Managing an editorial project
An editorial project carries a piece of content from its first specification, through drafting, review, copyediting, layout and press, to a finished print, disc, video or web product. Running it means pinning down what is wanted, planning and adjusting the schedule, keeping everyone informed, commissioning and checking the draft, controlling the changes reviewers ask for, preparing the manuscript and layout, and rereading what late changes may have broken.
The editorial project manager's role
Medical writers and editors often do not think of themselves as project managers, but every project that crosses their desks needs to be managed to progress to its next stage, so project manager becomes another of the hats they wear. Conscious, proactive project management improves efficiency, reduces work hours and increases accuracy. The responsibilities of editorial project managers, the processes they follow and the internal resources available to them vary widely between types of company, and even between companies working on similar projects. The editorial project manager may be a staff member or a freelance or consultant, and may be an editor who also manages projects or a writer and editor who also manages them. The ability to adapt and modify processes to fit each situation is the essence of good project management. The processes one experienced editorial project manager describes are best used as a starting point for developing strong, individualised project management procedures.
Editorial project managers are the driving force behind content development. Whether staff members, freelances or consultants, they are responsible for managing the process of turning a concept into a final produced piece, which could be print, CD, video or web-based, and the challenge is to do so on an often intense schedule while overcoming multiple obstacles and delivering high-quality work. The keys to meeting this challenge are to plan, communicate and control during every stage of the project.
The editorial project manager shepherds the project from its creation by a writer through a complex series of reviews by topic experts, generally physicians or other health care providers, internal staff and copyeditors. Formatting by a graphic designer follows, with further reviews by topic experts, continuing education (CE) reviewers as needed, and copyeditors, and the editorial project manager supervises all of these reviews. Throughout this frequently stressful and difficult process, the editorial project manager ensures that all the players work smoothly as a team and keep their good humour.
The goals of good editorial project management are to complete the project on schedule, to communicate clearly with team members such as expert reviewers, copyeditors, graphic designers and account or other staff, to anticipate obstacles and find a path around them, and to ensure that the content is clearly written, interesting to read and accurate, and incorporates the required topics. The goals look simple on paper, but ferreting out unspoken desires, meshing conflicting needs and coping with day-to-day crises make them a challenge to achieve. Good project management strategies and tools can help overcome obstacles so that an outstanding product is completed on schedule. General project managers may also be responsible for overall budgeting and staffing. In one experienced manager's experience this has not been common for editorial project managers, although at some companies, especially larger ones, they may control the editorial portion of the budget and staff.
For one writer who worked as a continuing medical education (CME) editorial director at several companies, the main role was to understand the project's needs, which meant attending the grantor's meetings, and to ensure there were the resources to complete the work to deadline and at high quality.
Project initiation and specifications
Project initiation is one of the most critical information-gathering points for the editorial project manager. It can range from a hurried five-minute phone call to an hour-long interdepartmental meeting. However the project is introduced, the manager must methodically work through a checklist of questions with the person initiating it before beginning work:
- What is the main topic, and what subtopics are known?
- Who is the target audience?
- Is this a CE or a promotional project?
- If it is a CE project, has a sponsor, a CE accrediting institution, been selected, and which?
- Who is the corporate supporter?
- Have faculty been identified, or is the manager to identify them?
- What honorarium, if any, is provided for the faculty?
- What format will the program take?
- What is the desired length of the program?
- What are the start and end dates for the deliverables?
Deliverables may be preset for in-house staff, and if they are not, the manager asks; freelances need to define them. Freelances also ask what the fee is, whether services other than project management are needed, whether they will be expected to work on-site, and, if writing is involved, whether the fee includes one or more rewrites. Without answers to these questions, the project could have problems from the beginning, resulting in rewriting, time delays and conflict with account staff, the art department and other team members.
