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IPOL Copyedit Instructions
The copyediting stage improves flow, clarity, grammar, wording, and formatting of the article. It is not supposed to change its scientific content, but can change the way this content is expressed or organized. It represents the last chance for the author to make any substantial changes to the article.
Copyediting is performed by the authors on requests from the editor in charge of the submission, after the final decision to accept the article.
Demo
There is no formal copyediting procedure for the demos yet, but the editor should:
- Test personally the online demo on all proposed input images and see if the parameters are understandable, with reasonable bounds, and if short and transparent usage indications are given to the users. This is important since in the evaluation process the demo may have changed. Report any anomaly or misleading result and request appropriate correction.
- Verify that the experiments in the figures and tables of the article are well specified and are reproducible with the code. When the shown experimental results can be directly obtained with the demo, perform some testing to check that the results displayed in the article are coherent with those given by the demo.
- Encourage the author to avoid an excessive number of parameters on the online demo.
- Check with the author if image credits are given and authorizations obtained for the input images proposed on the demo.
The code for this demo must be uploaded to OJS (in Supplementary Files); the editor can also ask for a reset of the demo archive (in case the demo has substantially changed) by a mail to tech@ipol.im.
Software
There is no formal copyediting procedure for the source code yet, but the editor should verify that it follows the Software Guidelines.
The code for this demo must be uploaded to OJS (in Supplementary Files). Note that unlike the demo, the software is published as part of the article and will not be easily modified after publication.
Manuscript
The manuscript is copyedited via OJS, where files and messages are exchanged. After a submission has been accepted, the copyediting process is initiated from the Editor Decision
section, REVIEW
page in OJS. The editor chooses the version to work on (the latest reviewed one) among author versions and editor versions, and validate with Send to Copyediting
. This file is now available in section Copyediting
, page EDITING
, and the manuscript is processed in three steps:
- Initial Copyedit
The editor checks the PDF manuscript accepted by the reviewers and annotates it to ask for corrections of the flow, grammar, wording, and formatting. Then the editor uploads the annotated document to OJS (in Copyediting / Step 1), larks the work asCOMPLETE
and notifies the authors. - Author Copyedit
Authors read the editor comments, modify their manuscript as appropriate, and upload to OJS the revised PDF document (in Copyediting / Step 2) and the LaTeX sources (in Supplementary Files). - Final Copyedit
The editor checks that the PDF document from Step 2 has been modified as requested in Step 1. If some corrections are still needed, the editor can add new notes to this document and return to Step 1 (Initial Copyedit). If the document from Step 2 is satisfying, the editor uploads this file in OJS (in Copyediting / Step 3 and in the Layout section) and asks the layout editor to produce the final files, following the layout editing instructions.
Editors and authors communicate via notes inserted in the PDF document; we suggest this formatting:
- Additions and changes are indicated by the EDIT prefix: EDIT here is the new text. When the text is changed, this EDIT … comment replaces the previous text.
- Deletions are indicated by the DELETE prefix: DELETE here is the text to remove.
- Requests, editions of a large chunk of text or distributed over the whole paper, can be mentioned with the QUERY prefix: QUERY move the section 1.2 to 1.1 and use the first paragraph as abstract, QUERY capitalize the titles, QUERY use a vector format for this figure, QUERY add a caption to every figure.
- Other notes can use the COMMENT prefix.
Editors not willling to use PDF notes can write a copyediting report with the list of their notes with page and paragraph numbers, and upload it to OJS in place of the annotated PDF.
Copyediting items are detailed hereafter.
Spelling, Style and Content
- Completely re-read the PDF document and ask for improvements of the language and presentation wherever possible. Any correction is possible if it benefits the reader without altering the scientific content.
- Verify that the title and abstract reflect the final article content.
- Verify that pseudocodes are consistent and complete.
- Algorithms are often better displayed by using the
algorithmLaTeX environment instead of lists and paragraphs. If needed, ask the authors to use this environment. - Verify the spelling of the article, using American English (color, neighbor, …). When in doubt, refer to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Note that technical terms (denoising, …) won’t be in dictionaries.
- Enforce the items listed in the manuscript guidelines, including getting full author information, institutional email addresses, and removing unnecessary abbreviations (Fig., Eqn., …).
- Verify that proper acknowledgment has been done to grant and funding organizations.
References
- Verify that references are up to date and complete. Verify that related IPOL articles have been adequately cited.
- Verify that the references use a consistent style (there is currently no official IPOL style for references). Remove abbreviations of journal names, use the full name instead.
- References must always include a DOI link for articles (
http://dx.doi.org/10.XXXX/ABCDE), and an ISSN for books (ISSN:1234567890). - Remove reference links from the abstract (this abstract will be reused in other environments without the reference list like web page and metadata).
- Ask for rephrasing of sentences where reference numbers ([42]) are used like nounds. Grammatically, reference numbers must be treated like footnote numbers, sentences must still make sense without these numbers and the first author name should appear in the text:
in [23]
becomesin the original paper by Smith et al. [23]
,Martin shows in [7] that…
becomesMartin [7] shows that…
.
Images, Figures and Tables
- Verify that there is an unnumbered
Image Credits
section just before the bibliographic references, and that it indicates the origin and license of every image used in the article. - Zoom in graphics with a very high zoom factor and if pixels appear, require the authors to use a vector format instead. Authors can produce vector graphics in SVG format with the Inkscape program for example, and then convert them to PDF, or they can use the PGF/TikZ LaTeX packages. Simply converting a PNG file to PDF does not create a vector graphic file.
- Ask the authors to remove internal horizontal and vertical lines from tables; this grid is not needed for clarity, and visually obtrusive. A single horizontal line to separate the header and body of a table is usually enough.
- Check that every floating figure and table has a caption. All figures and tables must also be referenced in the text, independently of their legend, and redundancy of both texts is allowed. No section of the document must only be composed of floating figures or tables.
- Tables and images must always fit inside the document margins. Very large tables can be reduced using a
\smallfont size, or displayed vertically using therotateLaTeX package.
References
Two reference books are recommended for IPOL papers:
- general rules for writing and formatting the papers are found in
A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations
by K. Turabian, 7th ed., ISBN:075698355X. →Amazon - spelling is checked with the
Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary
, 11th ed., ISBN:0877798095. →Amazon
For comments on the general writing style refer to