Collections Guidelines for Volume Editors

Detailed instructions specific to your project will be provided by your production editor. The following are general guidelines.

Multiple editors

Assign the tasks below and let your in-house editor know who is responsible for each of the stages. Or, if you are each responsible for certain chapters, please provide a list specifying which editors are responsible for which chapters. Refer to chapters by both chapter number and author name, not by title.

Housekeeping

Notify contributors of the schedule so that they may plan accordingly. Notify the in-house editor of all planned extended absences. Please provide a list of all contributors’ e-mail addresses. addresses.

In all correspondence, refer to chapters by both the chapter number and the author name (not by the title).

Artwork

Ensure that all illustrations are submitted in the required format As the volume editor, you are responsible for ensuring that all illustrations submitted meet the requirements of the Editorial-Production Department. Artwork guidelines (PDF file) are available online. Illustrations that do not meet the requirements may be omitted. To avoid delays in the production and publication of your book, please review the guidelines as early as possible and contact the in-house editor if you have any questions.

The copyediting phase

You may choose to review the work wholly by yourself. If you decide to have contributors review their own edited material, distribute all chapters and accompanying documents to them. Contributors will have only about two weeks to review their chapters so you should notify them in advance and give them a deadline.

Receive and review chapters from contributors. Contributors should return their chapters to you, and you must ensure that they have responded to the queries. Contributors do not see proofs, so this is the last opportunity for them to review the material. Collate the material into a single reviewed set of chapters. Do not send one version of a chapter with the contributor’s comments and another version with yours.

Contributors are asked to provide an electronic file for new text or changes longer than a sentence. These should be provided in attachments (not in the body of an e-mail) with file names consisting of chapter number and author name. Volume editors are asked to collect and forward these attachments (and print them out if the contributors have not already done so). Be sure to collect, clearly label, and forward additional text/files

What if a contributor is late returning his or her chapter?

If only a chapter or two are outstanding, ask the in-house editor if she would like to receive the rest of the manuscript. If several contributors fail to meet the deadline, the production schedule may be compromised, which may affect the publication date.

Beyond the copyediting phase

After the chapters have been returned to the Press, you can expect to receive further queries from the in-house editor: requests for clarification or for missing information, or follow-up on queries left unanswered.

Volume editors will be asked to make decisions on behalf of contributors or to contact those contributors and obtain responses promptly.

Volume editors are responsible for reviewing the proofs.