A Happy Farewell

Abstract

A Happy Farewell JCMS In Summer 2018, we introduced ourselves as the new editorial team behind Cinema Journal by issuing a demand—and a promise—to decolonize the journal, the field, and the way the journal constituted the field. By its next issue, Cinema Journal had become the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (JCMS). That name change was itself a pledge to become a new kind of journal. It was the first of many transformations we initiated in pursuit of greater equity and inclusion in academic publishing and film and media studies, broadly construed. We all devoted years of our lives to this project, because we believed and believe that the Society for Cinema and Media Studies' (SCMS) journal of record must reflect its membership's personal and disciplinary diversity and that the best way to express our love for cinema and media studies is by "constantly calling into question received ideas about that field and embracing new voices and concepts."1 So much has changed about Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. The cover of Cinema Journal 57, no. 4. Cover art by Scott Richmond. [End Page 1] the journal since the Summer 2018 issue that we felt it incumbent upon us to reflect briefly on those changes—and the future transformations they anticipate—as we joyfully hand JCMS over to its new editors. To develop an editorial agenda organized around professional equity and respect for diversity, we demanded recognition of an unfortunate and uncomfortable truth: "many of our fellow [SCMS] members do not feel recognized by SCMS or its journal."2 As the publication of a learned society, JCMS belongs to the SCMS membership—period. Its area of inquiry is whatever film and media studies means to them—period. And if members feel that the journal is inhospitable to their subfield, then the journal needs to change—period. We recognized that we as editors not only needed to reach out to members of historically underrepresented groups and fields; we needed to apologize and hold ourselves accountable for the journal's past exclusionary practices. Consequently, we changed the journal's review procedures to include revision and resubmission so we could work with authors on developing their ideas for publication. We implemented new submissions management software to accelerate the review process. We separated book reviews from the In Focus topics in order to prioritize books by precariously employed scholars and scholars from underrepresented groups, showcase books from less industrially prominent presses, and promote important new titles in a timely fashion. Book Review Editor Laura Isabel Serna worked hard to spread the service of reviewing and ensure that senior scholars as well as junior scholars and graduate students lent their insights to this important endeavor. We also made our book reviews open access, so that more scholars could benefit from our reviewers' insights. We added two Co-editors of Outreach and Equity, who spearheaded the JCMS Publishing Initiative and a Facilitated Peer Review process to pair minority scholars with senior mentors prior to submission to help them prepare their work for publication. The Co-editors of Outreach and Equity also commissioned a study of the journal's publication record over the past twenty years.3 Led by digital humanities scholars Yelana Sims and Nina Lorenz—with contributions from all seven SCMS caucuses—this study documents the journal's long-standing biases and establishes a foundation for further accountability and transparency. Frankly, it doesn't make us look very good, which was precisely the point. We needed to own our shortcomings so we could do better. We also felt compelled to improve the accessibility of the journal—and indeed the society it represents—for film and media studies scholars around the globe. We switched publishers in order to pursue a digital-forward publishing model that would make JCMSjournal.org the locus for all our paywalled and open access content while also preserving quarterly print issues for those who choose to receive them. On our website, we launched [End Page 2] an annual Fifth Issue of peer-reviewed research articles featuring work by authors who either chose or were compelled by funding structures to publish open access. (Prior to...