Problematic With Your Technical Journal? Look No Farther For Your Editor In Chief Who Is A One-Man Band! Frank A Hilario, WFH

These are digital times; the Internet came to the Philippines in 1991 – yet 31 years later, even in the state-financed University of the Philippines System (UP), there are very few technical journals – and UP hardly makes those publications come out on time! UP is snubbing desktop publishing (DTP)!

I am an alumnus of UP Los Baños, BSA Ag Edu (1965); Civil Service Professional (1964); self-taught digital writer, editor, formatter, layout artist, desktop publisher (DTP) – the DTP copy saved as portable document format (pdf) being the final file before commercial printing. I’m your one-man-digital band in manuscripts & publications.

I know of a government agency – nameless here – that used to publish a technical journal but has stopped for years and now wants to publish again. They have my email; if they want me to restart that journal, they have to “show me the money” – I mean, they should convince me that their office has allotted a budget for the regular publication of their journal, and that includes adequate compensation for the Editor In Chief who is a one-man band – me. Like UP, they have to officially appreciate DTP.

My story goes back 46 years ago: Founder & Editor In Chief of the technical journal of the Forest Research Institute (FORI) – Sylvatrop (Forest Research Journal), 1976-1980. Today, Sylvatrop is published by the mother agency Department of Environment & Natural Resources (DENR) annually. In my typewriter time, FORI came out with Sylvatrop quarterly. DENR, where’s your Talent Digital?

Digital: From 2001-2008, I was the Editor In Chief of the Philippine Journal of Crop Science (PJCS) published by the Crop Science Society of the Philippines based at UP Los Baños within the Los Baños Science Community. In fact, I was hired 2003, but the PJCS was 3 years late in its issues, back to 2001, even as it came out only 3 times a year. No problem – as a one-man digital band: Editor In Chief plus Secretary plus layout artist plus DTP person, I made the PJCS up-to-date in 3 years, meaning I doubled the output to 6 times a year, or 18 issues in 3 years – and the quality of editing passed the strict requirements of the ISI (Web of Science).

Before I was hired as Editor In Chief of the PJCS, Prof OK Bautista of the Postharvest Horticulture Training & Research Center, who was concurrently Editor In Chief of the Philippine Agricultural Scientist (PAS), took me as an Assistant Editor of PAS. Each PAS manuscript had to be edited by so many editors – and yet, after they were all finished, I still could find several grammatical errors!

That PAS experience told me that technical people really have to rely on academic people for the editing of their papers. The technical people can depend on other technical people for technical review – but not editing for grammar and composition.

Anyone can become a technical author, after conducting proper research, but good editors for good English are hard to find!@517

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