The workflow of a manuscript

In most cases, the contact between the author and the series editor(s) comes about in an informal way. The formal process starts once a book manuscript is officially submitted to a book series. The first step is the submission. The series editor (at times in conjunction with members of the editorial board) examines the manuscript in a cursory way and decides whether its content is suitable and whether it should be reviewed for the series

Book manuscripts are peer-reviewed by at least two reviewers who are selected by the respective series editors. For edited volumes this review may be skipped provided the contributions in the volume have been peer-reviewed and the review process is documented.

The reviewers are asked to review the book manuscript within 10 - 12 weeks. If there are still reviews missing after 14 weeks, the series editor asks other reviewer(s) to write a review within 8 weeks. If the series editor does not succeed in obtaining at least two reviews after 26 weeks, the manuscript counts as rejected.

The review process has two possible outcomes: rejection or acceptance conditional upon implementation of changes. There is no revise and resubmit, but rejected manuscripts can be resubmitted after a year.

In the case of acceptance the series editor passes the reviews on to the author, who uses them to prepare the revised version. At this stage at the latest, all the style guidelines (ยง) need to be observed very strictly. The revision may take up to two months.

If the manuscript was not already written in LaTeX, it is now converted to LaTeX. This process is the responsibility of the author and the series editor. (The LangSci office can provide assistance as long as the DFG funding lasts, but probably not beyond this.) At this stage, the LangSci office will add the metadata to the book's record and announce the book as "forthcoming" in the catalogue.

The revised LaTex-manuscript is sent to the community proofreaders, who provide feedback to the author. This is done by the LangSci office. Depending on the length of the book, this can take between two and six weeks.

The LangSci office will do the typographic finetuning, and the press managers will carry out a final check of the book.

After the final check by the press managers the book is published by the LangSci office, i.e. it becomes available as a PDF document on the LangSci website. In addition, it is uploaded to the print-on-demand services, so that it is also available in printed form. The LangSci office will announce the book via LinguistList, its Twitter account, and an informal, engaging description will appear on the blog. New books are also announced in the LangSci Newsletter, which is sent out about once every two months. Further publicity is the responsibility of the authors, series editors and their subcommunities.