: What should be done if there is a dispute of opinions within the editorial team? In a magazine where an individual author's name is not published with the article, it seems obvious to me that

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Journals don't have a lot of room for error taking extra time to "get to the bottom of things." They have to get their product out, especially in the case of a team effort which costs hundreds of dollars an hour to produce.

In the case of a single author or investigative reporter, a single editor probably supervises, and individual differences are hashed out.

A team effort probably involves a company-wide policy and a chief editor. As Mark noted, if the employee really doesn't like it, there is always resignation, but since this scenario will repeat itself until said employee is a chief editor, most people will just swallow their pride and accept it. Full-time jobs in writing are few and far between.

If a chief editor is outvoted, that's a case-by-case basis, and the journal's president might get involved. Publications are private enterprises trying to turn a profit. When in doubt, the tendency is for the powers-that-be to choose sensationalism.

A peer-reviewed scientific journal is a different beast with the main issue being whether the data supports the conclusions. In this case, a single dissenting opinion might require the research team to recrunch the numbers so that the conclusion is more reliable--this may alter the conclusion. Again, it's up to the chief editor to make a formal decision. This person is an expert in the field.

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All I can offer you is an example of what I've seen done. I don't know the industry standard for such things, and your journal can follow whatever practices it wants. This is just what my newspaper did.

When I worked on a student-run newspaper in college, the editorial was always published with a statement at the bottom reading something like "This topic was approved by a 6-1 vote of the editorial board." The editorial itself was usually written by a specific editor, chosen for that publication, and their name was attached to it as well. If there was a significant dissenting vote, a dissenting editor was chosen to write a short piece explaining their stance at the bottom of the article. The dissenting opinion usually omitted the name of the writer.

The only example of this I was able to find from my student newspaper is this one from 2013, about freedom of speech. I'm sure there's a more recent version, and it's entirely possible that their practices have changed in the intervening years, but searching for stuff on their website is hard.

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