Editors at even highly ranked scientific journals are now often young staff rather than experienced scientists for several structural reasons.
The business model of modern scientific publishing has changed. High-impact journals have become commercial enterprises rather than academic institutions. Their goals are efficiency, market reach, and brand control. Experienced scientists are expensive and often unwilling to take full-time editorial jobs that pay less than senior academic roles. Hiring younger PhDs, often fresh from postdocs, keeps costs low and allows publishers to maintain centralized editorial teams.
Second, professional editors are easier to train and manage. Publishers prefer editors who can follow company policy and editorial strategy. Senior scientists would bring strong opinions and disciplinary biases and may resist marketing or strategic directives. Younger editors are more adaptable, less attached to specific disciplines, and focused on efficient handling of manuscripts and reviewers.
The prestige gap between academia and editorial work has widened. Decades ago, senior scientists sometimes served as editors between research posts. Today, the reputation and influence of active research far outweigh editorial work, which is now more about managing flow and impact metrics than shaping science. Most experienced scientists therefore stay in academia, while early-career researchers see editing as an alternative career path.
Fourth, publishing houses are driven by profit and high throughput. Companies like Elsevier, Springer Nature, or Wiley operate with constant publication pressure. They depend on rapid editorial decisions to sustain citation rates and subscription value. Young editors working within standardized procedures are faster and cheaper to employ.
Finally, this shift has consequences. It leads to a focus on novelty and newsworthiness over technical soundness, and to reduced capacity for deep scientific evaluation. Editors rely heavily on external reviewers and internal performance indicators such as citation forecasts or altmetrics. The result is a system driven by marketing and efficiency rather than scientific judgment.
In short, modern journal editing has become a professionalized and industrialized process. It is now a job rather than a calling, and youthful, efficient gatekeepers have replaced experienced, skeptical scientists.
(c) chatGPT 5
