In Praise of Artisanal Copy Editing
When I started in the publishing game all journals employed their own copy editors, who edited the accepted manuscripts prior to publication. As with all things, they were not all equally good, but several journals have or had long-standing copy editors who did an outstanding job. I learned a lot from them about writing. In particular, Persephone Doliner—who was the long time copy and production editor at Academy of Management Journal—and Linda Johanson and Joan Friedman, the retired and current (respectively) managing editors of Administrative Science Quarterly have been fantastic to work with. I also had a great copy editor, Geraldine Lyons at Edward Elgar, when wrapping up my forthcoming writing book. I call the kinds of copy editing experiences I had with them “Artisanal” copy editing because of its careful, high quality, hand crafted nature.
So what made these artisanal copy editing experiences? It was the direct, interactive, hands-on experience I had working with these folks. Their efforts allowed me to identify my writing tendencies, get some great, critical writing feedback, and negotiate what my final paper looked like. The copy editors would send me the final Word document I submitted when my paper was accepted with all their changes tracked, allowing me to easily see all their edits. Their edits highlighted my writing tendencies, suggested more effective wordings, and identified ambiguities and unnecessary jargon. It also made it easy for me to catch any of their edits that unintentionally changed the meaning of what I was trying to say. Because we were emailing directly, I could engage with them on these points, ask questions, and negotiate new language. In doing so, I was able to build a relationship with the copy editor, making it a richer experience. It also made reviewing the final, typeset article proof much easier, and led to fewer final changes at that stage.
Alas, very few journal or book publishers still employ the artisanal approach (ASQ and Edward Elgar being welcome exceptions). Rather, they have outsourced—which also means offshored—copy editing to third party services employing lower-paid, lower quality copy editors. This has reduced costs and sped up the process on the production side, but with detrimental consequences for the author experience and the final product’s quality. In this new system you have no idea who is copy editing your paper, and are only provided a generic contact point for emailing questions. Further, you are only sent the typeset proof in PDF format. Thus, you must hunt for the changes they’ve made. The quality of the copy editing is lower, and because PDFs are a pain in the ass to edit, if you want to make changes you have to write them all in comments and append them within the document. If it’s the same change 20 times, you thus have to make twenty changes, rather than making or requesting a global change, lest they miss any you don’t expressly flag. Even then, there’s no guarantee they make the changes in the final document, and you don’t get another look at the article until it’s published. In one instance I found several significant errors in the published piece. I contacted the journal, and to their credit they changed the online version of the published article, but that didn’t help for anyone who had already downloaded the original, poorly edited version, or received a print copy.
So, cherish any artisanal copy editing opportunity you get. If you haven’t already hired a copy editor during the review process, you might want to invest in doing so before submitting your final version, so you can have, and benefit from, the artisanal experience. And in all other cases, make sure you carefully read the typeset and published versions of your articles. Don’t hesitate to push back on changes you don’t like. It’s your name on the article, so it should read as you want it to.
Update: I’m sad to report that Linda Johanson died on November 4, 2022 from cancer. She was a towering figure in our field, serving as ASQ’s managing editor from 1982 to 2020, where she copy edited every article published during that period. She, more than anyone else, was responsible for the journal’s voice and the quality of the writing that appeared there. She will be greatly missed.