Scholarpedia:Assistant Editor

Graduate students and postdocs are invited to volunteer with Scholarpedia as assistant editors. Assistant editors work on one or more key projects, typically spending up to a few hours per week. Contact support@scholarpedia.org if you would like to volunteer. Mention your knowledge of WikiText, HTML, and/or LaTeX, as well as your English skills.

Below are possible projects that an assistant editor might assist with.

Featured author column

The main page of Scholarpedia periodically features select authors. Ideally, the featured author column should be updated weekly.

Job: Propose authors who might be suitable for the featured author column. Such authors must have both a Ph.D. and a publication record in their subject area. The names of proposed authors should be sent to either editor-in-chief@scholarpedia.org or support@scholarpedia.org. After you receive a "go-ahead" response, you may start writing a short (2- or 3-paragraph) bio that contains relevant background information about the author and highlights the author's accomplishments. You may also begin to update the Featured Author Column with the new bio.

Project page: Featured Author Column.

Project leader: Swetamber Das, IIT Madras, Chennai, INDIA (Swetamber.Das@scholarpedia.org)

Summaries of newly published articles

A list of recently published articles with summaries are published on the main page of Scholarpedia.

Job: Periodically update the "Newly published article" section when new articles are published. This involves deciding on the image that best represents a newly published article and formatting information about that article.

Project leader: Zan Pan, Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China (Zan.Pan@scholarpedia.org)

Assistance with WikiText and other technical tasks

Many invited authors of Scholarpedia have no knowledge of WikiText. Furthermore, some authors need help with converting illustrations from one format into another (e.g., large .gif file into smaller .jpeg, or .avi movie into animated gif).

Job: Help authors convert articles from MSWord/LaTeX to WikiText and/or convert figures into the desired format.

Requirements: knowledge of WikiText, LaTeX, and HTML; native English

Project leader: Jonathan R. Williford, Johns Hopkins, MD, USA (Jonathan.Williford@scholarpedia.org)

Copyediting

In addition, work with the editor-in-chief to develop guidelines for a good style. Modify existing articles to conform with the guidelines. Enforce the style in new articles.

Interact with editors

Some editors may wish to have help in inviting authors and proposing articles. You may contact an editor from our editorial board and offer your assistance or contact me (support@scholarpedia.org) for more information or help finding an editor to work with.