Institute of Professional Editors Limited

CredAbility 1

This is the first of the Accreditation Board's regular columns in our quest to reach the grail of accreditation for editors. Any quest is a challenge, and any challenge becomes easier if we all know as much as possible about what it entails. The aim of this column is to involve you by telling you what the Accreditation Board is seeking to do, how it is trying to do it, and by asking for your input. Our initial topic covers what has become a FAQ: how were the first assessors chosen?

Establishing our first pool of assessors

As set out in page 4 of the Accreditation Working Group's Final Report (2004), the Accreditation Board was charged, ‘in consultation with each state and territory to set up an interim pool of assessors comprising distinguished editors acceptable to their peers'. Once accreditation is granted, any accredited editor will be eligible to be appointed as an assessor. ‘The aim is to ensure that the profession as a whole regulates itself, and that accreditation is not controlled by a small and possibly unrepresentative group.'

Each member of the Board went back to their respective committees and asked them to nominate individuals who met the criteria of ‘a distinguished editor'. It was clear that we needed career editors who were endorsed by their societies, who were accomplished and respected by their peers, who were ethical, professional and active supporters of editing standards.

The obvious choices were the honorary life members of each society. However, as some societies had fewer such people to draw on than others, the various committees nominated appropriate people from among their peers. Those people, now deemed to be distinguished editors, were then invited to be among the first assessors, and the list of acceptances was provided to the Board.

As you can see from the list below, we have a formidable group of people who have agreed to take on the task of being the first assessors. (Details about the assessors and their areas of expertise will soon be available on our various state and territory websites, as well as the IPEd website <http://www.iped-editors.org/>.) This inaugural pool of editors has effectively been accredited by virtue of having been identified by their societies as 'distinguished' and nominated as assessors.

Please use CredAbility as a forum to raise your comments and queries. Contact [details of AB delegate] with your feedback. The Board wants to know what your concerns are, to address them, and to discuss them via CredAbility.

First cohort of assessors for accreditation

ACT

Elizabeth Murphy (generalist)

Chris Pirie (generalist)

Loma Snooks (generalist)

NSW

Heather Jamieson (literary fiction, generalist)

Sybil Kesteven (educational, vocational)

Pam Peters (generalist)

Meryl Potter (generalist, education, corporate)

Julie Stanton (generalist)

TAS

Janice Bird (generalist)

SA

Karen Disney (generalist, online editing)

Celia Jellett (generalist, children's literature)

Susan Rintoul (generalist, education)

Kathie Stove (generalist, sciences)

QLD

Susan Addison (legal, humanities)

Paul Bennett (education, business)

Rosanne Fitzgibbon (fiction, history, education)

Jill Morris (children's and adult fiction)

Barbara Ker Wilson, AM (generalist)

Ruth Ridgway (sciences, generalist)

Jan Whelan (generalist)

Judy Heinemann (education, government)

VIC

Elizabeth Flann (generalist)

Beryl Hill (generalist, writer)

Janet Mackenzie (generalist, writer)

Renée Otmar (generalist)

Susan Keogh (education, non-fiction)

WA

Anne Surma (generalist)

Janet Blagg (fiction, non-fiction)