I have proofs!

[liv]

So the journal have sent me final proofs, which is kind of exciting because now the stuff I wrote looks all formal and ready to print and professional. On the negative side, they sent the proofs at 2 pm on a Friday, and want them returned within 48 hours. Apparently the 48 hours thing is standard practice, but 48 hours when 45 of them are weekend seems a little mean.

Anyway my printer has decided it won't play ball, so I'll need to go into work to do this. And I'm not going to do that in the last half-hour before shabbat so I'll end up doing this in a panic on Sunday. I need to get signatures and authorisations for payment, too, which is going to be hard to do during the weekend.

Also, I've never proofed anything before so I don't really know what I'm doing, which is kind of scaring. Then again, I'm on the verge, the very brink, of being an actual published scientist, so that's pretty cool!

Comments

[redbird]

1. Take a deep breath.
2. What you're doing is making sure that any changes they made are okay: fixing grammar is fine, messing up equations is not. You're not rewriting at this stage: unless you find an actual, factual error, let it alone.
3. They don't expect you to use specific proofreading symbols.

[liv]

Gosh, thank you. This is really useful information! It seems to be one of those things you're just expected to know. The email said there would be instructions included with the proofs, but the instructions turn out to be instructions in how to use some Acrobat plugin that I don't have, and not instructions in what exactly they want me to do in the way of proofing.

I feel a lot better about writing a list of stuff I want changed, expecting the changes are going to be minor, than I did about the idea of 'here's your manuscript, proof it' and thinking I'd have to go and ask Google how to mark changes properly and urgh. The timescale is still a problem, mainly from the point of view of getting input from people who don't work weekends, but hey.

(Can you tell I react really badly to being given vague tasks with no explicit docs?)

[redbird]

I can't imagine what they think you'd be doing with Acrobat that would connect to proofreading symbols. Those work well on hardcopy, if you know them. That is, if both parties know them. I got one job in part because I knew proofreading symbols, and then discovered that if I used traditional markup, the layout/typesetting people wouldn't understand what I was asking for.

[redbird]

P.S. 4. I don't know the specific journal, and you might want to consult rysmiel, or any of your friends or fellow students who've done this before, before taking my word on point 3.

I'd be happy to look at the instructions they sent you and see if they make sense to me.

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

My mum didn't use formal symbols and stuff for hers, she just used red pen mostly. They used to do annoying things like set crosswords wrong and other things like that, and those ones she would print and stick on.