Receiving copyedits on your academic manuscript represents a crucial milestone in your publishing journey. For many scholars, however, it can be difficult to know what you’re supposed to actually do with a copyedited manuscript to move it to the next stage of publication.
Understanding how to effectively handle manuscript copyedits can make the difference between a smooth publication process and unnecessary delays or misunderstandings.
The purpose of copyediting
Unlike developmental editing—which helps you develop the ideas, argumentation, and structure of the manuscript (and thus takes place earlier on)—copyediting happens once all your content is set.
Copyediting focuses solely on writing and ensures your manuscript communicates your ideas clearly and consistently in a way that will hail your desired audiences.
A professional copyeditor improves grammar, sentence structure, spelling, punctuation, formatting, citations, consistency, and adherence to the publisher’s style guide. Their goal is to help your ideas shine while maintaining your unique voice and perspective.
Receiving your manuscript copyedits
When you first receive your copyedited manuscript, resist the urge to immediately accept or reject changes. Instead, first check the email or other editorial communication that outlines what was edited and how, as well as any specific information you need to know when reviewing edits.
Look through the style sheet, which contains important information about the style choices and formatting rules applied to your manuscript.
Familiarize yourself with the tracking system used. Most copyedits are delivered using Microsoft Word’s Track Changes feature or similar tools in other word processors. There will also be some author queries as margin comments that explain certain choices to you, ask you to make a decision about something, or alert you to something important in the manuscript. You should be able to view all the copyeditor’s changes and approve or reject them as desired.
Scan through the edited manuscript to get a feel for the scope and nature of the edits and author queries before addressing them individually.
Once you’ve gotten an overview of the edit, you can dive into approving and/or rejecting the individual edits. These edits typically fall into several categories, involving differing degrees of author choices and intervention.
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Language and grammar corrections
Detailed language corrections in a copyedited manuscript typically include fixes for grammatical errors, awkward phrasing, or punctuation issues. These are usually rather uncontroversial as they ensure your manuscript adheres to the publisher’s style guide.
I recommend accepting these changes unless they alter your intended meaning (in which case, go ahead and reject—but make sure to still fix the element in a way that more accurately reflects your intended meaning).
Queries and comments
Copyeditors often leave questions or comments about unclear passages, inconsistencies, or elements that require you to make a decision based on your personal preference.
For instance, the copyeditor may alert you to the fact that you equally use both LGBT and LGBTQ+ across the manuscript—both initialisms are grammatically correct and fine to use, but they have different political significance. A good copyeditor will flag the inconsistency for you and ask you which version you prefer so your choice can be applied consistently across the text.
Queries also often ask you to review and/or clarify tangled passages if they were difficult for the copyeditor to understand. In that case, a good copyeditor will ask you to review their changes or recommendations to ensure they correctly reflect your meaning and to adjust things if needed.
Formatting changes
Formatting changes in a copyedited manuscript ensure consistency with the publisher’s style guide and include adjustments to headings, citations, indents, figure captions and callouts, abstract and keywords placement, and bibliography formatting.
Unless you notice a mistake or you have a strong reason to disagree (for instance, if you deliberately want to lowercase a name or use a specific term for political reasons), I recommend accepting those changes as they usually improve the manuscript’s professionalism.
Keep in mind that the copyeditor follows the publisher’s style guide, so if you feel strongly about departing from that style guide on a specific element, add a query explaining your reasoning so the publisher can review.
Substantive suggestions
Occasionally, copyeditors may recommend reorganizing content or expanding explanations. On a large scale, this type of advice is considered developmental editing and thus shouldn’t be part of a standard copyedit. But there are times where a copyeditor will catch something that has made it through and will flag it for your intervention.
Consider these suggestions carefully—they reflect how readers might experience your text. It’s also fine to reject those recommendations if they do not align with your intended audience.
Creating your clean copy
Once you’ve had a chance to review the copyedited manuscript, it’s time to create your clean copy. This is the manuscript version that you’ll submit to the publisher or scholarly journal.
For the clean copy, make sure all tracked changes have been accepted or rejected. There should not be any visible tracked changes in the new document.
Delete any remaining queries and responses that are not directly relevant to the publisher or journal given the stage of publication. This will likely be most—if not all—of the queries.
Give the clean copy an accessible and professional file name that includes your name and relevant identifying information—avoid generic file names like Jones Manuscript or Draft 7. File names like Jones Watching Gender Book Proposal and Jones Watching Gender GLQ Submission are much more accessible and easier to understand. This helps busy acquisition editors and faculty journal editors identify your manuscript from the dozens of email attachments they get each day.
Final thoughts
Learning to navigate a copyedited manuscript effectively is an invaluable skill for academic authors. By approaching copyedits as a collaborative process rather than a critique, you can ensure your manuscript reaches its full potential.
Remember that both you and your copyediting team share the same goal: producing the clearest, most compelling version of your scholarly work. Your work deserves to shine, and quality copyediting is one of the best ways to ensure it does.
Ideas on Fire specializes in helping interdisciplinary scholars navigate the copyediting process with confidence. Contact us to learn more about how our experienced academic editors can help strengthen your next manuscript.
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