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Guidelines for Editors of Multi-Authored Works

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

Volumes with multiple editors: Assign the tasks below and let your Acquisitions 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. If the chapters are to be reviewed by all the editors, assign one editor to collate all changes and communicate these to the in-house Acquisitions Editor.

Housekeeping

Notify contributors of the schedule so that they may plan accordingly. Notify your Acquisitions Editor of all planned extended absences. Please provide a list of all contributors' e-mail addresses. Be sure to ask contributors to inform you of changes to their contact information. Having multiple contributors often increases the length of time that it takes to bring a manuscript to the stage that it is ready for submission. There might be many months between the time you have "finalized" the chapters of your most efficient contributors and those of the contributors who tend to procrastination. Even the most meticulously edited chapter is likely to elicit a few queries from your in-house editor. If you intend to have the contributors respond to the in-house editor's comments, it will be important in avoiding delays in production that you have not lost touch with those first, more efficient contributors.

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. Please review the artwork guidelines as early as possible and contact the Acquisitions Editor if you have any questions.

The Copyediting Stage

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.

Contributors should return their chapters to you, and you must ensure that they have responded to the queries. Return a single version of each revised chapter to your in-house editor. Do not send one version of a chapter with the contributor's comments and another version with yours.

In all correspondence, refer to chapters by both the chapter number and the author name, not by the title (e.g., Chapter 10 Smith.doc).

Beyond the Copyediting Stage

After the chapters have been returned to the press, you can expect to receive further queries: 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. In some cases, contributors will also have the opportunity to review the page proofs of their own chapter.