NYU School of Law, Open Global Rights (OGR)

Project Background

Hosted by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the Future of Rights Program at NYU School of Law, Open Global Rights (OGR) is an online platform that publishes articles written by academics and practitioners who provide analysis and opinion on international human rights issues. Since 2013, the site has published authors from around the globe, including some of the leading names in academia, law, and activism, who generate dialogue on international human rights issues across various perspectives.

Under the direction of Editor in Chief César Rodríguez Garavito and Managing Editor Ginger Hervey, OGR posts approximately 8–12 articles per month. Many of these pieces are written by international authors without significant experience writing for an online platform. OGR therefore engaged the team at Flatpage to help ensure that the content met their quality guidelines and was free of grammatical and spelling errors.

The Collaboration

The executive and managing editors at OGR initially approached Flatpage to assist in copyediting the numerous articles they wanted to publish on their website so that they were consistent in style and free of mechanical errors in grammar and punctuation. At the outset of this collaboration, Flatpage helped OGR develop their own content and style guidelines to ensure that all articles met their content parameters and that our editors implemented a consistent house style.

Because OGR’s authors are often multilingual speakers, their team primarily needed copyediting assistance to ensure that the articles were free from grammatical and punctuation errors and that all sentences flowed logically. When one of their chief editors transitioned out of the organization, Flatpage also took the lead in providing content feedback through line editing to ensure that the text is engaging for a general readership.

I have been impressed with how organized and communicative Flatpage’s editors are. They are always responsive and professional, and turn around high-quality edits about complicated subject matter quickly. Authors at OGR sometimes do not have extensive nonacademic writing experience, or English is not their first language. Regardless, the content and copy editing processes make all the articles more clear, well-structured, and accessible to a broad audience.

Ginger Hervey, OGR

This project requires two editors who collaborate on each phase of the editorial process and who work closely with the executive team at OGR. The project is managed on OGR’s project-management platform and, since the content length is short, our editors work on shared online documents using tracked changes and comments.

The Outcome

Flatpage’s collaboration with OGR is ongoing and has resulted in the successful completion of hundreds of published articles

Flatpage’s editors are experienced, efficient, and organized. They strike a balance between letting the author’s voice come through in the piece and cutting down on jargon and technical language. I would recommend Flatpage to any publication looking for editors. I’ve greatly enjoyed working with its editors, and we’ve received positive feedback from authors about working with them as well!