Copyedit Instructions

Purpose. Copyediting improves the accuracy, clarity, and consistency of an accepted manuscript without altering its research findings or introducing unsupported scientific claims. These instructions provide a standard work sequence for ZAHRA copyeditors, handling editors, and authors during preparation of the final publication files.

1. Responsibilities and permitted changes

2. Pre-copyedit intake verification

1. Confirm the manuscript status is accepted in OJS and obtain the correct accepted source file; do not copyedit an outdated submission version.
2. Check that every named author, affiliation, email, ORCID (if supplied), title, abstract, keywords and funding statement are consistent with the final editorial record.
3. Check that the article fits the journal section and uses the approved template and current publication language policy.
4. Verify declarations and permissions for reused images, datasets, adapted tables and quotations.
5. Record copyedit queries for the author rather than silently changing data, numerical results or the scientific interpretation.

3. Language and technical consistency

• Correct grammar, spelling, punctuation and sentence structure while preserving scientific meaning and the author’s terminology.
• Maintain consistent terms, abbreviations, model names, dataset names, variables, capitalisation, hyphenation and units throughout text, tables and figures.
• Define technical abbreviations at first use in the main text, even when also defined in the abstract; avoid unnecessary abbreviations in headings.
• Check singular/plural, tense and clarity of comparisons; distinguish research objectives, observations and interpretive claims.
• Do not change equations, algorithm steps, hyperparameters, reported performance values, or statistical significance statements without author confirmation.

4. Manuscript elements to copyedit

5. Handling citations, references and identifiers

References must be traceable. A copyeditor may standardise format, punctuation and abbreviations, but should not replace or fabricate source information. Verify any DOI against the actual cited work before inserting it. Do not invent a DOI for the ZAHRA article or display a DOI field before registration and resolution are confirmed.

6. Author queries and approval cycle

1. Mark ambiguous claims or inconsistent data in an author-query list with section, paragraph, figure/table number and a concise question.
2. Return the copyedited manuscript or tracked-change file to the corresponding author for review, with clear instructions for resolving queries.
3. Check author responses and ensure accepted corrections are inserted consistently across abstract, body, tables, figures and references.
4. Escalate scientific changes, authorship changes or unresolved integrity concerns to the handling editor; they require editorial authorisation, not unilateral copyediting.
5. Deliver a clean, approved final text and record the approved revision in the OJS workflow before layout begins.

7. Final copyediting checklist

• No unexplained editorial query remains open; names and metadata agree with the accepted record.
• No figure/table is uncited, unnumbered, or inconsistent with the written results.
• No citation lacks a corresponding reference and no listed reference is uncited unless the editorial policy permits it.
• Technical abbreviations and metrics are consistently presented.
• The author has verified any substantive corrections and the handling editor has cleared the source for layout.