Screening Team Requirements and Guidelines

While the Editorial Review team has the vote in what is or is not approved, the screener can influence that assessment by presenting an author's work in the best and cleanest form possible. Our goal here is to find work we want to recommend, and if the only bar to that is minor cosmetic issues, it then benefits the whole process to see them addressed and corrected - to put the author's best foot forward. Screeners are the first line of review and approval and are essential to the success of the Anthology.

For Authors:

The primary goal of the screening staff is to assist submitting authors in presenting their work to the Editorial Review team to its best possible advantage. It is not the job of a screener to provide a line edit for every submission, but rather to assess the main issues in a given work and present them in a way that will make them easy for an author to understand and remedy.

Screeners receive the story from the administrator with no identifying information attached. Their task is to scan (or read) the text in the hopes of identifying any common technical problems such as spelling, typos, punctuation, inconsistent tenses, POV shifts, homophones, formatting, or other such issues.

In general, authors tend to be consistent in their errors, including typos or the overuse of a word or phrase that is a particular stylistic quirk of that specific author. The screener's job is to find those error trails and point them out. If the story exhibits a particularly noticeable or a substantial number of non-American phrasings (British is common), this will be noted as well.

Screeners are not required to mark or identify every instance of a problem, but there are times when it may be helpful for the author. For example, if only one or two words are misspelled, a screener may make a specific note instead of simply stating that there are spelling issues.

If a text has only minor typos that would take less than five minutes to correct, the administrator may contact the author to point this out and ask if staff may correct them so the text can be moved more quickly through the process. If the author agrees, the text will then be shifted into the queue for the Editorial Review team - the decision to correct and resubmit a text is solely up to the author.

Screening has two distinct areas of concern:

Technical Errors: Common errors of punctuation, grammar, and spelling are issues that must be addressed by the author before the work can be sent to the Editorial Review team.

Style Issues: Non-standard punctuation and/or formatting issues may be style choices by the author. If you find them distracting or notable, include them with your comments. These may or may not be addressed by the author and if an author maintains their choices, style issues alone are not a bar to moving the work into queue for the Editorial Review team

Works rejected at the screening level may be resubmitted three times. In such cases, every effort will be made to get that work back to the original screener; however, the third resubmission will likely go to someone new.

For Screeners:

Screeners are not expected to catch everything. Anyone who has ever worked with betas or editors knows that errors may slip through no matter how many eyes have reviewed a text. However, if a member of the Editorial Review staff makes note of a lot of technical issues remaining after a particular screener passes on a text, that screener may be asked to step down, serve in a different position on staff, or do an actual line-edit on a work to show that they haven't overstated their own abilities at screening. This isn't meant to be a punishment or a judgment on the screener, but to ensure that the screener's attention, focus, and skill set are appropriate to the task at hand.

Summarize your comments and use examples when necessary. An author may challenge or question a screener's comments, and those questions will be sent back to the screener to be addressed. In the case of an unresolvable difference of opinion between an author and a screener, the work may be resent to another screener for a 2nd opinion. Neither the first screener's comments, nor the author's, will be included in a 2nd screening review.

If a screener develops any issues, personal or fannish, which might interfere with the ability to keep the screening process fluid and in motion, please contact the administrator as soon as possible. After notification, the screener will be removed from the screening rotation for as long as they need and will be reinstated without prejudice when able to return.