OPEN POSITION FOR BASOR COPYEDITOR
The Publications Committee of the American Schools of Oriental Research and the Editors of BASOR (Dr. Eric Cline and Dr. Chris Rollston) announce an open position for Copyeditor of BASOR, with a start-date of 1 January 2019.
The Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR) is a leader among peer-reviewed academic journals of the ancient Near East. For nearly a century, since 1919 when William F. Albright originally founded it as the Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, BASOR has served as a highly respected interdisciplinary English-language forum for scholars worldwide in subject areas such as archaeology, art, anthropology, archaeometry, bioarchaeology, archaeozoology, biblical studies, history, literature, philology, geography, and epigraphy. The journal contains articles written by leading scholars and acknowledged experts in the ancient world that cover a geographical region from Israel and Canaan to ancient Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Cyprus, and Egypt and a chronological range from the Paleolithic period through Islamic times. The journal appears bi-annually, in May and November.
Candidates interested in this (part-time, contractor) position are encouraged to contact Drs. Cline and Rollston (ehcline@gwu.edu; rollston@gwu.edu) for more information about the position and its responsibilities and to send a current resume and letter of interest to them. Compensation will be competitive and commensurate with experience. Review of applications will begin 1 October 2018.
Job Description:
Following a first round of copyediting by the associate copyeditor:
- Format Word doc to impose BASOR paragraph styles and standardize formatting anomalies, which facilitates editing and a clean import for the typesetters
- Undertake a close line editing of the article, checking for spelling, punctuation, grammar, style, and general readability; insert queries into the doc file (as Word Comments) as needed; all edits are made with Track Changes turned on
- Review tables and formats as needed (the associate copyeditor checks the sums, matches the data in the tables with that in the text)
- Review the illustrations for size, resolution, legibility, and overall clarity; size and clean up image files as needed (using Photoshop and/or Illustrator), or ask author to do so
- Compose an email message for the author(s) with instructions for reviewing the edited MS; include a reiteration of all the queries (from the associate copyeditor and the copyeditor) and attach all the edited files, including the article, captions, tables, appendixes, etc.
Following receipt of the reviewed/approved MS from the author:
- Review all the authorial changes and edit as needed (for spelling, punctuation, etc.)
- Accept all changes into new doc files (in order to keep the author’s originals intact)
- If there are additional or unanswered queries, write to the author (or to Editors, or Associate copyeditor) to get answers
- When all issues have been resolved and changes entered into the appropriate files, gather all finalized files and post on Dropbox; send email to editors and typesetters to alert them that files are posted
When 1st proofs are first posted:
- Undertake a quick visual review for obvious problems, before proofs are sent to the authors; if something significant is amiss, contact typesetter for a correction; otherwise, give approval to typesetter to send out Dropbox link to the authors
- Carefully read proofs and mark up a PDF with corrections; in addition to reading the text, review the layout for infelicities and placement of illustrations and tables relative to their callout in the text
- Collect and collate corrections from the associate copyeditor and the authors, resolving conflicting opinions; insert all corrections into a master PDF file, including suggestions to fix layout problems
- Revise illustration files as needed
- Post corrected files and send notice of same to editors and typesetter.
When 2nd proofs are posted:
- Check the proofs against corrections submitted in 1st proofs
- Gather any new corrections from authors and editors
- Resolve all remaining questions and post 2nd proof markups on Dropbox; send email to typesetter and editors
Follow same process for 3rd proofs, as needed, until final proofs are approved.
When all articles are typeset and compiled into a single file:
- Review proofs for running heads, pagination, and any new material (e.g., table of contents, index, other frontmatter); notify typesetter and editors as needed.
- Throughout the process: communicate with the authors, editors, co-copyeditor, and typesetters, on questions of content, style, layout, etc.
