Is it possible to ask for reviewing the corrected Galley proof in Taylor & Francis journal

Question

I recently received the Galley proof from the journal. I sent my correction, but there are more than 50. All of them are minor. Part of them are caused in the copy-editing process, and the editor changed some words incorrectly. Part of them are caused by my own mistake on factual information, like missing a word in a citation, or giving wrong page number for a reference.

The publisher mentioned they would not expect to receive more than 30 corrections. I was wondering whether they would correct everything I mentioned (given these corrections do not change the content)? Is it possible to ask to review the corrected proof before they send it for publication? (Just to check they correct everything right, rather than suggesting new correction).

I am very nervous now, so any comment and suggestion would be great!

Answer 1

It's impossible to tell from the outside since this is going to be specific to the journal's production staff.

It's possible that the 30-changes limit is just to dissuade authors from submitting hundreds of changes and/or requesting a fresh typeset from the original source files. It is also possible that this is a hard limit and the the typesetters will go "this author wants 50 corrections?? I refuse to do it!". It's possible that if the typesetters say this, the desk editor will persuade them to do it anyway. There really is no way to tell, even for the same publisher, since the typesetters/desk editors for each journal will vary, and this is a decision at the individual level.

The same goes for requesting a 2nd reading. You can certainly ask, but the desk editor might not oblige. It's a juggling act here because if they don't send you a corrected galley proofs and publish anyway, and the published paper turns out to be poor, they'd have to deal with an angry author (which nobody wants to). On the other hand if they do show you the proofs, then you might make even more corrections, and ask for a 3rd reading followed by 4th reading etc, and that is also not ideal for them.

That said, since it's only the 2nd reading, I would likely oblige if I were handling your paper. If you want to see the 2nd reading, you should let them know quickly, for their convenience.

Answer 2

Yes, of course you can ask: "Due to the number of corrections, if possible I would like to review the proofs again after corrections are made, to make sure nothing gets missed. Would this be possible?"

But keep in mind that journal production runs on a tight schedule, and only a limited amount of time is available for reviewing and correcting the proofs. They may tell you that there won't be time to run the updated version by you, or they may give you a very short amount of time to check it (e.g. 24 hours).