When Colleen Lobner came to Boston for school—majoring in writing, literature, and publishing at Emerson College—she didn’t expect it would eventually lead to an office on the other side of the Boston Common. But in September of 2011 she found herself employed at 45 Beacon as a peer review support assistant (PRSA). At the time, AMS had just purchased the building next door at 44 Beacon, opening up the opportunity to bring on full-time, in-house support for the peer review editors.

“People love to joke about starving artists and unemployed English majors,” Colleen says. “But the great thing about the field of writing and communications is that those skills lend themselves to such a variety of jobs.”

As a PRSA, Colleen works with more than a dozen editors to provide whatever administrative support they need to do their jobs efficiently.

Before coming to AMS, Colleen ventured out to Chicago and spent two years working as a reporter on the commercial real estate beat for a regional business news magazine.

“It was a great experience for me, getting paid to write,” she comments. “But by 2011, I found myself back in the Boston area, looking to transition into something new, and that’s when I found the position at AMS.”

At that time, there were more than 30 PRSAs (then called editorial assistants) spread out all over the world, many of whom supported just one editor.

“I was hired as part of a major effort to streamline the program and ultimately improve the support AMS provided to these editors,” explains Colleen, who was promoted to peer review support associate last October. “Around the same time, the title of the position was changed from editorial assistant to peer review support assistant to better describe what we do.”

Currently there are nine PRSAs, and Colleen notes it’s a much more cohesive team. Nearly everyone is a full-time employee, and they each work with a number of editors across different AMS journals. This helps ensure a more consistent experience for all of the parties involved in the peer review process. Colleen points out that the peer review editors are all volunteers.

“They’re already incredibly busy teaching classes, conducting fieldwork, writing papers,” she says. “We’re here to let them focus on the science; they don’t have to worry about the minutiae of the role.”

The level of support is tailored to each editor’s personal working style, but the PRSAs keep an eye on things even for the more independent editors to make sure nothing gets lost in the shuffle.

“I let my editors know when action is needed—a new manuscript is in their care and we need to find reviewers, or all recommendations have been received and it’s time to send a decision,” Colleen explains. “I monitor manuscripts as they progress through the review process to keep things in line with the policies set by the AMS Publications Commission and to encourage best practices that have been developed in-house.”

Colleen also nudges things along on the reviewer and author side to ensure deadlines are met, which requires some finesse.

“It’s important keep the process moving in a timely fashion,” Colleen notes, “but of course reviewers are also volunteering their time, and there’s a lot of time and effort that goes into their comments. I field questions about the status of manuscripts and the overall editorial process, and I also do much of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering in Aries Systems’ Editorial Manager, the manuscript tracking system used by the AMS.”

The PRSAs primarily work remotely from their editors. Colleen’s are based in cities including Austin, Boulder, Baltimore, and Tallahassee in the United States, plus one in Canada and two in the United Kingdom.

“Five of the PRSAs also work remotely from the Boston office, which makes us a unique group within the Publications Department,” Colleen says. “E-mail and instant messaging are a very essential part of our day-to-day lives and I’d say that we’re a very collaborative group as a result.”

—Rachel S. Thomas-Medwid