Toxic work environment and poor benefits - Editorial Coordinator PNAS Employee Review

There are many people at PNAS who appreciate constructive feedback on both personal and professional levels, and they sincerely want to make a positive difference. As others have stated, yes, at one point, the journal suffered from internal problems, mostly due to poor management and a lack of communication. However, when such problems were acknowledged and officially brought up to those with the power to affect change, necessary changes were implemented and situations improved significantly. Initially, there were issues related to professionalism, respect, and the sheer amount of work that employees received. However, workloads have since become manageable, and employees are no longer "talked down" to, but rather are included in department conversations. PNAS, which has always been a well-respected journal, has also become a great place to work -- but you need to be proactive if you run into issues. The journal has also made major strides in acknowledging diversity issues, both in terms of its content and work culture (it even has its own diversity, equity, and inclusion committee, which is very active as well).

See "pros" section for more information.

I worked at PNAS for a little over two years and gained a lot of positive experiences and learned a ton of useful skills. Beyond the day to day duties of my position, I enjoyed learning about the academic publishing industry and science, in general. I really felt like the work that I was doing had purpose. Management encouraged you to grow by allowing you to try new things and pushed training opportunities. Constantly learning is something that's always going to stick with me. Lastly, I would like to mention that I worked at PNAS during the pandemic, and I believe that management handled it appropriately by always encouraging staff to take off if they felt burnt out or if they needed a mental health day.

Since PNAS was my first "real" job, I didn't have any other experiences for comparison; however, I would say that the workload was intense and the salary was low compared to the amount of work/responsibilities given, which may not be a PNAS-specific issue but more so a non-profit issue from what I've heard from other folks that work at non-profits.