WORKING WITH CONTRIBUTORS

Some reference publications, especially those that are longer than one volume, are created with contributor help. Your acquisitions editor will decide or help you decide whether a proposed work should use contributors.

Editing a contributed reference publication is an exercise in organization, leadership, and decision-making. This section will guide you through the process and offer tips on how to get the most from your contributors.

Selecting Contributors

Advisory Boards

For large projects, it is sometimes desirable to sign an advisory board of several well-known scholars. The inclusion of such a board can lend authority to the book. For some projects, the board members may serve primarily to endorse your book; for other projects they may be expected to review an entry list and make suggestions or to write certain entries. You can discuss the board's compensation and likely duties with your editor.

Contributors

Ideally, contributors will be a mix of senior scholars (usually signed to write important entries) and their younger colleagues, sometimes including graduate students or knowledgeable non-academics and professionals. You will most likely begin by approaching scholars who have written on the subject. When someone turns down an invitation to write an entry, ask for another name to approach. Be careful in selecting contributors. Avoid scholars with reputations for being late, as a few late entries can delay a project if you let them.

Two of the biggest challenges are recruiting contributors for all your entries and dealing with tardy contributors. To simplify recruiting contributors, one proven technique is to bunch entries into groups of related topics and then assign the groups, rather than assign individual entries. In this scenario, one or more long entries are packaged with related smaller entries and assigned to the same person. Another helpful tool is to send an online "Call for Contributors" to a listserv relevant to your project's topic. Other tips and suggestions for working with contributors appear below.

Always keep the deadline for the entire project in mind when planning contributors' due dates. How long should you give contributors to write their entries? Depending on the length of assignment, we recommend a three-month (in some cases, more or less) turnaround time. Anything longer suggests that you are in no hurry or do not consider the assignment a priority. Anything shorter might discourage potential contributors from accepting your invitation. Remember to take the academic schedule in mind when assigning dates and planning a recruitment calendar (the summer break, for example, may be a great time for contributors to write their entries but a difficult time to recruit them). Finally, remember to build time into your schedule to allow for late entries, the re-assignment of entries, and plenty of time for you to review entries and return some for revision. Also, since you won't be able to read all entries at once, you may want to give contributors staggered deadlines.

Contributors who fail to meet their original deadlines (and possibly a second deadline) should be notified that they will be replaced.

After a Contributor Accepts

Once a contributor accepts your invitation to write one or more entries, follow up with specific details of the assignment, including word counts, due date, and where and how to send (electronically) the entries. You will also need to give these details to your editor, including contributor contact information, so that releases (contracts) can be sent to your contributors.

Contributor Releases

We must have contributor releases from all contributors to your project. The contributor release is a one-page legal agreement with Greenwood that assigns us certain rights to the contributions in the encyclopedia. Greenwood's Editorial Administration department will take care of sending (generally via USPS mail) this release to your contributors and will track the return of signed releases. You can ask your acquisitions or development editor to request regular reports on how many signed agreements have been received for your project. A user-friendly contributor spreadsheet is available. See "Sample Contributor Spreadsheet" for a template, and ask your editor for the file. This allows our Editorial Administration Department to accurately and efficiently enter all contributor information electronically into a database.

It is very important that you maintain accurate records of entries assigned and compensation promised, especially, as is likely, if contributors drop out, complete only part of their initial assignment, or later take on additional entries. You must keep in close and regular contact with your acquisitions or development editor to ensure that he or she is apprised of any changes in assignment or compensation. So that we can update our records and prevent the payment of unwarranted compensation, it is particularly important that you immediately inform us when a contributor who has received an agreement drops out of the project or has submitted work that cannot be published.

Contributor Guidelines

You will also want to give contributors information on the project and guidelines on how to write, format, and submit their material. Ask your acquisitions or development editor to help you prepare these guidelines. If you write them on your own, please submit these guidelines to your acquisitions or development editor before sending them out to ensure that you and your editor agree on the instructions given to contributors.

"Sample Contributor Guidelines, A-Z Projects" is a general set of contributor guidelines that can be adjusted to suit your project. These guidelines provide basic instructions on planning and writing the entry, as well as brief information on style and a submission checklist. For encyclopedia projects, as soon as possible, you should create a sample encyclopedia entry or entries. This could be the sample entry or entries submitted early on to your editor, once you have incorporated any requested changes. This sample will be useful for contributors unfamiliar with writing for an encyclopedia. An introductory packet of material (including contributor guidelines and sample/s) should be sent to contributors via e-mail or made available to them on the web via a URL address. For narrative reference works, consult your acquisitions or development editor for ideas of model chapters, or you may wish to write one.

Contributors' Submissions

You or an assistant should back up electronic entries immediately so that a copy exists, and make sure the files open correctly and contain the right material. Do not accept hardcopy-only submissions from contributors. As the contributed assignments arrive, you will want to develop a system for handling them. That system should allow you to approve entries or work with contributors when you feel their work needs revision or improvement. Basically, you will want to approve for copyediting material as it comes in. Although you won't have to worry about misspellings or minor formatting issues (since the copyeditor will be checking for these problems), generally the more editing you do, the better the final product. If your contributors are reliable, there should only be a few entries you cannot approve for copyediting. In these cases, you'll have to work with the contributor to get the entry into acceptable condition, which can require delicate diplomacy. Remember that you can reject an entry if it does not meet acceptable standards. Work out a plan with your editor for sending in entries during the development of the complete project.

Contributors should know that both you the volume editor and Greenwood Publishing Group have the right to edit their material. If you make serious, substantive changes to entries, you should show contributors the edited text before you submit the finished manuscript. If contributors object to your editing, negotiate a solution or replace the contributor. Greenwood and the production houses we work with cannot directly send entries to individual contributors before, during, or after copyediting. You, as volume editor, will receive the copyedited manuscript as well as page proofs and can involve contributors in the final editing, as long as the schedule is maintained.

Contributor Compensation

In some cases Greenwood may be able to offer monetary compensation to those contributing to your project. This decision will be based on our assessment of the market potential for the book. If we have set aside a contributor budget, put a good deal of thought into administration. There are many factors to consider when planning how you will compensate the contributors to a reference work.

You should have discussed with your acquisitions editor how much money will be needed for contributor pay, how many complimentary copies of the work will be needed for contributors, and what the budget for the project will allow.

When you received your contract, the rider portion will tell you how much has been budgeted for contributor honoraria and complimentary copies.

Recommendations for Pay. It's best to set an amount based on size categories of entries. That is, after you have set your size (word) amounts for "long," "medium," and "short" entries, you should set roughly one payment for each category. However, reserve a certain amount to be able to pay a well-known scholar extra, or to pay for additional entries you may decide to assign later on. Therefore, you may choose to vary amounts depending on the expertise of the contributor. For example, if you have decided to pay $100 to contributors who write approximately 2000 words each, you still might choose to pay $400 to get a well-known scholar to write a 2000-word entry, because of the importance of her experience and contributions to the field. Conversely, someone with less experience than average in the field might be paid less than the $100 rate.

Complimentary Copies. If your budget allows, the best and easiest procedure is to give all contributors complimentary copies, with some contributors also receiving payment. Therefore, contributors who write small entries or who are less experienced might receive a complimentary copy only. For contributions to a very large set of reference works, however, the contributors who write more or who are more widely known might be given a set in lieu of pay, or in addition to pay, since the set will be quite expensive to purchase.

Payment Timing. In almost all cases, contributors are paid upon publication of the book, not submission of the entry, which will be noted on the contract that they receive from Greenwood.