Editorial production and publication roles

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Between acceptance and print a manuscript passes through several editors, a typesetter and a printer, each with a part of the work. The author reviews the copyedited text and answers for it, how far an editor may change a piece depends on what kind of piece it is, and computers have taken over most of the physical work of production but not the editor's judgment.

Who works on a manuscript

Editorial departments, whether of a scientific journal, a consumer magazine or a large government or medical organisation, generally have a similar structure, and the process that leads to publication is often very similar. Depending on the size of the team, not every function is carried out in house, and it is not unusual for publishers to use freelance editors, proofreaders, designers, artists and typesetters as they need them. It is important for an author to understand the roles of the people who may work on a manuscript before publication, and their responsibilities vary by title:

Consultant editor, executive editor or editor-in-chief. Usually the most senior editor of a publication, responsible for its overall content and usually holding final sign-off before it goes to press. Usually the publication's public face, overseeing the full production process, with budgeting responsibilities, and managing the other editors.
Assistant, deputy or associate editor. Usually works closely with the managing editor and, depending on the size of the organisation, manages other members of the editorial team.
Development, acquisitions, commissioning or managing editor. Commissions new titles for a publishing house, and is the person to approach with a proposal for a new book. Also maintains the range of journal titles the house owns, oversees finance, sales and marketing, and manages administrative staff, including editorial assistants. The managing editor may lead on publishing issues and oversee any associated electronic or online products.
Editorial board members. Govern a journal's editorial direction as a team, and are often experts in the journal's field.
Web editor. May manage a website's content: uploading information in an appropriate format, updating news sections and links, and monitoring web-based notice boards and emails from viewers.
Technical editor, copyeditor or subeditor. Usually responsible for the technical aspects of a document, and may apply house style, check facts and figures, add page cross-references, compile the index, format references and images, correct punctuation, check spelling, check the document for sense and clarity, and raise queries for the author. Usually enters after the managing or more senior editors have done a substantive edit, and may re-check the document once it is typeset, a stage known as proofreading.
Desktop publisher or typesetter. Lays out the publication, often in software such as QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign, and may format text and images to the publication's design standards.
Designer. May design the overall look of a publication, including logos, colour schemes and the look of associated products such as websites and stationery.
Picture editor or photo editor. Acquires suitable images to accompany an article.
Book editor. For a book with contributions from several authors, may invite specialist authors to contribute sections, sets submission schedules in line with the dates agreed with the publisher, and may initiate and coordinate peer review of sections or of the whole book.
Editor for an organisation. Many large medical organisations employ editors for the documents they issue, and many royal medical colleges, NHS organisations, medical charities and medical research organisations have an in-house editorial department.

From the editor's desk to the warehouse

The editorial process usually runs in these steps:

The senior editor requests any changes from the author, which may include cutting the document or revising its content.
Once the revised document is back, the senior editor does a substantive edit or passes it to another senior editor. Broad issues are addressed at this stage, and the document is reduced to the desired size.
A technical editor or copy editor applies the house style, which can include preferred spellings, terminology and reference styles, and checks how figures, statistical information and dosing information are represented. This editor also adds instructions for the typesetter on how the document should look, such as heading levels, table layout or emphasised text.
The typesetter lays the document out electronically as it will appear in print, and may send it back to the editor in electronic form to make sure the information has been presented correctly.
The typesetter sends the document electronically to the printer.
The printer prepares a set of proofs, an exact paper copy of how the finished document will look. The technical editor or proofreader reads the text against the original edited document to check that nothing has been left out and that the layout is appropriate. Changes can still be made at this stage, although this can be more awkward than making them in house at the earlier stages.
The most senior editor gives the final sign-off, after which there is no going back, and the proofs are sent to the printers for the final production stage.
The document is printed and sent to a distribution centre or the publisher's warehouse.

Once the document has been edited and typeset, the printing process involves:

selecting a printing company, which may involve a tender for the job
deciding the size of the print run
assigning an ISBN, a unique number a publisher gives a book title for tracking and ordering
arranging for the editorial team to review the printers' proofs
setting printing schedules
uploading the information to any associated website
distributing to subscribers and other buyers, either directly from the printers or from the publisher's own warehouse

Reviewing the copyedit

The author answers for the edited text, and the AMWA Journal's instructions for contributors from 2008 to 2010 stated that all submitted material is subject to editing and copyediting, that authors receive the edited version before publication and should review all queries and editorial changes carefully at that point, and that authors are responsible for the content of their entire work, including changes made during the editorial process and approved by the corresponding author.

