copyediting- why, what and how

Leanne Slavin is a copyeditor at MUP, and came in for three sessions to discuss the copy editing role, what it entails and how you can go into it. She also gave us some great insight into the changing publishing landscape for editors in particular.

Copyediting is defined by the following roles:

• Checking basic spelling mistakes
• Checking grammar and continuity
• Checking for sentence formatting and re-editing appropriately
• Checking for coherence
• Checking references and style
• Checking that the text meets the house style guidelines (more in the 'commissioning editing' posts earlier in the blog)
• Checking reader understanding and general readability (these academics can be a bit wafflly)
• Checking facts and dates - although the author is primarily given this responsibility.

However, the editing process is not as simple as first assumed.  This is because a very tenuous relationship exists between editor and author, and this must be maintained carefully at all times. For this reason, the 'track changes' feature on Microsoft Word is a lifesaver. This gives the author the opportunity to see what has been changed, and also offers the editor the chance to 'flag up' any peculiar wording or incorrect facts before omitting it completely. This will be very useful on the copyediting test.

We also heard about the development of certain BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China. With the rise of educational budgets in developing countries, UK publishers can create a larger print run to reduce costs, and then export a majority of these books to schools abroad.

UPDATE: The copyediting test went really well, and I received a good grade. Although I like to edit work, I do not think I could choose this path as a career as I am a very fast reader, and I am not certain that I would be able to slow down spot small errors to the level expected.

the future of academic publishing

Academic publishing is a sector that relies more heavily than most on political and institutional changes.

Library Funding 

Libraries are particularly important to the academic publisher, and cuts to funding can be extremely harmful to business. Recently, this Guardian article noted that UK library budgets had been cut by 60%, and £1.5 million. This threat to the industry can be worked around by exporting to the developing and BRIC countries with a high concentration of english-speaking people. These governments in some instances are increasing their public education budgets by a $100billion and are likely to buy academic textbooks from the UK. 

REF

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a government-run system that works to allocate the £1.6 billion funding to Higher Education institutions. The validity of this framework is debatable, in short because the universities that house the best academics might not necessarily be the institutions with the best teaching standards. If the academics are putting such time into their research, it follows that lecture planning and student support could be insufficiently prioritised. 

Academics in the framework must complete one substantial piece of research each six years to receive payment and maintain their position. This is most often presented in the form of a monograph, and must be published by a reputable academic publisher. Work must be submitted 14 months before publication. 

The ethical issues with the framework concern the inclusiveness of young researchers who need to teach to improve their position, and female academics who could require necessary time off for maternity- time which is still categorised as 'research time'. For these reasons, it could be argued that the framework favours older men. 

If these logical and ethical pitfalls in the framework become more widely discussed in the near future and the REF is dismantled, this could pose a large threat to academic publishers, who rely on monograph publication to sustain their businesses. However, it is difficult to see how these issues can be overcome without analysing an alternative system. 

Open Access

The term 'double dipping' is defined by a publisher seeking an unwarrantable increase in revenues by levying article processing charges (APCs) for publication in a journal, while not providing a decrease in subscription costs.To overcome this, ideas about Open Access have been discussed in business thinktanks, who believe that this practice is immoral. 

Open Access would mean that every journal would be made available to the public, through the gratis or green model, or with an extra charge for additional rights under the libre or gold model. This would open up a much greater power dynamic between the author and publisher, with the author attaining more say in the publication of their work.

 This could provide a large threat to the academic publisher, as a lot of the revenue and holdings could be taken away. However, a move toward less journal publication could be a way to overcome this problem, and a rise in print and monograph editions could follow.