Author review (AR) is your chance to address the queries and edits made in your manuscript by the Technical Editor and Project Editor and to add, revise, and delete content as necessary. You have two different phases of AR -- one where you review your manuscript after editing but before layout, and one where you review PDFs after your manuscript has been laid out and proofread.
Author Review Schedule
The key points to remember about your author review schedule are as follows:
- When does author review take place? Ordinarily, you will be given chapters for author review even before you've finished writing the initial manuscript, and you may have time while you are finishing the initial manuscript to get started on some author review work. Note that you will also be responsible for reviewing PDFs, and depending on your schedule, it is conceivable (albeit unlikely) that you will have new manuscript, Author Review of manuscript, and PDF review all on your plate at the same time. It's more likely you'll have two of those three at any given time.
- When is author review due back? Your editor will set deadlines for when AR has to be back, and it is imperative you stick to these deadlines so that your book can flow smoothly into production and stay on schedule.
- How much time is scheduled for author review? The pace of author review is a more aggressive one than your initial writing phase. You will ordinarily not have more than 48 hours to review a given chapter, and you will be asked to turn over chapters immediately as you finish reviewing them to help keep the book moving.
Author Review of Manuscript Instructions
Please keep the following key points in mind as you perform your author review on your manuscript (there's another list later for review of PDFs).
- Please always work with revision marks turned on. Each chapter should have Word's revision marks already turned on. You can tell that they are turned on because every change you make is marked – generally, that means that new text is underlined and shown in color and deleted text is struckthrough in color. If revision marks are not turned on when you receive a chapter, please turn them on!
In Word 2007: Select the Review tab. Find the Track Changes and select it. The option will turn orange when turned on. Also, make sure the Display for Review pull-down list is showing the following option "Final Showing Markup."
In Word 2003: Choose Tools
Track Changes and in the Reviewing Toolbar (right click in the toolbar area at the top of the screen and select Reviewing if this toolbar isn't visible) make sure "Final Showing Markup" is selected in the Display for Review pull-down list.
Then go ahead and make any necessary changes in the text that either we're asking for from you or that you think should be made. - Please don't use Word's comment feature to respond to queries. When you respond to any queries, please use only the Query or Author Query style provided in the template. Do not embed comments in the file using Word's own comments feature.
- Please don't accept the revision marks already in the chapter. It's critical for us to be able to see all queries and changes from everyone (editors, tech reviewers, and authors) when we do our final clean-up pass following author review. It's kind of like putting the pieces of a puzzle together, and we need to see who said to do what.
- Please be sure to respond to every query. When we ask you whether a particular change we've made is okay, please at least type "Changes OK" at the end of our query. Even if you simply say "Changes OK," or "Leave as is," please put some kind of response after each query in the chapter. That way, we know for sure that you read our question. Your responses will show up in a different color so that we can quickly see that you responded to our question.
Note: If we've made a change that you disagree with, press Enter to create a new line after the paragraph or after our query and explain why the change doesn't work. You can ask us to change it back to the original, or you can go ahead and make a different change in the actual paragraph. Again, your response and changes will show up in a different color that we'll be able to see. - Focus your attention on queries made and answering those. Most of the line by line editing changes were just made to smooth out the text or conform it to house conventions, so don't feel the need to read back through the chapter line by line. (Though if you disagree with any particular change in the line edit, please let your editor know why and change it to how you think it should be.)
- Please check figure, table, and listing numbering. If you add or delete any figures, tables, or code listings, be sure to renumber the rest of the figures, tables, and code listings accordingly as needed.
- Submit replacement or additional figures with your author review. If you are replacing or adding figures in author review, be sure to submit any replacement or additional figure files for the chapter when you returned the author reviewed chapters.
- Double-check code and submit final code download file. Be sure to check code carefully during author review. If you make any changes to the code in author review or if you just have not yet submitted the code for the chapter to your Project Editor, please submit a zip containing the final sample code for that chapter when you return the chapter from author review.
- Please submit chapters as you finish them. When you have reviewed the entire chapter and saved your changes, please return the chapter to the editor who sent it to you (tag the end of the filename with a "_AR" to show it has been AR'd by you). Don't wait to send in a whole batch. It will then go through a final clean-up pass in which all revisions are accepted, new material is edited, spell check is run, and all formatting is checked and fixed, as necessary.
Author Review of PDFs
After you return your edited manuscript, the PJE will clean it up and submit it to production. Production oversees the layout, indexing, and proofreading processes of your book. When the chapters have been laid out to series specifications, a PDF of the laid-out chapter is compared to the final Word doc by a proofreader and sent to the PJE. Your PJE will check titles, running heads, figures and tables, headings, and so on, but you should keep an eye on those things as well. Here are a few specific things for you to check in detail:- Most importantly, review the proofreader's marks. If you object to anything, note it. If not, no action is necessary.
- Respond clearly and fully to proofreader questions. Sometimes they just suggest a change and follow it with a question mark. This requires you to approve the change.
- Review your sidebars and figures. Are they as intended? Do they end where intended?
- Review your tables. Do they appear as you intended?
- Review your code. Are the breaks correct?
- This is not the time for a line-by-line read and edit of your chapters. However, if you do notice something is wrong (or something has changed since you submitted the file) you may ask that the change be made now. Note that any changes you make now should not cause reflow (meaning, chapters to end on a different page than they do already). If there is time in the schedule, or it is a critical error, those changes will be made.
In order for you to make changes on the PDF, you will have to have Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can download free versions of this from the Internet (go to www.adobe.com/downloads, and then select Reader). You will want to use the "Commenting and Markup Toolbar" (Go to View Toolbars Commenting and Markup, or something similar, depending on your version) to access a tool bar including a text box with which you can add your comments, edits. We have been asked not to use the post-it feature, as the compositors don't always see or expand them.
