Instructions for SMC Volumes Editors

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This list of steps, with tentative timeline, is intended to help those who plan to publish an edited volume (or monograph) with SMC.

See https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/publications/smc.html for information on the scope of our series, the editorial board, our previous publications, the review process, and the style sheet.

1. Proposal

Those intending to publish a book with SMC must first send a proposal to the secretary of the board. We do not have a form for this, but a proposal should contain at least the following pieces of information:

name and affiliation of the editor(s) / author(s)
provisional title
book concept (summary of 250–300 words), highlighting why the book fits within the scope of our series
list of contributions and contributors
intended number of text pages and (colour) full-page images
intended schedule: When do you expect to submit your book to us for peer review?
funding: Do you have or do you need funding for the open access publication fees, for the English language revisions, for the typesetting and the indexing?

The board normally evaluates the proposal within one or two weeks. Please note that the book itself will be accepted only after the peer-review process is completed.

2. Preparing the book submission

The book must comply with our Guidelines for Publication (see our website).

Do share this style sheet with the book’s contributors early on, so they can follow it while writing their articles. The book editors are responsible for ensuring the style sheet has been applied consistently across all the articles or chapters. Any book may present specific issues unforeseen by the style sheet: please get in touch with the secretary of the board to solve these issues as soon as possible.

The book editors should set a strict deadline for the submission of the articles. It is advisable to start the editorial work on the articles as they come in, without waiting for all articles to arrive.

A few points of special consideration:

SMC does not publish conference proceedings, as such. The contributions must be reworked and edited so that they no longer appear as conference papers, and they must also contain new and original information.
Bear in mind that the introduction is a very important part of the book project, insofar as it must demonstrate the scope, coherence, and relevance of the book.
The title of the book (and of the articles / chapters) must be short and telling – that is, to the point and unambiguous. Titles are not intended to be literary achievements; rather, their primary use is within bibliographic databases and search engines. Avoid quotations or punctuation marks other than commas and colons in titles.
A volume must contain at least 200 pages (text and images) and not exceed 700 pages. A regular text page comprises 2,600 characters (including spaces).
SMC does not have any fixed limit regarding the number of images, but they must be clearly relevant for the purposes of the book. Note that it is the responsibility of the author / book editor to obtain permissions to publish an image and images must have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi and be at least 1,300 pixels wide. Images must be sent as separate files (jpeg) and NOT imbedded into a Microsoft Word file. In the Word files, use placeholders with captions instead (see the style sheet).
The type area is 116 × 183 mm, which makes large tables difficult to accommodate, especially with footnotes. While a table is useful for comparison, for other purposes a well-structured list is a highly satisfactory alternative that is easier to typeset.
For the same reason (limitation and balance of the page), avoid long footnotes.
Inventories, cases studies, editions, long tables etc. will appear in appendices at the end of the article (following the references).
Each article must contain a short abstract (approx. 120 words), which will be printed at the beginning of the article.
SMC volumes usually include a list of contributors with short bios (approx. 60–80 words) in the back matter. This is the only place in the book where the contributors’ affiliations are mentioned, which may be important for some of them. To ensure a smoother process, the book editors should ask for these short bios to be sent together with the submitted articles and compile them. Failing that, this step can happen when the proofs are corrected (see item 6), but it is not advisable.
An index is compulsory (see item 7).

3. Peer-review process

After a first round of editing by the book editors, who will have ensured that the articles are suitable for the intended book project, the complete book or groups of articles can be submitted to the secretary of the board, and from there be sent for external peer review. See https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/publications/smc/review-guide for more on our peer-review process.

The peer review is organised by the secretary of the board and generally occurs before the English copy-editing (see item 5). The secretary usually consults with the book editors to find suitable reviewers and decide whether the book should be reviewed as a whole or whether to arrange separate reviews of each article or group of articles. In the latter case, the peer-review process can start before all articles are ready.

The peer-review process usually takes one to three months, depending on the size of the book. The decision to accept, reject, or ask for a resubmission of the book or articles within the book is made by the editorial board of the series, in dialogue with the book editors and following the suggestions of the reviewers.

Contributors usually need to revise their article at least once, following the suggestions of the reviewers and book editors.

4. Contract and marketing with De Gruyter

Once the peer-review process is complete, the book editors should fill in a publication questionnaire, which serves as a basis for De Gruyter to complete several administrative steps, including drafting the contract. From that point on, the book’s title and the names and order of appearance of the editors, as well as the size of the book, must be definitive.

The form requires two advertising texts for De Gruyter websites and catalogues; the shorter of the two will be published on the back cover of the book. The title and advertising texts must be approved by the editorial board of the series and De Gruyter.

The form also requires a realistic date of submission for the complete manuscript (including the introduction, but not the index). This date is absolutely binding and must be respected, because the contract with the typesetter depends upon it, as does the publication date, which will be announced on De Gruyter’s website (usually four to six months after the date of submission, depending on the size and complexity of the book).

