Books With Multiple Contributors Present Multiple Editing Challenges

Multiple Editing Challenges Scientists love multi-author books, a fact easily seen by how worn such volumes are in libraries. Each offers varied perspectives on a research topic. "In putting together a multi-author book, it is important to choose a theme, and to choose contributors who are doing interesting work," explains Rudolf Raff, a professor of biology at Indiana University in Bloomington, who has edited two such books. The tone and pace of the articles contained within the covers of multi-author books contrast with those of journal reports. "Articles like these allow one to put discoveries into an historical context, and to speculate a bit more than in original research articles," says David Shub, a professor of biology at the State University of New York, Albany. "Writing such an article is an opportunity to put together a review that synthesizes material in a way that adds something for people to think about." Shub coauthored an article on self-splicing introns in Molecular Biology of Bacteriophage T4 (J.D. Karam, ed.), published in 1994 by the Washington, D.C.-based American Society for Microbiology Press. NIGHTMARE: Joseph Arcos discovered that a contributor had plagiarized. "The interdisciplinary approach in these books brings you closer to reality than single articles in journals," adds Joseph C. Arcos, a senior science adviser at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C. Arcos was lead editor of the 47-author seventh volume of the Chemical Induction of Cancer series published by Boston-based Birkhäuser Publishers Inc. (a division of Springer International) in 1995. His book looks at oncogenes and tumor suppressors, but also considers the effects of diet, radiation, and other factors. A multi-author book is more research-oriented than a textbook (which may also have several authors), yet broader in scope than a journal. Unlike multiple authors of a journal article, contributors to a multi-author book work separately. And because a book article usually offers more information than a journal article, contributing a chapter can be time-consuming. "Book chapters usually take longer to write than articles for journals reporting a new finding," says Louis Delpino, research editorial assistant to Peter Nowell, Harnwell Professor of Pathology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Editors-both the scientific variety and those at publishing houses-ensure that a multi-author book reads more smoothly than a collage of related articles. One chapter should lead logically to the next, with no overlaps, gaps, or contradictions in coverage, and often a preface or introductory chapter to establish the overall theme. A scientist who serves as a consulting editor solicits chapters from contributors and edits them. An editor at a publishing house keeps the project on schedule and juggles the various stages of the publishing process. "At one time, you can be dealing with page proofs, galleys, and some pages still in manuscript form," says Peter McCurdy, editorial supervisor at McGraw-Hill Inc. in New York. McCurdy worked on The Metabolic and Molecular Bases of Inherited Disease (C. Scriver, A. Beaudet, W. Sly, D. Vale, eds.), published in 1995. It has 154 chapters, many with several authors. This unusually huge project had a board of four consulting scientific editors, plus three editors and two copy editors at McGraw-Hill. The gestation period of a multi-author book, like other books, should be two years, one for writing and editing and one for production. But delays at either stage often push back the timetable. Arcos's endeavor, for example, stretched to nearly six years, largely because several contributors had to be replaced. Delpino recalls that for one book, it took two years for the publisher to return page proofs to the author for review because coordinating the many contributors took longer than expected-and then changes on the proofs were requested to be submitted within 48 hours! "By the time the book came out, research had moved ahead so much that everyone already knew [the information in the chapter]," he recalls. Editing a multi-author book can be immensely satisfying as well as highly stressful. For Charles Scriver, Alva Professor of Human Genetics at McGill University in Montreal, coediting The Metabolic and Molecular Bases of Inherited Disease was a joy. Because he and the other editors gave each contributor a protocol for the chapter content, editing was minimal, and nearly all papers arrived on time. Plus, Scriver calls the McGraw-Hill editorial team "superb." In contrast to Scriver's positive experience is Arcos's. His problems went beyond the usual missed deadlines to include two deaths of contributors, a house fire, a flooded basement, and the discovery that one chapter had been massively plagiarized from a textbook. Arcos says he will take an extended vacation from editing another multi-author volume. The multidisciplinary nature of many of these books makes editing a challenge, according to David Lester, visiting scientist in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration. Lester coedited the 14-author Protein Kinase C: Current Concepts and Future Perspectives (D.S. Lester and R.M. Epand, eds.), published in 1992 by Ellis Horwood Ltd. in Chichester, U.K. "It covered many areas in biology, including cell biology, neurobiology, genetics, biochemistry, and biophysics. It definitely was more work as an editor, compared to editing a book from one perspective. I learned much more." Assembling a multi-author book occurs in stages. These include finding the consulting editor, lining up authors, and editing and production. Sometimes a scientist approaches a publisher with an idea for a multi-author book, and sometimes a publisher or previous editors approach a scientist about taking on the task of editing such a work. In Scriver's case, the editors of previous editions asked him to take over. Arcos became an editor after contributing chapters to preceding volumes. SEGUE: Rudolf Raff led a conference that inspired a book. Some scientists segue from hosting a conference