Cecile Berbesi - Freelance Content and Publishing Services

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Experience

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)

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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

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IT skills

Acrobat Pro

• Amending text and images using advanced editing tools directly in unlocked PDFs
• Tagging PDF files with comments and queries
• Transforming Adobe PDF files into ebooks and slide presentations
• Combining PDF files to reveal text amendments
• Extracting, replacing, adding pages to PDF files

Expert
Photoshop

• Optimising images for press
• Tweaking images
• Manipulating and amending scanned or PDF text

Good

InDesign

• Typesetting books, catalogues and flyers
• Creating styles and templates from scratch, following a brief or based on predefined styles
• Generating print-ready PDFs with press quality settings on

Expert
Illustrator

• Converting graphs, timelines and other numerical-type of illustrations (png, excel or pdf files) into high-quality eps files
• Drawing maps and graphs from screen grabs, pictures or scans
• Designing logos and banners

Good

Word

• Formatting layouts using styles and templates
• Using track changes and including comments and queries
• Compiling mathematical formulas, table of contents, indexes, glossary
• Comparing and merging Word documents

Expert
PowerPoint

• Designing dynamic presentations

Intermediate

Excel

• Creating production planning schedules and budget tracking spreadsheets
• Generating graphs

Intermediate