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Earlier this year I had a paper accepted to a well-recognized journal in a particular (humanities) subfield. I finally received proofs of the article, and was (more than a bit) upset at the edits. A lot of the changes were at the sentence level: phrasing, punctuation, word choice.

These edits often 1) obscured my intended meaning (e.g. turned ONE grammatically correct sentence into TWO sentences that, because of the addition of a weird transition phrase, no longer says what I intended), and/or 2) over-simplified or diminished the prose (e.g. adding "to be" constructions, adding awkward and unnecessary "ultimately"s, "for example," etc.).

So, how should I respond? Ultimately, I'd like to have 95% of the changes reversed. I would be mortified to publish the piece in its current state.

I've published several times and never had this issue - usually edits are small (more proofreading than anything). Because I was sent PDFs, the process of sending back my "corrections" will be arduous (on some pages every sentence now needs fixing). I don't want to alienate the journal or the staff member who made the edits.

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Anonymous Otter
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  • Have you asked others in your department who have a history with this particular journal or the editor who handled you paper? What did they say? – Dawn Nov 23 '19 at 19:49
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    The answers thus far are from people who apparently are unfamiliar with the humanities publication process (including me), so treat them with some skepticism. – Anonymous Physicist Nov 23 '19 at 23:24
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    I'm not an academic, so feel free to disregard, but would it be prudent/possible to ask them to explain why they've made the changes that they have, highlighting a few key examples? Asking would trigger a few things; introspection (they might realise the changes are unnecessary/redundant/unjustifiable), when they reply you'd be better informed what their reasoning was (so you can persuade, or implement changes that fulfil their needs yourself), and you'd have the pre-existing dialogue necessary to politely ask that they reverse their changes, explaining why they're problematic. – SE Does Not Like Dissent Nov 25 '19 at 00:54
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    Have you signed over the copyright for the article yet? If not, you can just deny them the right to publish it if they don't revert your unauthorized changes. – nick012000 Nov 25 '19 at 06:06
  • @nick012000 Yeah, it would be good to clarify whether the copyright transfer has already been executed. Of course, this is not to say Miffed should jump straight to denying permission to publish on copyright grounds; it's merely one option. – David Z Nov 25 '19 at 07:50
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    I like Giles Coren's take on this: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/jul/23/mediamonkey – Strawberry Nov 25 '19 at 09:19
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    You've come to the right place to ask this question. People are always editing others' questions here and messing up the meaning. – Jennifer Nov 25 '19 at 16:15
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    Don't understand why it arduous. 95% is easy. Just go back to your original draft, and correct the 5%. Done. Now 50% would have been a pain. – candied_orange Nov 25 '19 at 20:06
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    The journal production office (not the editor) has sent you the page proofs for one reason, and that is for you to check wether they have messed up anything. – Karl Nov 26 '19 at 00:47
  • What specific field is it? – dodo Nov 26 '19 at 09:29
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    @candied_orange Er, have you ever published a journal paper? The asker has been sent the page proofs of the final version, with the final formating, etc. They're being asked to OK (or not) the changes that have been made to that version, not to resubmit an earlier version with different formating, etc. – David Richerby Nov 26 '19 at 10:33
  • @DavidRicherby if you're being asked if it's OK then it's not the 'final' version. Just saying the proofs are not OK is useless. Say what they should be. – candied_orange Nov 26 '19 at 12:49
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    @candied_orange since you ignored my explicit question and, instead nit picked my poor use of the word “final” I assume you’ve not published a journal paper. At this stage of the process, merely sending a correct version of the text is not what is required. Having said that, it may be the most effective way to proceed: effectively, this would be saying “You mangled the text so badly that we’re going to have to start again. Throw away all your typesetting work, and typeset this.” – David Richerby Nov 26 '19 at 16:37
  • @candied_orange I never suggested just saying that the proofs are not ok. – David Richerby Nov 26 '19 at 16:37
  • @DavidRicherby sounds like that's exactly what they should do. I'd add a note that if they see anything else in need of editing they are welcome to send that correction back BEFORE doing any type setting work. Save some work and time. – candied_orange Nov 26 '19 at 20:04
  • @candied_orange The journal isn't going to change its publishing workflow just for you. – David Richerby Nov 26 '19 at 20:05
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    @DavidRicherby then the journal is going to have to deal with wasting their own time and effort. – candied_orange Nov 26 '19 at 20:06

6 Answers6

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I finally received proofs of the article, and was (more than a bit) upset at the edits.

