What is different about NCMR?  Our Mentoring Initiative

NCMR provides mentoring for contributors upon request.  As a new initiative for NCMR, we are implementing a mentoring program – one way of differentiating the journal and simultaneously serving our authors in ways that are consistent with the culture of the International Association for Conflict Management (IACM). Top scholars on our editorial board have agreed to serve as mentors. 

When you initially submit a manuscript, if you would like to be assigned a mentor, you just need to indicate your desire for a mentor in your email to the editor.  Your paper should be ready for the review process - but maybe you would like just a bit more input before going into review.

Once you have requested a mentor, they will be assigned to you by an editor.  Your mentor becomes something of a “pre” reviewer, providing the level of commentary and suggestion that they are comfortable with before the manuscript actually goes into blind review (mentors would not be blind).

The mentoring program will be highly developmental.  The extent of the mentor’s involvement should be negotiated between the author and mentor. In the early stages, the mentor’s role will be to help ensure that the manuscript is ready for prime time (cutting down on desk rejects and/or papers that just don’t make it through the process because they really were not ready to submit in the first place, but perhaps could have made it if they had made, for example, more focused arguments).

The mentor also can help – through their comments – to make the paper stronger and catch those red flags that could have been dealt with before a first review. The mentor will suggest, when appropriate, a language/writing consultant. In some cases, the mentor might suggest that the paper is better placed elsewhere – that its content really is not appropriate for our journal.

Eventually, the manuscript would be submitted for review through the normal channels. When reviews come back on a manuscript, if the author requests it and the mentor agrees, the mentor could again step in and provide the author with suggestions for dealing with the reviewers’ concerns, and perhaps help the author determine what can and cannot be successfully addressed.

Other key features of the program:

• Using the mentoring program is not a “back door” to an acceptance for the author
• Mentoring is not a back door to a co-authorship for the mentor
• It is expected that mentors will be acknowledged on the paper when published
• It is expected that papers submitted for the mentoring process will be polished and ready for submission - the intent of omentoring is not to help you write your paper, but rather to help you improve it
• A mentor is not an advocate – they do not communicate with the editor in terms of the strengths/weaknesses of the paper
• If authors use our mentoring and then submit elsewhere (unless recommended by the mentor) the author would not be able to request a mentor again and would receive an admonishing letter from the editor
• If the demand for mentors becomes too high, then limits will be put on the program (e.g. only junior faculty, only PhD students, only one manuscript through the system, etc.)
• Mentored papers will be assigned by the editor to one of the associate editors who will not know that the paper was mentored, ensuring that the fact that a paper has been mentored will not be considered in the review/decision process
• Subject to the basic principles of the mentoring program (e.g. pre-review & commentary and help with reviewer concerns) the mentor is free to set up his/her own limits with the author(s)
• For the editorial board members, a mentored paper counts as part of the reviewing obligation ot the journal