How we work
Agreed before it starts.
Accounted for as it runs.
Scope, standard, schedule and terms are settled with the editorial office at the outset. What follows describes the shape of the work, not the commercial arrangement, which is set out in the agreement between us.
We read the title before we propose anything
Recent issues, the template, the citation style, the volume and the rhythm of the schedule. Anything proposed without this is a guess dressed as a quotation.
A written basis
Scope, the standard to be held, the schedule and the commercial terms are agreed and recorded before any manuscript changes hands.
Files arrive as the office already produces them
We fit an existing workflow rather than asking an editorial office to adopt ours. Where something in that workflow is causing avoidable work, we will say so once, and then work with it either way.
Production
Editing and composition to the title’s specification. Anything ambiguous in a manuscript is raised as a query to the office rather than settled by an editor’s assumption.
The author round
Where proofing sits with us, the corresponding author marks corrections on the typeset article and the editorial office decides on each one. The office keeps final authority over its own pages.
Delivery
Final files in the required formats, on the agreed schedule, with a record of what was changed and on whose instruction.
Schedules
Schedules are set against a title’s publication calendar and confirmed in the agreement rather than quoted in the abstract. We would rather commit to a date that holds than to the shortest one that could be named.
Where something outside the work delays it — material still with an author, a decision still with the office — we say so at the time rather than let a date slip quietly.
Standards
Four commitments that
do not vary by title.
The office decides
Editorial authority stays where it belongs. We raise queries, propose and prepare; what is published is decided by the journal.
Nothing changes silently
Substantive changes are visible and attributable. An office should be able to ask why a line reads as it does and get an answer.
Confidentiality under agreement
Unpublished material is handled under the terms agreed with the publisher, seen only by those working on it, and used for no other purpose.
Integrity is not ours to smooth over
Where production reveals a problem that is not a production problem, it is reported to the office with what we found. It is not edited away.
Next step
One issue is the best test.
Produced end to end, against the standard the title already holds, it answers more than any proposal can.