[Cross-posted from the Alignment Journal's blog]

The Alignment Journal is beginning to invite the authors of select papers to submit their work for review. If you are interested in participating as an action editor or a reviewer, make an account on our website; if you have a manuscript that you think would be a good fit for the Journal at this stage, email contact@alignmentjournal.org to request an invitation to submit. Manuscripts under review will become visible on our homepage, and you will be able to nominate yourself as a reviewer of a specific paper that interests you. We plan to open up submissions to everyone sometime in October.

Here we announce the Journal's inaugural senior editorial board, advisory board, staff, organizational structure, and initial scope. We welcome questions and proposed changes to help us refine the scope in the future.

Personnel

The Journal is run by its senior editorial board, which makes the Journal's scholarly decisions, and two managing editors, who run operations and strategy. The advisory board offers high-level guidance without editorial responsibilities. A software lead and a head of operations support the team.

The senior editorial board (8 editors at launch, covering a range of alignment expertise) has authority over all of the Journal's scholarly decisions and over approving and removing senior editors. The board focuses its attention on policy, standards, borderline cases, and appeals as it builds trust in the review process by fostering a strong culture of rigorous and impartial review. Senior editors may choose to handle the manuscripts themselves, but usually recruit an action editor (analogous to an area chair at a conference) who will be responsible for leading the review process for that submission, while the senior editors supervises. The full board of senior editors handle appeals and other contentious issues.

The Journal startup effort is being spearheaded by managing editors Jess Riedel and Dan MacKinlay, who have initial authority over operational and strategic decisions, preparing policy proposals for the senior editorial board but deferring to the senior editors on scholarly decisions. Editorial policy (such as refining the Journal scope, making acceptance decisions, and accepting new editors) will be decided by consensus of the full senior editorial board until a formal governance system is adopted. As the...

Eric Van Grinsven

Eric Van Grinsven