“Academic editor” gets used loosely, and that looseness causes real confusion for authors navigating a submission for the first time. It can mean a journal’s editor-in-chief, one of several associate or handling editors on a journal’s masthead, or a person or company an author hires to polish English-language prose before submission. These are not the same role, do not carry the same obligations, and do not sit in the same place in the publication process. This page covers the first sense — the editorial-decision role at a journal — and draws the boundary against the other two clearly, because mixing them up leads authors to misdirect correspondence, misunderstand who actually rejected their manuscript, or misjudge what a paid editing service can and cannot do for them.
What an academic editor is
An academic editor, in the journal sense, is a person responsible for making or coordinating the accept/reject decision on manuscripts submitted to a scholarly journal. The role exists at several levels, and most journals of any size divide it across more than one person:
- Editor-in-chief (or just “editor”). Holds overall responsibility for the journal’s editorial policy, scope, and final decisions, and is typically the person named as accountable to a journal’s owning society or publisher.
- Associate editor / section editor. Handles a subset of submissions — often defined by subject area, methodology, or article type — with delegated authority to make decisions within that scope, usually still accountable to the editor-in-chief.
- Handling editor. The specific individual (an editor-in-chief, associate editor, or sometimes a member of the editorial board) assigned to shepherd one particular manuscript through review: selecting reviewers, weighing their reports, and issuing the decision letter. “Handling editor” is a per-manuscript designation more than a separate title — a journal’s masthead lists editors-in-chief and associate editors; the handling editor for a given paper is whichever of them (or which board member) that manuscript was assigned to.
- Editorial board member. Often asked to review manuscripts or, on some journals, to serve as handling editor for submissions in their expertise, without holding one of the titled editor positions above.
What unifies all of these is decision authority. An academic editor decides whether a manuscript is sent for review at all (many are desk-rejected before reaching a reviewer), selects who reviews it, weighs the resulting reports, and issues the outcome — accept, minor revision, major revision, or reject. None of that authority belongs to a peer reviewer.
Academic editor vs. peer reviewer
This is the distinction authors most often blur, and it matters because the two roles have different obligations and different relationships to the final decision. CASRAI’s Peer Reviewer guide covers the reviewer role in depth; the short version, stated from the editor’s side, is this: reviewers advise, editors decide. Per the ICMJE’s Responsibilities in the Submission and Peer-Review Process, a journal is under no obligation to follow reviewer recommendations, favorable or negative — the editor makes the final call and can diverge from what reviewers advised in either direction. A reviewer’s report is an input to a decision; only an editor makes the decision.
A few further differences that follow from that:
- Selection and accountability. Editors select which reviewers to invite and are responsible for ensuring reviewers have the material they need and that conflicts of interest among reviewers are managed; reviewers are not accountable for the eventual editorial outcome.
- Duration of involvement. An editor (or handling editor) stays attached to a manuscript from initial screening through final decision and any subsequent correspondence, including corrections or, in rare cases, retraction proceedings. A reviewer’s involvement is typically limited to one or two review rounds.
- Visibility to the author. Authors correspond with the editor (via the decision letter and editorial-office communications); reviewer identities are withheld from authors under single- and double-blind models, and are visible only under open peer review. See CASRAI’s peer review models comparison for how that visibility varies by model.
Academic editor vs. English-language editing services
The second common confusion is between the journal role above and commercial “academic editing” services — companies or freelancers hired by authors to improve English-language clarity, grammar, and adherence to a target journal’s style before or during submission. These services (sometimes marketed as “academic editing,” “scientific editing,” or “manuscript editing”) have no decision-making authority over any journal and no relationship to the journal a paper is eventually submitted to, unless the journal itself operates an in-house language-editing option. CASRAI’s Copyediting entry covers this adjacent, distinct activity in more detail. The practical distinction:
- A journal’s academic editor decides whether a manuscript is scientifically sound and suitable for the journal; a language-editing service assesses and improves prose, not scientific merit, and has no bearing on the editorial decision.
- Using a paid English-editing service does not grant any advantage in peer review or editorial decision-making, and reputable journals and publishers state this explicitly — it addresses language clarity, not the substance a handling editor and reviewers evaluate.
- Disclosure expectations differ: many journals ask authors to name a language-editing service or certificate in a cover letter or acknowledgments (a matter of transparency), which is unrelated to disclosing use of the journal’s own editorial or production staff.
Where the academic editor sits in the editorial workflow
A manuscript typically passes through an academic editor’s hands at several distinct points:
- Initial/desk screening. An editor (often the editor-in-chief or a managing/section editor) checks that the submission is in scope, meets basic formatting and completeness requirements, and is not an obvious ethical or duplicate-submission concern, before deciding whether to send it for review at all. A manuscript rejected at this stage is “desk-rejected” and never reaches a peer reviewer.
- Handling-editor assignment. The manuscript is assigned to a specific handling editor, matched by subject expertise, who takes responsibility for it through the rest of the process. In practice this assignment, and everything downstream of it, happens inside the journal’s manuscript-tracking system — see CASRAI’s Editorial Manager vs. ScholarOne vs. OJS comparison for how that assignment step is represented across the major platforms.
- Reviewer invitation and management. The handling editor invites reviewers, tracks response and completion, and may send reminders or replace a reviewer who declines or is unresponsive.
- Decision synthesis. Once reports are in, the handling editor weighs them — which can include overriding a reviewer, seeking an additional opinion when reviewers disagree sharply, or applying their own subject judgment — and issues a decision letter to the author.
- Revision and resubmission cycles. For a revise-and-resubmit outcome, the same handling editor typically remains attached through subsequent rounds, evaluating the author’s response and revised manuscript, sometimes sending it back to the original reviewers, sometimes deciding without further review.
- Post-decision matters. Editors remain the point of contact for post-publication concerns raised about a paper — corrections, expressions of concern, or retraction — guided by frameworks such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)‘s flowcharts for handling suspected misconduct, disputes, and duplicate submission. CASRAI’s ICMJE entry and its guidance for editors set out parallel expectations specifically for biomedical journals.
Why the distinction matters for authors
Knowing which role you’re dealing with changes what you should expect and where you should direct a question. If a manuscript is desk-rejected, appealing to a reviewer is meaningless — no reviewer was ever involved; the appeal, if a journal permits one at all, goes to the editor who made that call. If a decision letter cites concerns you believe misrepresent a reviewer’s actual report, the handling editor, not the reviewer, is who synthesized and issued that letter, and is the correct point of contact for a clarification or rebuttal. And if the goal is simply clearer English prose ahead of submission, a paid editing service is a reasonable option to consider, but it will not shorten review, does not communicate with the journal’s editorial office on the author’s behalf, and has no influence over the handling editor’s or reviewers’ assessment of the work itself.