Copyediting is usually one of the last stages of the editorial process. Depending on the publisher's policy, the copyeditor may send the author a marked-up version showing inserted and deleted text and changes made to conform with house style, together with queries and requests for clarification. The copyeditor may have rewritten some text to make it clearer, added subheadings, broken up long paragraphs and sentences, and made other changes for house style. Rewritten passages need careful review to make sure the correct message has been retained. In making its changes, the copyeditor should have kept the original meaning and emphasis.

A copyedit marked up on paper uses standard editorial marks, which it is a good idea to learn before reviewing the edited work, but files are now far more often submitted electronically and edited on screen, where track changes can be very helpful. With tracking switched on before the document is changed, every change can be seen by someone else, and the reviewer can accept or reject each one electronically, leaving an audit trail. A comment attached to a specific passage is also an effective way for author and editor to communicate. Editors sometimes assume that authors know electronic reviewing tools such as track changes, and an author who does not should ask the editor how to use them. Another common method is to slot comments into the text in square brackets, made clearer with bold type or coloured highlights, so that they can be found easily and stripped out as each issue is addressed.

Each of the copyeditor's queries is best answered directly, with an answer that aims to resolve the issue. An author who disagrees with a change should state the reasons clearly and supply suitable replacement text for the passage. Disagreeing alone is not enough, and will probably lead to the work being returned for further review after the editor has tried to address the issue, which may delay publication. The answer to the copyeditor's queries is the author's last chance to make any major change before publication.

Images

Sometimes the editor assigns images to accompany an article or asks the author for suggestions, and authors also commonly provide their own. An author whose readers need a specialised diagram or photograph to understand the work should suggest or locate a suitable image when the work is presented. Almost all medical publications contain images of some sort, and publishers usually have preferred formats for artwork. An author should always check with the publisher before submitting work that contains pictures.

Artwork needs to be planned early, and in an edited book the editor has to allow for the space images take in the early planning stages. Images from other sources need plenty of time, both to request permission and to find new images if permission is refused. For photographs of patients, such as in a case report or an article on a disease, patient confidentiality should always be taken into account, and where such a photograph is necessary, written permission should be obtained from the patient after they have been told how the image will be used.

A suitable image can be acquired in four ways:

creating it
commissioning an artist to draw it
buying it from an image supplier
requesting permission to reproduce an image already published

In more consumer-type publications, an in-house picture editor may decide on the image to accompany an article and will often source it, and the space available and commercial advertising may weigh in the choice. Whatever the publication, the author should give the editor suggestions of possibly suitable or unsuitable images.

How far an editor may change a piece

An editor going over a manuscript almost always has three choices: reject it, arrange for a rewrite or edit it. The growth of the publication market has created new editorial positions, such as acquisitions editor, copy editor and rewrite editor, so the "editor" reading a manuscript at any one time may hold all or none of the complete editorial function. For the editors who deal directly with the manuscript, often the copy editor or whoever serves that function, one experienced writer of medical articles and columns holds that it is not the editor's province to act as though they can do it better than the writer.

He ranks submitted material by how far an editor may change it, from the least to the most:

A letter to the editor. Beyond the usual management of such material, such as editing for grammar, brevity and clarity, no change should be made if the letter is used. It is a signed document, submitted in the expectation that the writer's opinion and words will stand as written, and a reader-writer's forum not really subject to editing.
A signed opinion column. It is not an intrinsic part of the periodical but an outside opinion by a skilled writer, and it should not be changed. A publication that needs to combat an opinion can pair the column with a counterpoint article. In his impression, syndicated columns are sold to publications with no changes allowed to grammar, opinion or writing, and a newspaper that finds fault with one may refuse to run it but will pay for it anyway.
News and scientific articles. These are submitted on the understanding that publication decisions, the form of the material and needed changes are apt to be made. Even so, a complete rewrite should never be made without consulting the writer, as there may be differences that can be accounted for. Where differences cannot be resolved, the publication has the right to reject the article and the author the right to withdraw it.
A reporter's copy passed to a rewrite desk. This ranks lowest: the rewrite editor composes the final copy without further input from the reporter.

