Editorial Services

The Press offers thorough editing, general proofreading and indexing as paid services, on any manuscript at any stage of its writing.

Separate from Publication

Commissioning any of this work is not a condition of submitting a proposal, and the Press asks for no editorial work to have been done before a manuscript is sent. Peer reviewers and the Advisory Board are not told which manuscripts have been edited, and editorial work is quoted and invoiced separately from the open-access charge. Authors submitting to the Press are free to use another editor, or none.

For books the Press accepts, copy-editing, proofreading and indexing are part of production and are already covered by the open-access charge. The services described here are work done on a manuscript before that point, or on manuscripts going to another publisher.

Funding →

Thorough Editing

Thorough editing is two rounds of work. The first is a review of the manuscript's logic and organisation, and of whether the research supports the argument. The second is a closer reading for the mechanical elements of language covered under general proofreading. Style and syntax may be improved, and references checked.

The work involves comment in the margins of the manuscript by at least two editors and, for most manuscripts, between 500 and 1,000 words of comment in a separate document. It suits authors who want a reading beyond their supervision or their institution’s own channels of review, from harsh but sympathetic readers.

Thorough editing does not suit every manuscript. Where an author wants only the mechanics of language corrected, general proofreading is the service to ask for.

General Proofreading

General proofreading corrects grammar, punctuation, formatting, verb tenses, phrasing, sentence construction and word choice. Awkward sentences are edited, and passages whose meaning is too vague to edit or rewrite are marked for the author. House style and other formatting are corrected to any of the major style guides, including APA, Chicago, McGill, AMA, OSCOLA, CSE and MLA. Typesetting is not included.

The manuscripts that gain most are those that have already had enough comment on their content from supervisors or colleagues. The purpose is to make the manuscript grammatically sound. Comment on content is not offered under this service, except where a claim is plainly false. A manuscript that needs work on its argument, its research or its organisation belongs in thorough editing.

Indexing

An index is prepared from the final text, working from typeset proofs or from a paginated manuscript. The indexer works to the author's specification on the depth of the index and on whether it covers names, subjects or both, and delivers it in the form the publisher requires. Indexing is quoted for each manuscript rather than charged at a per-word rate, because the work depends on the density of the text and on the depth of index wanted.

Write to queries@bassi.foundation with the length of the text, the kind of index wanted and the date it is needed, and the work will be quoted.

Authors in the Global South

A discount of 40 per cent on all editorial fees is available to scholars whose institution is in the Global South. It applies to thorough editing, to general proofreading and to indexing, and it is the same reduction the Press makes on the open-access charge for a book it publishes.

Eligibility follows the country of the institution rather than the author's nationality or where the degrees were taken. Write from your institutional address and the work will be quoted with the discount already applied.

The reason is the one behind publishing only in open access. A manuscript reaches a serious press in a particular state, and the editorial work that gets it there costs money that is not spread evenly across the world's universities. The discount is how the Press narrows that gap on the work it does itself.

Revisions

Once an author has received the edited manuscript and made further changes in response to it, further editing of the revised manuscript is done at no extra cost. This applies to both services and holds for as many rounds as the author needs. It is most often used when examiners or referees require changes to a manuscript after it has been edited.

Commissioning Work

Write to queries@bassi.foundation with the word count, the service wanted and the date by which the work is needed.