European Heart Journal—Case Report Educational Training Programme

European Heart Journal—Case Report (EHJ-CR) has expanded significantly since its founding in 2017. The central philosophy of EHJ-CR has, from the start, been to act as an educational environment for the cardiology community.1 This educational focus takes on a number of faces within the journal; however, a major focus has been in training young cardiologist and trainees in the fundamental of peer review and scientific editing. This focus must be balanced against the need to provide an excellent editing and reviewing experience for our authors. Many journals have an intentionally low turnover of their editorial team. However, in this regard, EHJ-CR is different. Given the focus on training targeting young cardiologist, the journal aims for regular turnover of its Junior Reviewer and Associate Editor teams. Individuals are appointed for 2- to 3-year periods with the aim of transitioning them into new senior roles, often within the journal, at the end of this time. EHJ-CR runs an annual recruitment process for new Associate Editors and Junior Reviewers which has grown popularity amongst our young cardiologist for opportunities of expanding their academic experience. This intentional turnover in editorial team members allows the journal to train a greater number of young cardiologists. EHJ-CR regularly has new team members who need training in their new roles. As we recruit young and relatively inexperienced junior cardiologists, they work alongside senior members of the team to ensure we deliver an excellent service for our authors. Each year following recruitment of new Associate Editors and reviewers, a period of initial training must be completed before they are provided articles to review and edit. EHJ-CR has developed a novel training system to support the development of our editors and reviewers. This structured programme consists of several stages. The first step is for new team members to review bespoke video tutorials on ‘How to Review Articles’ and ‘How to be a Great Associate Editor’. These provide background information for our Junior Reviewer and Associate Editor team members, respectively. They focus on the basics of peer review and editing including the nuances of the journal’s editorial systems. However, they also centrally highlight the importance of ensuring the authors obtain useful information from the submission of their manuscript regardless of whether it is eventually accepted or rejected. Following this, new associate editors and junior reviewers are asked to undertake the assessment of a number of pilot articles. Associate Editors are required to assess pilot cases from an editor’s perspective with reflection on comments provided from two reviewers. The training involves provision of feedback to the Junior Reviewer of their evaluation of the case and how they may improve future reviews. The Associate Editors are also required to make recommendations to the Editor-in-chief on the case assigned and comments to the authors to explain the reasoning for this choice. In a mirrored system, new Junior Reviewers are provided with a number of cases on which they are asked to undertake structured peer reviews. Following completion of these pilot cases, constructive feedback is provided by EHJ-CR’s Training and Education Lead. This year, we expanded the training programme for our Associate Editors with live online learning sessions based around different sub-specialities within cardiology. These sessions focused on evaluating reviewers’ comments on specific case reports and providing live run-throughs of the journal’s article management system. This highly successful enterprise ensured that our new editorial team members were able to hit the ground running. EHJ-CR trainee recruitment and training programme. EHJ-CR trainee recruitment and training programme. The initial training programme is an important initial phase in ensuring editorial and reviewer quality. Nevertheless, editing and reviewing manuscripts is a skill that requires practice and experience to cultivate. As such, continued training and feedback must be provided. To achieve this EHJ-CR pairs each Junior Reviewer with an Associate Editor. The Junior Reviewer is asked to review each article handled by the Associate Editor. The Associate Editor subsequently provides feedback to the reviewer highlighting areas of good practice and where improvements can be made. To ensure that Associate Editors receive ongoing feedback, the journal operates a system where each Deputy Editor supervises a small group of Associate Editors. All articles assigned to an Associate Editor come from their supervising Deputy Editor who provides feedback on their performance. The aim is for the Deputy Editor-Associate Editor teams to meet regularly to discuss issues and ensure a consistent editorial policy. This year, we have created a platform for regular monthly meeting between our Deputy Editors with the Editor-in-Chief and Executive Editor to resolve any concerns, discuss specific articles and on the overall update within the journal. This provides a supportive infrastructure for our Deputy Editors. Furthermore, our Deputy Editors also meet with our Deputy Editor for training to feedback on progress of our Associate Editors and Reviewers to ensure we have continuum in the process of training and education. The beauty of our training programme is the provision and availability of specific members within the journal hierarchy from our Editor in Chief, assistant editor, to our deputy and Associate Editors to ensure an open door policy and to provide a path to success for our team and a positive experience for our authors. The editorial board of the journal has a number of internal metrics of success. For our editor and reviewer training programmes, success is largely established by the quality of the reviews and editorial comments our authors receive. However, we also measure success through those team members who move to new positions at the completion of their current programme. EHJ-CR has been very fortunate since the inception of the training programme to be able to offer several members of our reviewer and editing teams’ new position within the journal. Our entire team of 16 deputy editors come from our Associate Editor alumni. In addition, 10 Junior Reviewers have been appointed as Associate Editors. This has developed into a policy of internal promotion which is cherished by the editorial board of EHJ-CR. The educational team are looking forward to the continued development of our training program with some exciting future plans for the team in progression of their training. We intend our training programme to remain a central pillar of the journals ethos and will be the steppingstone for future editors of the ESC sister journals. Conflict of interest: none declared.