The key to starting off on the right foot is to understand the project thoroughly. Pitfalls can arise throughout a project's lifespan, and some of the most dangerous occur at initiation, because veering off track at the start makes it nearly impossible to meet the anticipated deadlines, and the end product may be poor as well as late. A poorly defined topic or inaccurate specifications can result in disaster, and the best defence is to ask questions proactively. The manager should keep gently drilling down to the core issues until the topic and specifications are clearly defined and understood, or until the person assigning the job acknowledges the information gaps and agrees to obtain the answers before or immediately after initiation. The manager must position the clarifying process as a means to an outstanding product, because a manager perceived as unwilling to cooperate or as a barrier to timely completion makes the overall outcome negative.
Where the editor, account staff or other person assigning the project is vague or vacillates over the main topic or specifications, the manager should ask probing questions to clarify the parameters and, if necessary, bring the issue to the attention of more senior management. A freelance may wish to pass on a project whose parameters remain murky after questioning. Where final sign-off rests with more than one person, the manager should be alert for conflicting wants and needs, and seek ways to communicate with the group and guide its discussion so that the issues are resolved before proceeding.
Planning and controlling the schedule
Once the project parameters are understood, developing a plan or map of where the project needs to be and when is essential to meeting its goals. Communication is equally important. Everyone involved with any phase of production should be given a deadline to return comments or content.
Throughout the project, the manager should give feedback to key players, such as account staff, the editorial director and other senior editorial staff, and solicit information from them. This communication can be oral or by email, but it should include periodic written status reports to the key players. Control is vital because projects rarely unfold according to plan or schedule. If a reviewer misses a deadline, for example, the manager must make sure the reviewer provides comments within a day or two, then should adjust the timeline by reducing the time allotted to subsequent steps and alert those whose time has been shortened, so that all work together and the delivery date is met.
The outline and first draft
The next step is an outline of the content. A staff manager either creates it with the topic expert or hires a freelance writer to create it with the topic expert, and a freelance hired both to manage the project and to write creates it with the topic expert. Everyone who will sign off the final product should review the outline, to ensure buy-in from all relevant parties. Some people give little thought to concepts expressed orally, but seeing them in writing and being asked to sign off on them increases their attentiveness and improves the quality of their feedback. Once an acceptable outline exists, the first draft of the manuscript is developed.
The first draft may be written by a freelance writer hired by a staff manager, by a staff writer, or by a staff or freelance manager who doubles as writer, depending on the company's resources and structure. When a staff or freelance writer develops the draft, the manager should clearly communicate to the writer the due date, topic, audience, goals and objectives, format, style, program format and whether the project is promotional or CE. For a freelance, a formal contract or letter of agreement is the best way to provide this information. The manager gives the writer the outline if the writer did not develop it. Some companies give the freelance writer copies of the reference materials, and others expect the freelance to provide them.
Once the writer clearly understands the project and work has begun, regular communication about progress toward the deadline and discussion of obstacles is important. A manager who has not worked with the freelance before may wish to review the first few pages of the first draft to ensure that the writer has understood the assignment and that the quality of the work matches expectations.
One CME editorial director worked in most posts strictly with a freelance pool of writers and editors, and so had to find them, assign them to projects, quality-control their work and make sure the grantor was happy with the end product. The director also had to ensure that the writers adhered to CME guidelines and that all necessary elements were in place in each deliverable. When a writer did not deliver, as sometimes occurred, the director had to do the writing or find another writer who could fill in.
Review of the first draft and changes in direction
Everyone with final sign-off authority, topic experts included, should review the first draft. In handing the draft to each of them, the manager should emphasise that this is their primary opportunity to make substantial content changes, because the next major review, at layout, should be reserved for minor text or formatting changes. Asking all internal reviewers to sign and date the copy or tracking sheet helps encourage them to take ownership of the content. External reviewers' written comments or statements accepting the content are saved in case they are needed to support later decisions.
Parameters may be reassessed at this stage, as is common in the lifespan of any project. J. Davidson Frame, a professor of project management, calls this re-evaluation a natural occurrence, the learning effect, in which a person's vision of a project sharpens as it proceeds, and holds that the learning effect cannot be allowed to proceed unchecked.
