Has Proofing Gotten Worse?

Query: Has proofing gotten worse since most journals have moved entirely to electronic submissions?

I ask this as an author, not an editor. The first paper that I submitted and had accepted (maybe 15 years ago) was copy-edited and I was sent proofs with many queries. I made my changes, saw another copy, and then it went to press.

Subsequently I have always had proofs sent to me, corrected and returned them, but never saw the final version prior to publication. In the last 3 years, however, I have been sent proofs very, very late in the process (usually requiring me to turn things around with no notice in 24 hours), and subsequent publication showed that the corrections had either not been done at all (in one very embarrassing case), only been half done, or had been done incorrectly. All were with relatively large journals from good publishers. As an author submitting to the journal I edit, I found that my corrections had been lost entirely (and not logged into the system) and only because I sent a subsequent update on a reference did the production editor catch it and realize my corrections had been lost. In another case, the European publisher wanted corrections returned by fax in 24 hours. I and the secretaries at my institution faxed more or less continuously to their constantly busy machine, finally got through after three days, and NONE of the corrections were made. In this particular case, my co-author's name (and all the references that included her) had the tilde in her name replaced with a Z. Other mistakes—all resulting from pulling in a Word document into their own software—were equally embarrassing to me.

I never had copy-editing mistakes in any of my earlier publications (that were not my own fault). I'm wondering if this problem is becoming more common, if I've just been unlucky, or if the rapidity of electronic turn-around and importing documents rather than re-setting them is resulting in problems. If so, is there anything we can do to minimize them?

Nancy Darling
Associate Editor, Journal of Adolescence
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From the description Nancy provided, and speaking as one who spent years as an in-house production editor, I think the problems she's encountering are caused not necessarily by copyeditors or proofreaders but unrealistic production schedules created in the face of decreasing budgets and by a process now run by business people rather than by editorial experts. I subscribe to multiple editing-related e-mail lists, and I read the same complaints there, for the same reasons.

With shortened production schedules and budget cuts, more and more journals are telling the freelance copyeditors they contract with that they will be paying lower hourly or page rates; the talented copyeditors who are fond of affording to eat move on to better-paying clients, who are sometime authors who know journals may no longer take the best care with their articles. These same journals often do not even bother to hire or contract with proofreaders and are relying entirely on authors to proofread their own page proofs or expect harried in-house production editors, who have pressing production duties—working with vendors, crunching budget numbers, and creating production schedules—to do it in addition to their other duties. Some American journals are also outsourcing copyediting and proofreading to nations where the labor costs are much lower and the workers are not native speakers of English.

The move to importing authors' documents electronically rather than having someone typeset them from hard copy actually has decreased the chance of introducing errors. But corrections were once usually input by a composition (typesetting and page makeup) firm—an outside vendor—with expertise in words, and page makeup was done by another department within the firm that had expertise in page makeup. Now, to cut costs, journals' own internal desktop publishing staff members, who may be visual artists more experienced with page makeup than with words, are asked to both make editorial corrections and do page makeup. And at this stage, too, outsourcing to firms in other nations is becoming quite common.

Astoundingly, a management expert—who was not also a publishing expert—brought in to cut costs by an American medical publisher for which I worked in the early 1990s was heard to ask, "What value does [the copyeditorial] department add to our product anyway? Would our readers even notice if our books and journals were edited by a software program instead by people?" That midsize publisher was later bought by a larger publisher, which in turn was subsumed by an even larger publisher.

You get what you pay for.

Katharine O'Moore-Klopf
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I would think it quite reasonable to expect to see your changes sent to the editor turn up in print, especially so if you were asked to make the changes! I really hope you have had bad luck (and experienced bad manners).

I always send the edited version to the author before publication if I have had to make changes I think the author would want to know about (especially concerning medical issues). I also invite the author to add their references (if not present when I think they should be added) and I ask the author to edit back very long articles themselves. Who wants a stroppy or offended author (especially when he or she has a right to be so) nipping at their heels? Some authors (like some editors) are so precious, but I suspect, Nancy, that you are one of the most obliging authors!

