Omnibus Editor
From Augustan Society Staff Wiki
The official journal of The Augustan Society, Inc., is The Augustan Omnibus. It is under the direction of the Omnibus Editor, who is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the Editor-in-Chief.
The duties of the Omnibus Editor are:
- To prepare articles, reviews, editorials, and letters for publication.
- To submit sufficient articles, reviews, editorials, and letters to the Production Editor by published deadlines to permit on-time publication of the magazine, or to print and distribute the issue himself.
- To solicit articles from the membership suitable for publication.
- To assist authors, primarily with the aid of Associate Editors in preparing their submissions for publication.
- To ensure that the proper procedure is followed in the processing of submissions.
- To obtain copyright releases from authors, and to oblige authors to provide copies of copyright releases for material included in their submissions.
- To appoint such Associate Editors, Proofreaders, Advertising Managers, and other personnel as may be needed to perform the duties above.
- To delegate work among his staff and track each item, making status reports to the Editor-in-Chief as requested.
- To name an Assistant Editor within his first year in office, and to train him so that he might be able to step up to the office of Omnibus Editor at need.
Procedure
Following is our procedure for publishing issues of the journal:
- Articles are received by the Omnibus Editor.
- The Omnibus Editor does preliminary review about suitability for publication, possible rejection.
- The Omnibus Editor confirms that the article is previously unpublished, and that copyright clearances are provided for the text and all images submitted. Copyright release forms need to be developed.
- Omnibus Editor performs a quick survey of sources to confirm that most necessary data is available (even if out of standard format).
- Article is placed on list “to be edited.”
- Articles are selected from the “to be edited” list and assigned to Associate Editors. When there are insufficient Associate Editors, he may edit articles himself.
- Associate Editors provide copy editing (including planting text references to illustrations and tables, if needed), write captions for photos and titles for tables as needed, confirm sources as seems necessary, and convert all to standard format (to the limits of available skill and software). In doing so, they may contact the author, but this is not required (and at times, not possible).
- Article is returned to the Omnibus Editor for review, possible return to Associate Editor.
- The Omnibus Editor reformats the article as needed, including insertion of quarter-page ad spots (not the ads themselves).
- The Omnibus Editor sends the original and the edited article to proofreaders (if any) and corrects errors found.
- Article is sent to the Production Editor and placed on the list “to be published.”
- The Production Editor assembles the articles received into a dummy master, selecting for size (issues must be a multiple of four pages), and balance (to the extent that's possible).
- The Production Editor inserts the ads provided by the Advertising Manager, supplementing with stock ads as required.
- The Production Editor does final formatting (this is where column height adjustments are made, for example), selects cover art in consultation with the Omnibus Editor, and determines the final page count.
- The Production Editor arranges for printing, trimming, and binding, then passes finished magazines to Headquarters Staff for stuffing and mailing. If desired, the Omnibus Editor may perform these tasks.