How to respond? Do not respond while upset. Wait until you can respond in a calm way.

This is a perfectly normal occurrence. Remember the journal relies on getting your work for free in order to get subscription fees to pay its expenses. They need you more than you need them. Do not hesitate to ask for anything that will help your publication improve.

Anonymous Physicist
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I agree with @Buffy that the changes are probably from a copy editor.

I disagree some about requesting just the minimal changes that "affect the meaning". This is a humanities paper, so style may matter much more than in a math/cs/science paper where one could argue that "correct" is sufficient.

Write a polite(!) letter to the editor asking about rejecting many of the changes since you think they often change the meaning. Perhaps include a few examples. Then you'll have to do what the editor suggests in order to publish in this journal.

Ethan Bolker
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Write a response to the production staff that spells out which changes you'd like to revert. Feel free to use text if you can't indicate it on a PDF, e.g. "Page 2 column 1 paragraph 3, change 'write' to 'written'". If it goes as high as 95%, then just say use the original file but indicate the 5% of changes that you want to keep. That said, I'm skeptical it reaches 95% - that's 19 out of every 20 changes - and there's a good chance you didn't notice all the changes that were made.

The copyeditor is not likely to fight you over these changes - after all, they know that you understand the intended meaning better than them. In fact chances are the production staff will simply implement your requested changes and move on to the next paper. Don't get angry. It's kind of pointless, and if they're already going to revert the changes, it'll lead to the same result anyway.

Allure
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    This answer agrees with my (limited) experience. I once had to revert a lot of the copy editor's changes in a paper, and the journal complied. The only bad thing that happened was that a co-author also wrote to the editor without first calming down sufficiently. – Andreas Blass Nov 24 '19 at 02:50
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    If OP didn't notice all the changes that were made, that reflects even worse on the journal. Any journal that's going to make non-trivial copy edits should make sure they send a proof with the changes clearly marked. – Especially Lime Nov 25 '19 at 08:55
  • @EspeciallyLime I'm referring to trivial changes which many people never notice. Hence the 95% rate is difficult to believe - I'd guess there were trivial changes made that the OP simply never noticed. – Allure Nov 25 '19 at 09:11
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    That's why the @EspeciallyLime said the journal should send a proof with the changes highlighted so you can go through them one at a time. For an article written in LaTeX, for example, you could do it yourself, e.g. diff the original vs. copy-edited LaTeX source to find every difference. (Or use GUI text diff tools which at this point are very good, because programmers and sysadmins need to do this for source code and config files all the time.) But for other formats like Word docs you're dependent on your software having such a feature. – Peter Cordes Nov 26 '19 at 04:47
  • Newer versions of MS Word do have a solid built in comparison tool. It has a side by side mode similar to how diff tools for code files work, as well as IIRC a mode that can insert all the changes from the newer version into the older as tracked changes. – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight Nov 26 '19 at 15:55
  • @Allure I can confirm that I have seen cases where in the 90%+ of changes caused problems. Usually when they take one bad rule and apply it a lot of places. The worst cases are when they do substantial edits without track changes, at which point you need to reject all changes and force them to start again because you don't know what they broke. Anybody doing diffs is letting a bad editor waste their time. – Namey Aug 05 '21 at 10:44
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This sounds like the work of a copy editor not the "editor" in charge of the paper. Such folks usually know the language pretty well, but not the subject matter. So, the errors they make are semantic in nature - pretty serious.

My suggestion is that you correct the ones that need correcting; those that affect the meaning. But probably let the others go.

Write a report back to the editor (the real one) detailing each change and saying why. Leaving the minor ones go gives you a shorter report and more likelihood that they will be accepted.

I've had this happen too. But fight for the important ones primarily. A few more probably won't hurt, but 95% will probably get you on the wrong side of someone.