On the basis of the questionnaire, De Gruyter will calculate the price of the printed book and the open access fees and also prepare and send a contract to the book editors. The contract must be signed and returned to De Gruyter as soon as possible (be aware that the contract, which is issued by a special software, may end up in your spam folder).

If not yet started, now would be a good time for the editors to write their introduction. The introduction is not peer reviewed but will be read by the secretary of the board (and possibly other members of the board, if necessary).

5. English copy-editing

All articles written by non-native speakers of English must be revised by a native English copy-editor. SMC can provide assistance in this matter, but it must be agreed upon in advance; please consult the secretary of the board. It is advisable to stagger the articles for copy-editing, and to start this step as soon as possible to avoid any delay (one week per article is usually needed for the language editing, depending on the size and difficulty of the article). Note that one variety of English must be used throughout.

The English copy-editors make their edits using the ‘Track Changes’ facilities of Microsoft Word. The authors and book editors will then revise the articles one last time by accepting or rejecting the changes using the Track Changes options (note that some authors may not be familiar with this system).

Up to this point, all correspondence will have been between the secretary of the board and the book editors, unless the book editors wished it otherwise and the secretary contacted some authors directly. The book editors should now provide a list of contributors’ emails so that the secretary can send them the proofs of their articles in PDF.

6. Typesetting and correction of proofs

Final versions of all articles, with images sent as separate files, and the introduction will be sent to the secretary of the board for typesetting, together with a table of contents, which shows the order the articles will be printed and in some cases also the titles of subsections. The Word documents and images should have clear file names: e.g. ‘SMC54_Art2_NameAuthor.doc’ or ‘SMC54_Art2_NameAuthor_Fig1.jpeg’.

The final Word files should not contain any unaccepted corrections or remarks; should conform to the SMC style sheet; and should be in a ready-to-print state. The size and placement of images should be clearly indicated in the Word file using placeholders and captions (see our style sheet). Note that an ‘alt text’ must be provided for every image contained in the book (see our website).

The typesetter may make further formal corrections when laying out the articles. It usually takes four to five weeks to prepare the first proof, depending on the length and complexity of the book. The secretary of the board will send the proofs (as PDF files) to the authors, cc’ing the book editors.

The authors and editors then correct the proofs (using the tools available in their PDF reader of choice or as a list of corrections in a Word document, indicating pages and lines) and return them to the secretary within two weeks. Authors should read the proof carefully, flagging any remaining typos, typesetting errors, erroneous hyphenations, or incorrect image or table placements. However, no further author’s changes are allowed at this stage, because their implementation is onerous, time consuming, and error prone. By author’s changes we mean: insertion or deletion of text, image, or footnote; unnecessary variation of vocabulary; modification of the structure etc. If such changes nevertheless need to be accommodated, it will be at the author’s or editor’s expense.

If a contributor list was not compiled earlier, the secretary will ask the authors to provide their bios together with the corrected proofs. The contributors also will need to fill in a form (Excel) provided by De Gruyter, which serves as contract between the contributors and De Gruyter.

As a rule, the second proof is sent only to the book editors, and in some exceptional cases also to the authors. The book editors should ensure that all corrections marked up on the first proof were satisfactorily implemented and that the book has no formal shortcomings. They will be assisted in this task by the secretary of the board.

7. Index

An index is compulsory and the book editors are responsible for compiling it. Various types of indices are possible (index of manuscripts, of people and places, of notable terms etc.). The editors decide which type of index is most suitable for the book. We can provide assistance in this matter, but it must be agreed upon in advance; please contact the secretary of the board. The index is made using the second proof and usually takes three to four weeks to be compiled.

There are basically three options for completing the index:

the editors prepare the index;
the editors prepare a list of terms (avoiding any terms too general or too specific), which will be indexed by the typesetter (either by tagging them while laying out the articles or on the basis of the second proof);
a professional indexer is hired (this has a cost and depends on the indexer’s availability and skills).

In our experience, asking the contributors to provide keywords is counterproductive. In the first and second options, a good moment to begin compiling the terms is when writing the introduction.

The book editors will correct the proofs of the index (or indices).

8. Camera ready

The front matter is typeset directly by De Gruyter and sent for approval together with the very last proof of the book. This final approval must happen within a few days. After that, the book is ‘camera ready’, but it will take at least eight weeks before it is actually out (online and print release happens simultaneously). A book published after 15 October usually bears the copyright of the following year.

De Gruyter will send a print copy of the book to each author and editor as well as to libraries and institutions that provided images and require such a copy (editors should provide a list of addresses).

9. Book reviews

De Gruyter does not send complimentary print copies to journals for review without a request from reviewers or reviews editors. The secretary of the board can advertise the book to interested journals if the book editors provide a list of journals and email address of the reviews editors. A list of possible interested colleagues outside of CSMC (also with email addresses) may be useful as well.