Returning Copyedits & Accepting Changes
Once all essays within a volume have been copyedited, they should be sent back to the volume editor, who will distribute the essays to the contributors for review. It’s never a bad idea to review all your comments for tone/clarity before sending the documents back to the authors.
Clear communication is important through the review process to ensure the authors only review your changes and don’t continue tinkering with their prose (which would, of course, necessitate a fresh copyedit). Use the following template to facilitate your return of the essay.
Boilerplate for Returning Copyedits to Volume Editors
Dear [volume editor(s)],
Attached you’ll find the copy edits of all eight essays in your forthcoming volume with Romantic Circles, [INSERT TITLE]. At your earliest convenience, please pass these edited essays to your contributors for their approval. To keep everything on schedule, we’re requesting that all edits be approved and these documents returned by [INSERT DATE]. Here are a few guidelines and considerations to pass along:
- I’ve attached a PDF of the RC house style to this e-mail [or link to Contributor Resources / RC House Style]. Specific editorial decisions are outlined here, so please provide this document to each author along with their edited essay.
- All edits have been marked using MS Word’s “Track Changes” function. Please leave this function switched on. Authors should feel free to enforce suggested edits, leave comments, etc., but they should not “accept” any changes. Upon our re-receipt of the files, RC technical editors will treat all remaining changes in the document as approved (if there are no comments to the contrary) and will “accept” all changes.
- If an author wishes to reject a revision or suggestion, they should leave a comment rather than removing (“rejecting”) the edit from Track Changes.
- The attached copy edits are for final production. We cannot accommodate substantive edits or changes beyond those requested by the copyeditor(s).
- We ask that all responses/edits be finalized by [INSERT DATE]. Each author should return their essay to the volume editor, and the editor will pass them back to me. To prevent lost files, please return all essay files for the volume in a single e-mail to this thread.
- After [INSERT DATE], RC will assume all changes have been approved and will begin the TEI encoding process, after which no further changes will be possible.
- After the encoding stage, RC technical editors will distribute a link to online proofs of the volume for final approval. This normally occurs 2–4 weeks after our re-receipt of the edited essays.
Accepting changes
Per RC’s instructions for author review of copyedits, when you receive the essays back, Track Changes should still be turned on and all comments and edits should still appear (i.e., be unresolved). Carefully go through the document, review each author’s responses to your comments, and make the necessary corrections to the essay. Delete each comment as you address it. Once this process is complete, you should be able to “Approve All” changes within the Track Changes toolbar/menu. Once all changes have been resolved and all comments have been deleted (the page size should “shrink” back to its original size when no more changes are marked), you should save the clean copy of each essay as a new file.
If, in your review of the document, an author disputes your changes or disputes an edit, review your work. If either decision seems correct, defer to the author. If you feel strongly about your decision—and/or the author’s wishes seem factually, ethically, or academically problematic, you should refer the issue to the volume and section editors. If necessary, the final decision for any editorial decision will be made by the general editors in consultation with the appropriate ection editor(s).