Co-editor has disappeared

[CustardCreamPie]

I'm co-editing a special issue of a journal with a colleague at a different university. I would say that I've been the driving force since the start but my co-editor was very involved in the early stages of developing the remit and outline, drafting the CfP, being in meetings with the journal editors.

I felt it was a 60/40 effort which I was pretty happy with.

But once the abstracts started rolling in, my co-editor has disappeared. She doesn't reply to any emails from me, from authors, or from the journal. Her auto-reply says that she's on UCU strike which tells me that she's not on sick leave or anything like that.

I copy her into everything which goes back and forth to keep her in the loop but also to demonstrate that I'm handling everything alone. And now that manuscripts are being submitted, there is quite a lot to handle.

I'm normally a pretty straight-to-the-point kind of person at work, and I don't tolerate this kind of bullshit. But we usually work pretty well together and I don't want to endanger our collaborations by calling her out too harshly.

I have tried emailing directly to ask if everything's okay, and to say that I could do with some help with the special issue. No reply.

So, how do I deal with this situation? I don't really see I have much choice other than handling it alone and learning a lesson

Presumably if she's on strike, she's not doing any academic work at all. A bit shitty for you. Personally, I would consider co-editing to be separate to work for my direct employer. However, she may not see it that way given that work of that nature is considered to be part of the job for an academic.

@OchonAgusOchonOh

Presumably if she's on strike, she's not doing any academic work at all. A bit shitty for you. Personally, I would consider co-editing to be separate to work for my direct employer. However, she may not see it that way given that work of that nature is considered to be part of the job for an academic.

Thanks for your reply. I don't think I was very clear what I meant about her striking, sorry.

We've been working together on the special issue for many months. But it's only in the last couple of months that she's gone completely quiet. At first I'd assumed that she may have gone on sick leave or something similar which is why she'd not received, or replied to my emails.

But her auto-reply says she's been on UCU strike which tells me that she's not on sick/other leave and that she's been checking her emails. I absolutely wouldn't expect her to do any work while she's on strike. Of course not. But she's been ignoring emails for a couple of months, way before the current round of strikes.

If she does see the co-editing as extraneous to her contracted work, that's completely fine. I understand that. But I would've appreciated a courtesy email to that effect. So that at least I know I'm dealing with the whole of the special issue alone.

I agree, it's very rude of her not to have kept you up to date. It would be a bit nuclear to remove her as co-editor, particularly as she did some work, but you could email her asking does she want to to continue in the role.

Yep, I think I need to. I did send her a polite nudge email a few weeks ago but got nothing back.

I might try again. I really struggle with diplomatic emails - I'm a little bit too abrupt/to-the-point

I think it's ok to email her with exactly what you have said in your second post: fine if she can't/ won't do this but could she do you the courtesy of letting you know.

Can you not just ring her and find out what's going on?

Yes I would ring. Emails are too easy to avoid

Call her. Emails are easily ignored.

agree with calling.
She might not be on sick leave but could be totally burnt out. When the workload gets me, I find some things incredibly hard to do and tend to blank them for the sake of being able to keep functioning.

Jeez, don't email her again, pick up the phone! She's already demonstrated that she isn't going to answer an email so ring her. And if she doesn't answer or get back to you, ring her tomorrow.

I don't have her phone number

@Marasme That's partly what's grinding my gears - while she ignores the whole thing because of her burn-out, the whole thing still trundles on, someone has to do the work, fuck my burn-out obviously.

worried it is me....! I am so disorganised it is the kind of thing I'd do - just get overwhelmed and go into ignore mode! Also we have a rapacious spam filter at our uni. Found all sorts in there I should have dealt with, if I remember to look.

Could you ask the journal general editor to step in?

@CustardCreamPie

I don't have her phone number

@Marasme That's partly what's grinding my gears - while she ignores the whole thing because of her burn-out, the whole thing still trundles on, someone has to do the work, fuck my burn-out obviously.

You should be able to get her office number from switch at her university. That's assuming she is in the office and no longer on strike - I'm not in the UK so don't know what the strike status is there at the moment.

If she's not there, ask to speak to admin in her department and ask them to send an urgent message for her to contact you.

Switchboard, nice one, excellent idea

Off to do that now! Thanks everyone.