Multi-Author Academic Book Editing and Proofreading

Project Background

Following Flatpage’s successful collaboration with NYU Law CHRGJ’s Open Global Rights platform, the team at CHRGJ engaged Flatpage to provide academic editing services for law schools, including comprehensive line editing, academic copyediting services, and final proofreading support for a forthcoming publication.

Flatpage has been extremely consistent in the high quality of service provided, always demonstrating a high degree of professionalism, responsiveness, and care in their work.

Jackie Gallant, CHRGJ

The book was developed for the More Than Human Rights (MOTH) Project, an interdisciplinary initiative dedicated to exploring the rights and wellbeing of humans, nonhumans, and the web of life that sustains us all.

Derived from conference proceedings and edited by César Rodríguez-Garavito, the publication comprises approximately twelve essays written by scholars, legal experts, activists, and storytellers. Because the contributions ranged from highly theoretical to legally dense to artistic and abstract, the manuscript required experienced scholarly manuscript editing to ensure clarity, consistency, and accessibility for a broader readership.

As the essays were originally conceived as oral presentations, Flatpage’s team provided line editing to strengthen structure, refine transitions, and adapt tone for publication. In addition, our academic copyediting services ensured consistency in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and citation formatting across all chapters.

The Collaboration

The MOTH team approached Flatpage during the early stages of preparing the conference proceedings for publication. As with many higher education publishing projects, the manuscript involved multiple authors, varied citation approaches, and distinct stylistic voices.

They needed a partner experienced in higher education editorial services who could:

• Help authors shift from presentation-style delivery to polished, reader-friendly prose
• Standardize citation formats across footnotes, in-text references, and endnotes
• Ensure mechanical consistency and eliminate typographical errors
• Preserve each contributor’s voice while strengthening clarity and cohesion

Flatpage coordinated closely with MOTH lawyer Jackie Gallant, relaying editorial feedback and tracking revisions through a shared project system. Documents were exchanged via a structured file-sharing platform, organized by editing pass and author response.

Flatpage exceeded even our high expectations in the quality of work and ease and professionalism of service. Publishing a book is a difficult task but working with Flatpage made the process of producing the book enormously easier and less stressful. We are exceedingly pleased with the outcome.

To maintain consistency across twelve contributors, our multi-editor team developed and maintained a shared style sheet throughout the project. This document governed citation formatting, spelling conventions, punctuation preferences, and stylistic decisions—an essential component of large-scale scholarly manuscript editing for academic institutions.

After the manuscript was prepared for production, Flatpage provided academic proofreading services, reviewing the publisher’s page proofs to ensure that no typographical, formatting, or layout issues remained before printing.

This final review included:

• Cross-checking citations and notes against the style sheet
• Identifying spacing or typographical inconsistencies
• Flagging layout issues that could affect readability
• Confirming consistency across headings and chapter elements

This stage of proofreading is especially critical for multi-author academic volumes, where even minor inconsistencies can undermine the professionalism of the final publication.

The Outcome

The MOTH book was published by the New York University School of Law in 2024 and is currently available online and in print.

Through a combination of academic editing services for law schools, structured collaboration, and meticulous proofreading, Flatpage helped transform a complex set of interdisciplinary conference papers into a cohesive, accessible, and publication-ready volume.

We absolutely recommend working with Flatpage! They can 100% be relied on to provide high quality services and make the process of book (and other) publication exceptionally smooth.