1. Journals Manuscript Editing at the
University of Chicago Press
John Muenning
Publishing Technology Manager
Journals Division
University of Chicago Press
SSP/AAUP Webinar: “Improving the Copyediting Workflow,” May 7, 2009
Workflow,” 1
2. University of Chicago Press
Largest American university press
Small by commercial standards
Not for profit
Publish 46 journals and ~250 books/year
~46,000 journal pages/year
~300,000 DOIs registered with CrossRef
~80,000 full-text articles online
43 electronic journals
Annuals to biweeklies
Literary criticism to medicine and astronomy
SSP/AAUP Webinar: “Improving the Copyediting Workflow,” May 7, 2009
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3. Early electronic editing in Journals
First electronic manuscripts in 1989
Editing in WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS
Macros for cleanup, footnote handling, querying,
coding, etc.
Set up procedures and trained in-house staff of copy
editors
Improved workflow
Worked with typesetting vendors to make
downstream processes as efficient as possible
Goal was to save time and money in the production
process without adding time in copyediting
SSP/AAUP Webinar: “Improving the Copyediting Workflow,” May 7, 2009
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4. Single-source SGML process
Early adopter of SGML
For the Astrophysical Journal in 1994
– Before journals were published on the Web
Learned the single-source model works best
Benefits of SGML and XML
Speed
– Editing time increased but downstream processes
much more efficient
Control
– No back-end quality control necessary
Parallel publishing to multiple output streams
Reuse
SSP/AAUP Webinar: “Improving the Copyediting Workflow,” May 7, 2009
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5. Life of a manuscript
Peer review
Transmittal and conversion
Copyediting
Typesetting and print
Web publishing
Archiving
SSP/AAUP Webinar: “Improving the Copyediting Workflow,” May 7, 2009
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6. Transmittal and conversion
Aries’ Editorial Manager transmits accepted
manuscripts and their metadata into our
production system
Conversion to SGML or XML from unstructured
or quasi-structured author files
One house DTD
Economies of scale
Ease of maintenance
Copy editors begin their work on fully tagged
manuscripts
SSP/AAUP Webinar: “Improving the Copyediting Workflow,” May 7, 2009
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7. Copyediting
Editors are closest to the content
Editing in SGML with Arbortext Editor
Highly trained in-house copy editors
Training in style from six months to more than a year
Training to take advantage of Arbortext and SGML
All changes to content or structure at any stage
are made in Arbortext, mostly by copy editors
Every word and structure in the print or online
editions of our articles is accounted for in the SGML
SSP/AAUP Webinar: “Improving the Copyediting Workflow,” May 7, 2009
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8. UCP’s editing environment
Developed over the course of 14 years
Customized to reflect editorial requirements and
practice
Suite of tools for facilitating content preparation
Arbortext knows the structure of the edited document
and lets you use it
– Context-sensitive searching, etc.
– Enables sophisticated automation of editing tasks
Goal is to let editors be editors, not geeks
SSP/AAUP Webinar: “Improving the Copyediting Workflow,” May 7, 2009
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10. Editing tools
Metadata maintenance
Updates metadata from edited manuscript at the end
of each editing session
Markup
Cleanup
Tag templates
Sections and subsections
Verification/error trapping
Beyond validation
Redlining
SSP/AAUP Webinar: “Improving the Copyediting Workflow,” May 7, 2009
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11. Autoredaction: EditPrep
Pressure to increase productivity among copy
editors without diminishing quality
Tools to automate the imposition of appropriate
aspects of editorial style
Silent, flagged, and interactive changes
Redlining and comments to indicate changes as
appropriate
Editorial staff defines and maintains the rules
Can take advantage of SGML to create complex,
context-specific rules
Astronomy group defined more than 850 rules
SSP/AAUP Webinar: “Improving the Copyediting Workflow,” May 7, 2009
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15. Complex content
Mathematics
Edited in SGML using WYSYWG editor
Tools to facilitate copyediting math
– De-mathing and re-mathing
– Math tag mode: enables search and replace across
documents and validates math
Tables
Edited in SGML using WYSYWG editor
Tools to help with alignment, rules, ellipses, de-
doubling, joining and separating columns containing
data with common patterns, and cell shading
SSP/AAUP Webinar: “Improving the Copyediting Workflow,” May 7, 2009
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16. Typesetting
Most pages typeset from copyedited SGML
In house with Penta SGML Publisher
Integration with Arbortext editing environment
Typesetting and pagination tweaked with Arbortext
menu items
Some journals have staff dedicated to typesetting
By typesetting vendors from SGML
Deliver print- and Web-optimized PDF and EPS
extracts for math and tables
SSP/AAUP Webinar: “Improving the Copyediting Workflow,” May 7, 2009
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17. Web publishing
Atypon Systems’ Literatum platform
Imports UCP SGML or NLM XML
Serves PDF and HTML proof to authors
Staging before going live
Hosts our published electronic journals
SSP/AAUP Webinar: “Improving the Copyediting Workflow,” May 7, 2009
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18. Lessons learned
Copy editors must be flexible
Use standards like SGML and XML as far
upstream in your workflow as possible
Even standards-based solutions will eventually
become obsolete
We are currently retooling and updating our
workflow to use NLM XML
Build or buy modular solutions to allow you to
adapt gracefully to changing requirements
Customization and integration are work
So is outsourcing
SSP/AAUP Webinar: “Improving the Copyediting Workflow,” May 7, 2009
Workflow,” 18
19. Thank you!
John Muenning
jmuenning@press.uchicago.edu
SSP/AAUP Webinar: “Improving the Copyediting Workflow,” May 7, 2009
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