Copyeditor Help

From Scholarpedia

Project leader

Tobias Denninger

General style

All authors are required to adhere to the Instructions for authors, though very few follow them.

To achieve a consistent style throughout Scholarpedia, the goal is to check following items for all the articles.

1. /Text
   1. Item copyeditor: Jianqiang Shen
   2. Text
      1. All equations should be formatted with the LaTeX Math syntax, not with HTML; i.e., , not xⁱ_j.
      2. emphasized term should be used instead of 'emphasized term'.
   3. Sectioning
      1. The article should be broken up into sections and subsections.
      2. Section headings should be in 'Sentence case'.
      3. Extra empty lines above or below section headings should be removed.
2. /Definition
   1. Item copyeditor: Andrew Whitford
   2. At the top, before the first section, there should be a definition of the topic. If no such defining paragraph exists, it is acceptable to provisionally treat the first paragraph as a definition section. The article may then be approved, and the author made aware of the desired changes.
   3. The topic of the article should be mentioned at least once (verbatim) in the definition section. Like most words, the first mention of the topic should be in lowercase (except names, like in 'Hopfield network').
   4. The first mentioning of the topic should be in boldface by using <strong><nowiki> </nowiki></strong>
      1. <nowiki> </nowiki> prevents from 'autolink'.
      2. <strong> </strong> is important for Google pagerank.
   5. If there are any problems with the clarity or content of the definition, the editor of the article (listed at the bottom of the article page) may also be contacted. Avoid altering the content directly.
3. /Figures
   1. Item copyeditor: Burak Erdeniz
   2. Figures can be inserted by using [[Image:figurefile.ext|thumb|400px|right|label|caption]]
   3. The figure references in the text should be of the form Fig. <ref>label</ref>.
   4. Often it is better to have Fig.1 at the top right.
4. /References
   1. Item copyeditor: Jie Bao
   2. There should be a section == References ==.
   3. References should use the unordered list style, i.e., should be itemized using the '*' symbol at the beginning of each list item.
   4. References should be alphabetized by first author and in the (Author 2006) format, not in the "number" format. It is OK if some math articles use the AMS reference style, like in Topological entropy (articles have abbreviations, which are used in the main text in square parentheses).
5. /Recommended reading
   1. Item copyeditor: Ian Stevenson
   2. There should be a section == Recommended reading ==.
   3. Authors should be asked for review articles or books they recommend for further reading.
   4. Recommended reading items should use the unordered list style, i.e., should be itemized using the '*' symbol at the beginning of each list item.
6. /External links
   1. Item copyeditor: Juan P. Carbajal
   2. There should be a section == External links ==.
   3. External links should use the unordered list style, i.e., should be itemized using the '*' symbol at the beginning of each list item.
   4. The external links section should start with the websites of all the authors.
      1. Example: * [http://www.uhnres.utoronto.ca/labs/skinner/ Frances K. Skinner's website]
      2. Check the author's webpage. Look for publications. If the scholarpedia article is not cited or is not correctly cited, put the article in the list Scholarpedia:Assistant Editor/Linking_to_Articles_From_Author_Pages/Articles, adding a brief comment (i.e. bad citation in <author name>'s webpage or citation missing in <author name>'s webpage).
7. /See also
   1. Item copyeditor: Elias August
   2. There should be a section == See also ==.
   3. This section contains links to other Scholarpedia articles.

Article copyeditors and item copyeditors

Each article gets an article copyeditor (section 'Articles') and each item we want to check for the articles gets an item copyeditor (section 'General style'). The task of the article copyeditor is to contact the author if necessary and to modify the respective article. If he has questions regarding a certain item, he can communicate with the respective item copyeditor. The task of the item copyeditor is to double check the modifications made by the article copyeditors and to update the respective item details in the section 'General style' if he recognizes that issues for the respective item accumulate.

Progress table

Please write in the respective cells AC--~~~~ (author contacted) after you contacted an author and OK--~~~~ if you consider an item as done. The goal is that each cell gets a OK1 after a check from the respective article copyeditor and OK2 after a double check from the respective item copyeditor.

Find the progress tables here:

/Progress table

Compact overview of articles currently in the copyedit focus

• Peer review status

1. invited
2. accepted
3. started
4. submitted
5. 1 reviewer agreed
6. 1 reviewer approved
7. all reviewer approved

• Copyedit status
  • Status for the 7 items. 1=OK by article copyeditor, 2=OK by item copyeditor.
  • Next action by: Can be article copyeditor, item copyeditor or author.
  • The copyedit process should be primarily during the peer review status 3. - 6.

Articles

The plan is to check the unapproved articles first and the approved (peer-reviewed) articles later, but let's discuss what is the best approach. Please choose articles you want to copyedit from the list

/Articles

and put your name behind it. Also please add the respective row to the 'Progress table'. Alternatively or additionally you can choose an item (Definition, References, Recommended reading, External links, See also) and go through the articles double checking those items. In this case put your name behind the chosen item in the section 'General style' above.

Questions and answers

• Can I modify language?
  • You can modify the language directly provided that the author is not English language native. Otherwise put your suggestions into <!-- --> to not offend them. Changing from British to American English might be dangerous ;-)

<!-- I not have sure if people that not speak eNglish natively also not can feel himself a bit offended with such corrections... -- Nwerneck 19:54, 30 March 2008 (EDT) -->

• What is the style policy to be enforced for subpages within articles? Are they to be treated like 'sections' of the main article? - Chennu
  • A subpages should be treated as "appendix" to the article. It does not have to provide definition, references, see also, etc., but the authors may include references pertinent to a particular subpage. Once the article is approved, all subpages are treated as approved. Izhikevich

• Should tables be hyperlinked within articles, like figures? If so, what is the WikiText syntax to create a table label and reference it? - Chennu
  • Tables do not have automatic numbers, so the best way is to say: "the table on the right..".
  • Also, you can put <label>tab1</label>'''Table 1''' next to the table, e.g., in the table caption. Then, in the text, you can write [[#tab1|Table 1]]. This would produce a link to the table, the numbering is done manually though.

• If a section is empty. What do I do?
  • External links: Contact the author asking for their homepage or relevant page. You can use the template found in /External_links. As an example see Awareness_of_intention. The Author Brian Maniscalco has no webpage but he is related to the Columbia University - Department of Psychology.
  • Recommended reading: Similar procedure as above...

• This page, and the article template, define only the format for references to journal articles or books. Is there a standard format that should be adhered to for essays in volumes, websites, etc.? Is it permissable to include page numbers with references to books in the text of an article?

• What is meant by extra empty lines in Text section? Multiple empty lines? There should be one before and after at least for readability of the wikitext. --Memming 11:57, 25 January 2008 (EST)