Notes for Editors

Once your proposal for a Proceedings volume has been accepted by the Publishing and Conferences Committee, the following points below outline the stages of preparing the volume and your responsibility as Editor(s).

Editors will receive a Letter of Agreement and Licence to Publish form once the proposal has been accepted. Each contributor will also receive a Licence to Publish form for their contribution.

Author email addresses will be required from all contributors to enable the dissemination of Licence to Publish forms.

All Licence to Publish forms should be signed and returned to the Publishing department prior to submitting the final work.

The authors’ draft texts should be submitted to the Editors directly; it is the Editors' to make sure that authors adhere to the agreed schedule.

As Editors you are responsible for managing the peer review process and for ensuring the quality of the volume. How you wish to determine this arrangement is within your discretion as Editor, though each paper must be sent for comment to at least one referee who is not an Editor of the volume nor an author contributing to the volume. It is important that papers for these themed volumes are refereed to the same standards, therefore your role in this process is crucial.

Authors should be given reasonable time to revise their work in light of the peer review comments before the full manuscript is submitted to the Academy for review.

The Academy understands that as a consequence of the reviewing and editing process, it may be necessary to amend the contents list of the volume as originally agreed. If you think that a contribution is for any reason unsuitable for inclusion in the volume and that it should therefore be omitted or replaced by an alternative, please inform the Publishing department.

Introduction

The volume should contain an ambitious and substantial Introduction by the Editors, which will sell the topic and the volume to the reader. The British Academy’s Publishing and Conferences Committee takes a keen interest in each volume’s Introduction and it will be reviewed alongside the manuscript's reader's report.

Style and referencing

Please refer to the style guide for instructions regarding editorial style and referencing.

As Editors you will decide on the referencing format for your volume. This will be either Harvard or MHRA referencing. Authors will prepare their work according to the appropriate references as confirmed by the Editors.

Editors are not required to undertake any copyediting, however when providing editorial feedback to the authors, please draw their attention to any significant deviations from the style guide so that they may correct these in their final draft.

Illustrations

It is the authors' responsibility to obtain the necessary permissions for images used in the volume.

The use of colour illustrations should be discussed with the Publishing department during the contract stage. Whilst the Academy will publish colour figures, it is important to consider how vital the requirement of colour is for the purpose of the volume. Colour printing impacts on the production costs and the price of the book. If the volume is particularly colour heavy, please consider if funding can be obtained, and discuss this with the Publishing department as early as possible.

For detailed information relating to image requirements, refer to the Illustrations section in the style guide.

Content structure

Please ensure that chapters, figures, and tables are numbered correctly throughout the volume.

All papers should constitute numbered chapters.

Figures and Tables should be numbered in sequence for each chapter, e.g. Figure 1.1, Figure 1.2, Table 1.1, Table 1.2, etc.

The preliminary pages of the complete volume text should include, in the following order:

• Title page
• Contents list
• List of illustrations (if applicable)
• List of tables (if applicable)
• Preface and/or Acknowledgements

Other front matter not listed above, for instance Abbreviations, etc, is also acceptable.

Once the peer review process has been completed and you are happy with the volume, the complete and final text should be submitted to the Publishing department for review ([email protected]).

The manuscript will be sent to a reader for a final evaluation of the entire work before the Publishing and Conferences Committee meets to discuss the volume. At this stage, the Committee will decide whether the volume is suitable for publication or if further work is required. The Academy reserves the right not to publish the volume on quality grounds.

Final approval for publication rests with the Academy’s Publishing and Conferences Committee.

On approval of the final text by the Publishing and Conferences Committee, you may have been asked to make minor revisions to your manuscript prior to sending this to us.

Production work can only proceed once the final and complete manuscript is submitted to the Publishing department, along with all required forms as provided in the Submission Pack upon Committee acceptance.

Project manager

A project manager will be appointed to manage the production stages of the volume. They will provide a schedule and serve as the main point of contact for proofs and queries.

Where there is more than one Editor, it is important to establish who will be responsible for dealing with copyediting queries and proofs.

Copyediting

The copyeditor will liaise directly with the volume Editors. Copyediting queries along with the tracked changes will be sent to the Editors.

Proofs

First proofs of each chapter will be sent to the lead author. Please note that at this stage, all queries should be resolved from the earlier copyediting stage. First proofs are designed for minor corrections and to ensure tables and figures are correctly positioned and presented as you would like them. Extensive changes to first proofs may impact upon the schedule, therefore it is advisable for authors to ensure they check their copyedited work very carefully, and to note any additional changes at the copyediting stage.

The Editors will be sent a full set of first proofs. Authors will be asked to return their corrections to the Editors, and it will be the Editors' responsibility to collate the proofs into one master set to be returned to the project manager. A second set of proofs will be provided to the Editors only.

Index

The Editors will be required to index the volume at the copyediting stage using Word's embedded indexing tools. Indexing at this stage in production has a number of advantages, particularly as it allows you to concentrate on checking proofs when they arrive, without the added task of indexing from the proofs. This way of indexing also adds to the functionality of e-books and any other electronic versions of your book that may be produced. Guidelines on producing the index by this system will be provided by your project manager.

Cover

The Publishing department will request a selection of potential cover images from you as part of your final submission. It is the Editors' responsibility to ensure, where necessary, that any permission-related costs for the cover are resolved. The Publishing department will provide a selection of design options for the Editors' consideration.

Authors will receive a PDF file of their final published contribution which they may use to run off additional paper copies for non-commercial distribution to colleagues, or which they may email as a ‘virtual’ offprint to individual colleagues for their own scholarly use (which excludes the right for them to email it on to others); this PDF file of the final published version may not be posted on an electronic bulletin board or website, or deposited in an institutional or subject repository. See the 'Open Access' section below for guidance surrounding depositing chapters in online repositories.

Editors will also receive a complimentary print copy of the volume. Please refer to your contract for details.

Once the volume is ready for publication, the Publishing team will be in touch with more details relevant to your title, including publication date and marketing contact.

Marketing is handled by our partner, Liverpool University Press. We have a dedicated marketing executive that you will be put in touch with closer to publication. They will be your first point of call for any marketing queries, including arranging reviews, submissions to prizes, and marketing materials.

LUP will provide a marketing questionnaire at a later stage. Your answers to this will help inform their marketing strategy, but typical marketing for our volumes involves:

• targeted email campaigns to a global network of readers with genuine academic interest
• submission to prizes in the subject area
• solicitation of reviews in relative publications
• supporting book launches and talks organized by the author
• social media promotion
• soliciting collaboration with podcasts and newsletters, if requested
• representation at appropriate academic conferences.

LUP also offer authors an opportunity to publish on their blog and can help with providing marketing copy for other outlets.

Editors are supplied with a pack of marketing assets which can be used to promote the work to colleagues and on social media.

We operate a green open access policy for volumes in the Proceedings of the British Academy series. You may upload the ‘author accepted manuscript’ version of your chapter in the Proceedings volume to an institutional or centrally organised subject repository where it may be made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC-ND), provided that (a) it is not made publicly available until 12 months after the publication in the Proceedings of the British Academy series, and (b) the Proceedings is attributed as the original place of publication with the correct citation details given.