Snippet from Bill T
>  Actually, the original point was the disclaimer, which had zero to do with shaping words. The posts by the editor in this thread explaining herself were more in explaining that she was looking at the science and disagreed with it, hence the disclaimer.

> Were it all about shaping words and meeting a target audience, there wold have been no thread and no issue.

It was very much about shaping words and clarification. For example, in one article Randy Oliver wrote that bees start guarding at about 19 days of age. I flagged this statement, explaining in my comment that bees show a wide range in the age of guard duty performance. My exact comment on his statement: “There is actually a lot of variance. This makes it seem like they hit 19 days and then start guarding.” To help explain my point, I included the following reference: “Workers that guarded initiated the behavior between the ages of 7 and 22 days. The mean age of the onset of guarding varied; the minimum mean age of guards for a colony was 13·6 days and the maximum was 16·0 days.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347287801720”

Instead of changing the sentence, Randy’s solution was to cite Winston’s book The Biology of the Honey Bee. However, if you look up the details on age of guard duty, Winston gives a table that cites four papers with a range in age of 4-60 days, 10-46 days, 11-25 days and 7-23 days. When I took over as editor, Randy informed me that he required all changes to be approved by him. I was not willing to print the statement as written, and we were rapidly approaching our print deadline. In the last moment, we finally agreed to change it to around 2-3 weeks. 

This is just one of many examples, where we differed. I'm happy to send my edits on Randy's articles to anyone who is curious if he approves or he can make them available. My goal is always to improve the clarity of the text, the readability of the article, the scientific accuracy if it is well established, while maintaining the author's voice. Readers like his column and we at ABJ wish to continue printing his articles, but this process of going back and forth frustrates us both. So to enable us to continue printing his work without driving us both crazy, we mutually agreed I would no longer edit and as this differs from all other articles in the journal, we're printing a revised disclaimer that we MUTUALLY agreed to. This revised disclaimer reads: "ABJ does not edit Randy Oliver's articles and they are not submitted for peer review. The opinions expressed are thus his own and the editorial staff does not always agree with his views. In order to maintain scientific and factual accuracy, Randy invites comments and corrections."

As to the direction of ABJ, I am always open to submissions and welcome diverse voices. I can only publish articles that I receive as submissions. And yes, I strongly believe that editing helps improve articles. My edits have been well received by many and highly complimented by individuals like Tom Seeley. I wish someone put the same amount of time and effort into closely reading and editing my articles as I do for others, as I would be a much better writer. 

We're all fallible. I have made mistakes and will undoubtedly make more. But realize when you tear someone down for doing their job, they lose their enthusiasm for their work. I've only been at it for a year. We all grow into our roles. Joe Graham, who I greatly respect was ABJ's editor for 45 years. They're big shoes to fill. It's an eclectic publication serving a huge diversity of readers from all economic, educational and political backgrounds with large variance in beekeeping experience. We do our best to offer a range of articles to serve that diversity. We don't expect you to relate to every article or author, but we sincerely hope you find something useful in each issue. 

Sincerely,
Kirsten S. Traynor

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