Vivienne Miller
Diabetes Management Journal
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Proofreading and correction of articles by authors is still being done. However, sometimes the corrections the authors have suggested may not be necessary or it may not conform to the journal's style. In such case the editor may not make the changes. Also, if you are asking for too many corrections at the proof stage the editor may not consider them because of the cost in money and time. If the corrections are fundamental and have to do with the science of your article then the editor should do everything possible to make them.

Sometimes authors respond very late in correcting proofs and the work may have gone to press before it gets to the editor, so the editor simply ignores the corrections. Editors usually give a timeframe for the author to return his/her proofs, after which they assume that you do not have corrections and go to press. Every author should understand that the journal also has its own schedule which if altered may affect other things.

In your own case, I feel a 24-hour ultimatum is too short. It seems to me that the editor must have tried to send it to you earlier without any response and was sending it to you as a second attempt or as a reminder. I cannot also rule out the fact that he was sending it for the first time. In any case, authors should be given enough time to correct their proof so that the purpose of sending it to them is achieved. Sometimes an author may be attending a meeting or doing some other things at the time the proof arrives and in that case he may not be able to respond immediately. The editor should take such things into consideration when setting deadline for the return of the proofs.

Above all, if an author makes time to correct the proofs, then the editor should effect the changes, and the editor should inform the author if for any reason he/she feels otherwise.

James Falaiye

Science Writer/Editor
Communication, Documentation and Information Services (CODIS)
International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA)
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Nancy Darling's experiences with unsatisfactory editing and proofing processes are probably not related to the use of an electronic manuscript submittal and tracking system. The mishaps can be classified, for the benefit of colleagues who'd like to review their own processes (as described in Kimberly Taylor's posting), into 3 different types of problems.

1. When the deadline for delivering corrected proofs is unrealistically short, and the corrections are not input correctly even when the author complies, this is evidence of less than ideal coordination or communication. Perhaps the editorial office is understaffed, or perhaps the editors need to have a serious talk with the publisher to work out just who is responsible and accountable for what, and when. The more jobs get outsourced, the more important it is to have an experienced, alert project manager or managing editor to oversee every step in the process. In any case, this sort of problem suggests that the journal's editorial process needs to be improved.

2. Typesetting and file conversion errors caused an author's name to be misspelled. Part of the reason for this type of error is probably to be found in Katharine O'Moore-Klopf's explanation of recent changes in copyediting, typesetting, page layout, and proofreading processes. (By the way, it is not only American journals that  are outsourcing copyediting and proofreading to places where labor costs are lower and workers are not necessarily as skilled in scientific-technical-medical copyediting as colleagues in the Western Hemisphere or Europe.) That these errors caused embarrassment to the author and a gross misspelling of an author's name in print (and probably in database files—where this kind of error is hard to correct) are serious failings, and the journal should be held accountable and asked to make amends somehow.

3. The busy fax machine that wouldn't let the authors meet the deadline for delivering proofs is a case of just plain inadequate equipment for the job of running an editorial office. The firm involved should get a better fax machine with suitable memory, or another phone/fax line or two. It is unfair to authors for their corrections to miss the deadline just because the office was not equipped to handle a certain volume of fax transmissions within a given period. Again, the authors should complain to the editors, and the editors should have a serious talk with the publisher.

Basically, it is the publisher's responsibility to see that these steps in the publication process are handled professionally; if they shirk these responsibilities, they are selling their clients (editors, scientific societies, etc.) short. If publication is managed in-house by the editors themselves, as is often the case for smaller journals, then it is the editor's responsibility to see to it that the quality control of each step in the process is adequate to meet the readers' needs.

Authors of course STILL have nowhere to go (apart from the WAME list and a few other lists, and COPE) when they are victims of editorial mismanagement. I'd agree with Kimberly that authors need to be told very clearly what's expected of them, and need to comply with certain things that  are meant to facilitate the whole review, editing and publication process. But when there are serious mess-ups that are not the author's fault but do damage the author's interests or reputation, surely the miscreant editors or publishers should also be held accountable for performing their duties with due diligence? Fair is fair. Authors are being asked to do more and more editing and production work (which many of them are not skilled in) these days, so what's left for publishers to do other than get paid more and more for doing less and less?

Karen Shashok