A dramatic change in the direction of the content or the specifications is sometimes dictated by external events, such as newly published data or a revised package insert. At other times it arises because reviewers had not adequately thought out their needs at initiation, and seeing their concepts in typeface triggers brainstorming, a new focus and a rewrite of the entire draft. In either case, the manager should identify the rationale behind the change and, if the change is necessary, gain agreement on the new timeline.
Whatever the cause of a change in direction, the manager needs to assess the rationale behind the proposed changes and how they would affect the timeline. To determine the effect, the manager should first identify salvageable content and assess the need for new content, then develop at least two alternative scenarios for completing the project that highlight changes in cost and timeline against the original timeline and specifications. The manager should enumerate all important external influences for the decision-makers and discuss their relative importance. The scenario analyses then go to the decision-makers, and the manager gains acceptance for one scenario before moving forward with it. The challenge is to present the analyses so that the decision-makers and other reviewers understand and accept the rationale for any change in timeline or content direction.
Minor conflict between reviewers' input can be handled by speaking one-on-one with each reviewer to try to identify the rationale behind the comments. In deciding which changes to incorporate, the manager needs to weigh each reviewer's authority in guiding the content. Major conflict may require a meeting with in-house reviewers and, if necessary, a conference call that includes external reviewers. A freelance manager working off-site may wish to request a face-to-face meeting with the client or, if that is not feasible, a conference call. Every attempt should be made to reconcile conflicting opinions, and if that is not possible, a single authority figure should be identified who can endorse a revised plan of action.
The final manuscript
Once the content is final, the manager passes the project to the copyeditor, who reviews the document and its previous versions with the reviewer comments to ensure that every comment has been addressed. The copyeditor also assesses the general flow and determines that no copy was dropped during editing. The copyeditor's checks at the final manuscript stage are:
- Look for missing information, such as CE disclosures, disclaimers, self-tests and evaluations, comparing with recent printed pieces by the same CE provider or an established template.
- Determine that the answers to the self-test questions are evident in the content, querying the editor or writer if unsure.
- Check all dosages against package inserts or another verified source.
- Check that the references are complete, are written to the required style, such as the AMA Manual of Style, the company's house style or a journal's own style, match the text, and are correctly numbered, with text placeholders removed before layout; watch for a text that says "Smith and colleagues found" over a reference to Jones et al.
- Perform a cold read for general sense and flow.
- Check faculty titles and affiliations against a verified source.
- Look for misspellings the spellchecker did not pick up, and for grammatical errors.
The manager and copyeditor should keep communication open and discuss any important changes before they are implemented. Frequent communication makes the review smoother and more efficient, because it lets the copyeditor focus on the areas that need work at the time and postpone work on areas that are less important or subject to change. Poor communication between them results in inefficient work, or in a lack of understanding of the timelines that delays progress to layout, and the remedy is to engage the copyeditor in a dialogue about the project's parameters and timeline. Where a lack of global work prioritisation leaves the copyeditor without time for the project, the situation should be discussed with more senior staff such as the editorial director.
When an error-free manuscript exists, it is sent to the topic experts for approval. It can go to the CE reviewers at the accrediting institution at this stage or the next. Once the final manuscript has been developed and all reviewers have signed off, the project can move to layout.
Layout and printing
Layout begins when the manager passes the final manuscript to the art department. At the hand-off, the manager briefly reviews the project with the designer, clarifies any unusual formatting needs and, if necessary, highlights areas of missing information with the date by which it is expected. It is generally best not to have missing information at this stage, although in some situations it may be unavoidable. On receiving the first layout, the manager checks it against the final manuscript, checks all figures and tables against the original version of each, and checks general flow, readability and attractiveness. The copyeditor checks the layout against the contact information expert reviewers provided, including name, title and institution, against reviewers' emails with key data, and against written communications from other team members and other information from the manager. The copyeditor should pay special attention to symbols, which often drop out or change during layout. Where the designer has misunderstood the formatting style, speaking with the designer and, if necessary, providing printed examples of similar jobs usually remedies it.