In a bylined opinion column, the editor corrects unintentional misspellings but never ideas or expressions. A writer becomes a regular columnist because someone believed they have clear ideas and positions on specific subjects and can write a readable and correct composition. In one case, an article submitted to a state journal came back completely rewritten by its single editor, who was not a physician, with a conclusion different from the author's, and the author withdrew it. The author did not dispute the editor's right to decide, but held that an article that bad should have been rejected, perhaps with an explanation of its faults and of whether a rewrite and resubmission was wanted, and that a complete rewrite was not the editor's to make without consulting him.

Editing, on the same writer's account, means four things:

Read the manuscript carefully to be certain that it makes sense and is relatively clear in its exposition.
Correct any obvious errors, such as wrong dates, misspelled names or places, or unintended grammatical errors.
Possibly suggest better wording in some small area, or even improved logic, for the writer to consider.
Note an egregious omission of a pertinent factor that should have been included, let the writer see it, and work out any differences.

Suggestions that make the manuscript conform to the publication's style are always in order. Merriam-Webster's long definition of edit does not contain the word rewrite.

The editors he regards as editing correctly posted their recommendations or suggestions on a submitted manuscript without undue fuss, probably three to five comments a manuscript on average, which he considers a reasonable average for differences of opinion. In about half the cases he agreed and let the editor proceed, and in about half he disagreed, explained his reasoning and had his opinion accepted. In a scattered few, he replied that the editor's change neither altered the meaning nor improved on his original, but that he would go along with it if the editor preferred it. Writing and editing, in his view, are both honourable professions that should always work together, as long as each keeps to its own sphere.

Production before the computer

From the late 1950s, as one manuscript editor recalled in 2008, editors worked on paper manuscripts, often several hundred pages long, and marked them in pencil with small changes, whole rewritten sentences, words or lines crossed out, comments and questions in the margins or between the lines, and circled passages with arrows to where they should move. A query could run long: one about a compound that seemed to carry a different name in different chapters ran to 65 words, a fifth to a quarter of a double-spaced typewritten page, and squeezed into the margin and between the lines it was close to illegible.

The marked manuscript then went to a reviewer, who might answer the queries on the page, cross them out, or circle them in the hope that someone else would respond. A different person then had to decipher everyone's handwriting, on a subject she probably knew even less about than the editor did, and incorporate the changes into a clean draft. That draft had to be proofread and always contained new errors, which were fixed by retyping a page here or there or with correction tape or fluid. The final camera-ready copy went to the printer, who made mats and printed the book, and a set of proofs and then a second set, with less time to check it, came back before the finished book.

Work considered important or saleable enough went to a compositor, who produced galley proofs: long sheets of paper, of a consistency like medium-grade toilet paper, each carrying several pages of copy. The editors or the printer or both proofread every word of the galleys, marking errors and any new material or revisions. The printer then produced page proofs that looked much like the final book, and these were checked to make sure that everything marked on the galleys had been fixed.

By 2008, a file arrived by email and was changed on screen, with questions asked in track changes, passages moved by copying and pasting, and fonts and type sizes changed without touching type or telling a compositor how to style the copy. The file went back to the author by email, the author might send it on to others, everyone could enter changes or comments in their own colour, and it could go to the publisher the same way.

Illustrations used to arrive as half-tones or line drawings. Someone in the printing office often redrew the line drawings to make them reproducible, and half-tones had problems of size, contrast and overall quality, marks or rust from paper clips on the edges, and indentations from writing on the back. By 2008 an illustration was scanned or created on the computer, sent electronically, and could go straight to the printer with nothing done to it. A multipage table printed sideways, with Greek letters and numbers from thousandths to thousands, might have to be redone from scratch after one small error, because correction fluid often could not be used once the spacing had been disturbed. By 2008 the computer built the table from the number of columns and the entries, and the editor inserted comments anywhere on the screen instead of squeezing marks into tiny spaces.

