Grounded in the innovative core and intrinsic logic of new quality productive forces, this study proposes a four-dimensional editorial competency framework encompassing cognition, skills, behavior, and adaptation, aiming to provide an analytical tool and theoretical foundation for the structural optimization and systematic design of academic journal editors' capabilities. It emphasizes the dynamic synergy and systemic interaction among these competency elements, offering an explanatory perspective for prevalent issues in current editorial competency models, such as structural rigidity, ineffective coordination, and lagging environmental adaptation. By constructing an editorial competency model characterized by systemic resilience and adaptive flexibility, this research intends to provide theoretical support for the structural optimization and systemic upgrade of editorial capabilities during the critical transformation of academic journals from content producers to knowledge service providers and value leaders. The rapid advancement of new quality productive forces, driven by technologies like artificial intelligence and big data alongside the global push for open science, is fundamentally reshaping the academic publishing ecosystem, extending journal competitiveness beyond traditional academic quality to encompass dissemination efficiency, openness, and user engagement. Consequently, the editor's role is evolving from traditional manuscript handling towards becoming a strategic coordinator, technology integrator, and knowledge service architect. However, existing editorial competency models—often based on classic theories like the competency model, iceberg model, and onion model—exhibit significant limitations in this new context, as they tend to be static, focus on individual skills in stable environments, and lack mechanisms to address the dynamic interplay and synergistic linkage among diverse capabilities required for complex tasks like cross-disciplinary evaluation and ethical governance of AI-generated content. To address these gaps, the proposed four-dimensional framework adopts a systemic perspective: the cognitive dimension forms the cornerstone, involving the reconstruction of systems thinking and scholarly judgment, requiring editors to develop holistic insights, interdisciplinary sensitivity, and a value-based assessment system; the skill dimension undergoes an upgrade towards technological application and innovative practice, moving beyond operational proficiency to encompass the critical ability to evaluate, integrate, and ethically deploy technologies within the scholarly workflow; the behavior dimension expands to highlight enhanced collaboration, knowledge service provision, and scholarly leadership, positioning editors as network builders and service providers; and the adaptation dimension is crucial for ensuring the framework's longevity, involving strengthened environmental scanning and a commitment to structured, continuous learning. Crucially, this framework is a dynamic, interconnected system where the four dimensions interact and compensate for each other, allowing strengths in one area to offset temporary gaps in another, thereby enabling editors to navigate the complexities of the new publishing landscape. By offering a structured yet flexible approach to capability development, this research provides a theoretical basis and a practical pathway for academic journals to strategically reconfigure their editorial talent, supporting high-quality development and a successful transition into their enhanced role as knowledge service hubs within the innovation ecosystem, with future work needed for empirical validation, metric development, and contextual adaptation across different journal types.