The layout should be sent for internal and external reviews, including the topic expert and CE reviewer, and the precise timing of these reviews depends on the overall timeline. The optimal situation is for the editorial and art staff to do some basic clean-up of the layout before it goes for review, but the copyeditor should not spend large amounts of time fine-tuning it before review, because the copy could change.
At layout, major content changes affect the timeline even more severely than at the manuscript stage, because of the time staff in several departments, including art and editorial, have already invested. In the worst case, the manager may have to start over by returning to the manuscript stage. Before making major content changes, the manager should convene a meeting or conference call with all the reviewers, topic experts included, to discuss their changes and explore the rationale behind them. It may be possible to reduce the number of changes and so their impact on the timeline. Minor changes can be addressed individually as needed.
Requests for major content changes at this stage can arise because some reviewers do not focus on the content until it seems official, that is, until it has the appearance of a printed piece. If a similar problem has occurred before with a reviewer, or the manager has noticed signs of inattention such as few comments on drafts, the manager should intervene early by taking steps to focus the reviewer's attention on the content. Before the piece moves out of layout, all reviewers, including topic experts and CE reviewers, need to sign off.
Once any content issues are resolved, the manager reads through the piece once more, edits it for optimal content flow, checks for missing content or errors and ensures that figures and tables are correctly placed. By then all internal and external reviews, including the CE institution's, should have been completed and their changes incorporated. The manager discusses the job with the copyeditor and the designer to ensure that their reviews and changes are complete. Finally, the manager checks whether revisions are being made to any other project in the company that might affect this one, a check that is critical if the project is part of a multicomponent program under development. If no further changes or reviews are needed, the piece can be sent to the printer. Sending the piece to the printer is a major accomplishment on the timeline, and once it has gone the project is nearly complete.
The printer sends the designer a sample copy, termed an iris, showing what the final printed piece will look like, and the designer passes it to the manager for review. Both the manager and the copyeditor should read the iris through once, focusing especially on symbol changes or dropouts and on the rebreaking of lines, termed re-ragging. Any difference between the copy sent to the printer and the iris must be marked on the iris so that the two versions will match. Reviews by other staff, such as the account executive or editorial director, may be required, and all reviews of the iris should be completed within one day. The marked copy goes back to the printer, which sends a revised copy to be checked if changes were made. Some printers may provide the first on-press copy for review rather than a pre-press sample. Once the copy is correct, the piece is printed and distributed, and the manager shifts focus to the next project.
Errors introduced by late changes
If rewriting has been extensive, errors may have been introduced, and the more changes reviewers have made, the greater the chance of errors, particularly under timeline pressure. The copyeditor should then review the content carefully to make sure no material was overlooked or entered incorrectly during what is often an intense rush to move the project to layout.
At one organisation producing newsletter-type publications for external clients, clients often demanded frequent and complex editorial changes after a publication had been typeset in a graphic design program, on average about four client-driven page-proof revisions per publication. The clients usually required the changes within several hours of receipt. Each change had to pass through at least three staff hands, which introduced more entry points for error. Because of the tight time frame and the complexity of the changes, such as end-note changes and additions, table and figure modifications and complete sentence rewrites, errors were common. The organisation reviewed its editorial best practices to identify where and when the errors were occurring, and added further and different quality-control steps, including complete rereads of the publications at critical points and quality-control checklists, to help eliminate errors brought about by multiple client requests for changes and by changes made after the page-proof stage.
Where substantial changes are made late in the process, another look at the document after a good night's sleep and a rest, which regulatory writers call a sanity check, may be highly desirable to pick up any fatal flaws.
The debrief after a project
Among regulatory writers, when a hectic project comes to an end, especially one that has not gone entirely according to plan, a debrief is often held to identify mistakes and discuss what was learned, in the hope that the next project may go more smoothly.