to work together.

We look forward to continuing this dialogue with the community as we collectively shape the editorial office of the future.

Those who registered for the webinar will receive access to the recording once it becomes available. If you were unable to attend or did not register, you can follow this link to register and download. Should you have any questions or would like to continue the conversation, please feel free to reach out to us at connect@integra.co.in.