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Cecile Berbesi

Freelance Content and Publishing Services

Production editor
Journals coordinator
Proofreader
Publishing industry
Content services
Home Experience Education IT skills Portfolio
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Cecile Berbesi
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Professional Status
Freelancer
Available
About Me
Meticulous editor and proofreader, with almost two decades of freelance and in-house experience in the UK trade and academic publishing industry.
Experience

Content & Publishing Services

Cecile Berbesi
Since April 2016
Freelancer
  • I wear so many hats as a freelancer that on a typical day, I can be a:

    • proofreader (English, French, Portuguese)
    • journals production coordinator
    • peer-review manager
    • pre-production coordinator
    • xml/pdf controller
    • typesetter

    Subject areas include Education, Politics & International Relations, Geography, Middle East Studies, History, Travel Writing, French and Portuguese
  • managing the production stages of a portfolio of 9 academic journals to ensure they meet the company's standards of publication time, quality and budget
  • monitoring workflow of journals articles and issues using online submission system (JAMS/Janeway), spreadsheets (Excel and Trello) and ScienceOpen website
  • budgeting, outsourcing and briefing suppliers (copyeditors, proofreaders, typesetters) to make sure that each article adheres to its own journal style guidelines (APA 7, CMoS 17, Harvard, OSCOLA)
  • providing ad hoc support on systems, communication with contributors and editors, copyflow and articles processing
  • reporting to the journals manager and production manager
  • checking final file deliverables (xml and pdfs)
Company website
https://uclpress.scienceopen.com/collection/UCLPress
  • overseeing the efficient operation of peer review for two major UCL Press journals, from the point of submission to acceptance/rejection
  • assessing initial submissions to determine suitability for the journals, leading to either desk rejection or assignment of manuscripts by the editors-in-chief
  • blinding papers, contacting reviewers, chasing reviewers, editors and contributors
  • tracking manuscripts and monitoring schedules using the online submission system (JAMS) and Excel/Word trackers
  • acting as the main point of liaison with the editors-in-chief, guest editors, associate editors, reviewers and contributors and reporting to the journals manager
  • preparing accepted papers for production by checking that permission for image reproduction has been granted, papers adhere to the journal style, ethics and other declarations have been obtained and plagiarism is avoided by running iThenticate reports
Company website
https://uclpress.scienceopen.com/collection/UCLPress
  • Controlling quality of 150 titles/year: ensuring content is standard to and in tone with house style/industry standard, checking for plagiarism, copyediting and proofreading all 150 books (Adobe Acrobat Pro and on paper)
  • Budgeting: tracking variance to budget performance, negotiating suppliers' fees, monitoring suppliers' payments and follow-ups
  • Scheduling: implementing production planning spreadsheet, updating internal project management database
  • Managing workforce and authors: briefing every project, outsourcing UK and Indian-based suppliers, tracking the production planner and chasing-up when delays, mediating between the supplier and the author, recruiting new suppliers, answering authors and suppliers’ queries
  • Designing: typesetting ebooks and layouts (Adobe InDesign), enhancing pictures quality (Adobe Photoshop), drawing book series logos and internal maps (Adobe Illustrator)
Company Description
I.B.Tauris is a publishing company founded in 1983 whose strategy is to publish serious but accessible works in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Company website
http://www.ibtauris.com
  • Building up publisher's list of titles on 3-year forecast
  • Reading and evaluating book proposals and manuscripts submitted by authors and agents, and assessing their suitability for the list
  • Contracting electronic and book publication rights
  • Releasing up to 10 packaging and text handovers/month to production: assessing manuscript content and image quality control, liaising with external suppliers and authors
  • Preparing marketing materials: selecting cover images, writing blurbs, securing endorsements, designing flyers and yearly catalogue
Company Description
A global publishing company that specialises in academic non-fictions, especially in the Science Technical and Medical subject area
  • Formatting all 50 book layouts using templates or as per briefing
  • Compiling contents and making indexes from scratch
  • Redrawing formulas using MathMagic (Adobe InDesign) and MathType (Word 2007)
  • Designing ratios, charts, graphs and maps in Adobe Illustrator
  • Assessing technical content of PDF files and tweaking final PDF files using PitStop
Company Description
ISTE Ltd is a privately-owned IT & Engineering Sciences and Technology publisher based in London and founded in 2005.
Company website
http://www.iste.co.uk