The typewriter shaped what could be put on the page. An exclamation point was typed as a period, a hand backspace and an apostrophe over it, there was typically no numeral 1, so a lowercase L was used, and a superscript meant turning the roller half a line, typing the character and turning the roller back. What was called text editing in the 1960s was not editing but the origin of word processing: IBM's magnetic-card and then magnetic-tape machines recorded what was typed, so that material could be revised without retyping all of it. In the 1970s a machine with a video display and tape-cassette storage allowed changes on the screen and printing only once the work was satisfactory. The electric typewriter took the physical work out of typing.

Copies had their own technologies. The mimeograph worked from a waxed stencil typed with the ribbon disabled, so that the bare type displaced the wax, and striking too hard cut out parts of letters such as o and b, leaving solid black blobs. Carbon paper, in use from around 1800 and still in use in 2008, made five or six copies at once, and correcting a letter, word or line across them was laborious; correction fluid came into use around 1950. An early electrostatic process charged a sheet with light, shook powdered carbon onto it and fused the carbon in a small oven, producing a lithographic mat for a printing press, and by 1959 a plain-paper copier did all of it by itself. A thermal copier of the 1950s was easier and faster, but its copies turned black when left in the light and became brittle enough to break, and a wet process produced usable but bluish copies that took a while to dry.

Everything in the manuscript editor's work changed over the half-century, mostly because of the computer: manuscript preparation, copy-marking, checking information, fixing tables and figures, managing references and making copies. What did not change was the use of the editor's knowledge and judgment.

Before desktop publishing, a design studio's major output was the boards: large white sheets of card, typically A2, onto which photographic prints of the typeset text, called bromides, were cut and pasted in the precise position the text was to occupy on the printed page. A semi-transparent sheet over each board marked where photographs went or gave other guidance, and graphic artists did the cutting and pasting all day long. Once approved, the stack of boards for a book or chapter went to the printer, and the next thing the publisher saw was printed proofs. In one publishing editor's account, the boards for the first chapter of a textbook had been checked by the studio and by him several times, yet when the director reviewed them on the day they were due at the printer, the final page of the chapter was missing.

What editing adds and what software has not replaced

The editor's goals, as the managing editor of JAMA put them in 2021, are accuracy, clarity and consistency, and a good editor works behind the scenes helping an author ensure that the science is communicated accurately, clearly and consistently. Several studies have measured what editing adds:

In a 2015 study, readers read four articles, principally news stories rather than trial reports, in unedited and edited versions, and preferred the edited versions and felt the quality was worth the cost.
A study published in Learned Publishing in 2007 compared authors' versions of 189 articles in science, technology, engineering and mathematics journals or humanities publications with the final articles. A substantial share of the edits corrected citation errors, a third fixed grammatical or stylistic problems and nearly 14% queried missing data, and its authors concluded that editing contributes substantially to the accuracy of the paper and so to the integrity of the article of record.
A second study in Learned Publishing in 2007 compared 24 self-archived papers in biochemistry or the social sciences with their published versions. Editing generally improved readability, but no error it caught was serious enough to invalidate significant data, conclusions or the overall validity of the findings, or to warrant a correction or retraction.
A systematic review of the literature on technical editing, presented at the Peer Review Congress in 2001, found 11 studies concluding that editing improves readability, may improve quality, and increases the accuracy of references, quotations and abstracts.

The managing editor of JAMA reported having yet to see a study concluding that editing is not worth doing.

Spelling and grammar checking in Word were the first software features to take on part of an editor's responsibilities, followed by programs that autocorrect errors or fix terminology by preselected rules, such as changing British to US spelling, and editorial staff feared that editors might be replaced. When editors were learning to edit in Word around the turn of the century, some wrote custom scripts, such as one that removed the zero before the decimal point in P values. Technology can help quality by spotting errors, but sometimes it is sentence construction rather than individual words that editors need to fix, as in "The patient has chest pain when lying on her right side for over a year." Technology may assist with some of a writer's or editor's functions, but it will never replace the judgment a human brings to the work.

Editors' work with references is particularly important: ensuring that references are cited, attached to the right content in the text and complete enough to link to the original source. Knowing when a citation is needed, which citations are appropriate to the reference list, and ensuring citation accuracy rely on well-trained medical writers and editors.

Editors work to preserve the credibility of a paper and of a journal or other publication as a whole. A patient given a document about a new medication or a diagnosis that is riddled with errors might assume that whoever did not take the time to proofread also did not carry out the necessary quality checks on the product or the information.

Sources behind this topic

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