Buffy
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    95% or not: it's OP's paper. OP should make their point politely, but firmly. I am tolerant for changes which are not wrong, albeit I am particular with the language of my articles. But I am in a technical field, and these guys write for humanities - style is so essential there that they even read preformulated sentences in their talks. – Captain Emacs Nov 24 '19 at 00:04
  • But also note that technical writers can be blind to the implications of how they state things, assuming knowledge that the reader doesn't have, or being overly pedantic. We can all use help in our writing, I think. – Buffy Nov 24 '19 at 00:12
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    I respectfully disagree with "But fight for the important ones primarily. A few more probably won't hurt, but 95% will probably get you on the wrong side of someone." Wrong is wrong. I don't think the poster should accept any incorrect changes. – Faheem Mitha Nov 24 '19 at 06:16
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    I agree with the other commenters. The OP should certainly consider if each change is an improvement or not, but they should ask for each one that is not an improvement to be reverted. – Martin Bonner supports Monica Nov 24 '19 at 17:46
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    I also agree with other commenters. The author is ultimately responsible for the content of any paper, including is presentation. Poor writing reflects badly on the author, not on the anonymous copy-editor. Yes, of course we can all use help with our writing, but it's not the copy editor's job (or intention) to "help" us. – JeffE Nov 24 '19 at 18:59
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    @JeffE and others: Bad writing also reflects badly on the journal if it publishes the article. Being insistent on every word, if there is disagreement with the real editor (not the copy editor) is likely to result in a judgement that you are an uncooperative author to be avoided. I only suggest you fight the important fights, not the trivial ones. The journal is about to take copyright and put its own reputation on the line also. If you want absolute control, then self publish. – Buffy Nov 24 '19 at 21:55
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    @Buffy I'm sorry, but I can't wrap my head around the idea that insisting that the copy editor get out of the way could make the author seem uncooperative, as opposed to making the copy editor seem incompetent. Real editors are our research colleagues; they understand very well the importance of precise language. Ideally, you and the the real editor are both pushing back together. (That said, if you can't convince the real editor that the changes are necessary, they aren't; let it go.) – JeffE Nov 25 '19 at 22:26
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    @Buffy An email I received from a copyeditor contained the following sentence: "As per Journal instruction we update style alone for this article and not changed any language in the proof." I count three separate grammatical errors. Unfortunately, the presumption that copyeditors are good writers doesn't seem to always be true. – academic Nov 26 '19 at 20:18
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I've had the same experience when publishing a book: copy-editors who not only didn't add value, they actually made the text a lot worse.

This was a technical book, and it's understandable that they didn't realise that an XSLT stylesheet is one word, while a CSS style sheet is two. But before doing a global edit to use the same term throughout - a global edit that can't be easily reversed - they should have checked.

They also tried to apply an editorial policy about the use of pronouns (I, you, we). But I had been very careful in my choice of pronouns, using "I", for example, only where I was expressing a personal opinion or describing my personal experiences, and they destroyed all the nuances.

I managed to get all the harmful changes reversed but it was an enormous waste of everyone's time.

Michael Kay
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Unless the editor made a provably incorrect statement with their changes I do not do anything. Do not like it but the editor gets the last say. Push too hard and they may decide not to print what you submitted at all.

joe sixpak
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    I once had a conversation with a newspaper reporter, and we surprised each other with the difference in the meaning of "editor" in our fields. Apparently, newspaper editors can alter a reporter's story pretty much at will; academic editors cannot. My experience is that, in academia, "the editor gets the last say" about things like the format, but the author gets the last say about the content. – Andreas Blass Nov 25 '19 at 16:30
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    @AndreasBlass Indeed. A newspaper editor's job is to actually edit. Academic job titles often have little connection to the everyday meaning of the words they use: our editors don't edit, our doctors don't heal people, our lecturers spend a small fraction of their time lecturing, our assistant professors don't assist anyone, ... – David Richerby Nov 26 '19 at 10:22
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    Have you genuinely ever had an editor change their mind and not publish your paper which they had previously accepted, because they disagreed with you on the editing? – Sneftel Nov 26 '19 at 16:59
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    The OP said they would be "mortified" to publish in the current state. Never put your name to anything you don't want to back up. If given a choice between publishing something you don't agree with signed with your name, and not publishing, one should not publish what they don't agree with under their own name. – penelope Nov 28 '19 at 16:00