to editing a book based on its presentations. Rudolf Raff and his wife, Elizabeth Raff, also a professor of biology at Indiana University, led a conference on comparative embryology in August 1985, at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory. They edited papers on the talks into Development as an Evolutionary Process (R.A. Raff and E.C. Raff, eds.), published by New York-based Alan R. Liss Inc. in 1987. The only problem, they say, was coaxing some of the 41 authors. "A lot of people come to meetings and want to talk, but not write a chapter," notes Rudolf Raff. INITIATIVE: Thomas Loughlin put related studies together. Sometimes a scientist identifies a need for a multi-author book and spearheads the process. This was the case for Thomas Loughlin, wildlife biologist at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, who coordinated the effort to save oil-drenched mammals following the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989. "At the time, there was no effort to put the animal studies together in a unified publication," recalls Loughlin. "I was afraid that the individual investigators would put their work in journals, and it would be hard for the public to track all of them down. So I took the initiative to get all the mammal work in one volume." The result: Marine Mammals and the Exxon Valdez (T.R. Loughlin, ed.), published by San Diego-based Academic Press in 1994, with 40 contributors. Loughlin's task was easy because the researchers could adapt government reports of their work into a chapter format. Rounding up chapter contributors is simple if the book is based on a conference, or if the editor knows the authors. The chief criterion for inviting contributors is scientific reputation. "Authors are chosen based on being a leader in their respective areas of expertise," notes Lester. For his book, the editors decided chapter topics, then consulted the literature to identify the most innovative researchers. Scientists vary widely on whether they regard an invitation to contribute a chapter as an honor or an inconvenience. "[Some] scientists think book chapters do not count for much, because tenure and promotion committees generally do not consider chapters equal to peer-reviewed research articles," comments Jerry Shay, a professor of cell biology and neurosciences at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Shay has edited several series for Plenum Press Inc. in New York. Some scientists decline because they have been burned in the past. Keith Frayn, consultant clinical scientist at Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, U.K., published a letter in Nature (375:100, 1995), detailing how publishers of books he had contributed to caused problems by copyrighting his figures. "I have grown very resentful of having to write and ask permission to reproduce a figure or table which I probably spent a Sunday afternoon drawing on my computer at home," he says. Authors can submit manuscripts in several ways. Most editors queried for this article prefer hard copy plus a computer disk. Justine Cullinan, managing editor of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, points out that faxes distort superscripts, subscripts, Greek characters, and equations. Receiving submissions from contributors in different countries usually isn't a problem, editors say, because deadlines are generous (four to 12 months), and E-mail speeds correspondence. Editing may take longer, though. "Some chapters need rewriting to 'Anglify' them," says McCurdy. In fact, it was "some unusual turns in his use of the English language" from one European contributor that led Arcos to discover plagiarism. But the initial motivation to write is the biggest obstacle, according to Cullinan: "Whether it is sent by disk or wire, or hard copy, they have to actually do it, write the article." Shay feels that potential contributors should realistically evaluate their ability to deliver on time before accepting an invitation. "An editor wants to have the highest-impact scientists writing for a book, and these individuals are simply overwhelmed with other commitments," he says. He grants one two-week extension for late submissions, which usually works. If the contributor does not deliver after that, Shay finds a new author. Such setbacks usually do not derail a project, because deadlines allow for some leeway, according to McCurdy. David Lester has an unusual approach to handle invited conference speakers suffering from writer's block: "We refuse to reimburse their expenses until a chapter is received!" Tardy authors can harm their cocontributors, as Frayn recounts. So many authors missed deadlines for a book he was contributing to as a graduate student, in 1975, that the publisher dropped the project. "I worked very hard on it, and was pleased with the end result [of the chapter]," he recalls. "About three years later, the publisher wrote to say that because some of the chapters had never been received, the book would not be published. There was no recompense, nothing." Publishers, editors, and authors agree that the motivation to contribute to a multi-author book surely isn't monetary. Most contributors aren't paid at all. Sometimes a percentage of the royalty is offered, but dividing a 10 percent royalty among dozens of contributors results in a very small piece of pie for each. Despite the deadlines, delays, and paltry pay, many scientists regard an invitation to contribute to a multi-author book an honor. "The reason why most people contribute chapters to multi-author books, I think, is to get recognition as an authority in a field," comments Shub. Scientist-editors gain from the experience, too. States Shay: "There is not much of a financial reward, but there is the reward of a job well done, especially when book reviews indicate that the book is a contribution to the field." Ricki Lewis, a freelance science writer based in Scotia, N.Y., is the author of several biology textbooks. She is online at 76715.3517@compuserve.com.

Books With Multiple Contributors Present Multiple Editing Challenges

Apr 28, 1996

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