Institute of Professional Editors Limited

Why do we need accreditation?

Editing remains an undervalued and largely invisible profession. For people who are outside our usual market, editors aren't the kind of people they would ever think about, much less suspect of being organised to the degree that we are; editors remain largely invisible to too many people who need our services.

Even within our present market, too many editors have difficulty in earning the kind of income that their skills and versatility should command. Members of our profession have an extraordinary range of skills, qualifications and accomplishments, yet we all know first-class editors who have difficulty in earning an income commensurate with their skills. ‘Genteel poverty' was the phrase Lyn Farkas used in Canberra in 2001 to describe this situation.

For example, it is far from unknown for editors to be paid $19 an hour. Even for an inexperienced editor, this is gross exploitation; a mowing man earns more than that.

Many editors could describe similar experiences. Many have also lost work because a potential client had previously engaged a so-called editor who then botched the job very thoroughly. Understandably, such clients may well become extremely distrustful of editors and believe that no editor is likely to add value to their work.

National industry standards increasingly require professions and training organisations to have assessment and accreditation processes. Having no accreditation process doesn't help new editors; it leaves them to float.

Will accreditation improve this situation?

We hope that it will, in conjunction with other activities at national level. The aim of the accreditation program we are now developing is to create a scheme comparable in many ways with registration/ accreditation schemes already well established in many professions, such as accounting, engineering, law, psychology and public relations.

Accreditation of editors will help members of our profession gain recognition of their skills. Our long-term aim is to create a situation where accreditation is seen by editors as a normal step in their careers and by clients and potential clients as an indication that they can expect a good job from an accredited editor.

We need to be realistic about what is possible: the benefits of accreditation will take years to achieve. But we have to start somewhere. This is at least the first step. If we don't take that first step, we have no hope of advancing our profession. Accreditation and the other national developments accompanying it will provide real benefits we cannot hope to achieve for our members now.

What benefits will accreditation bring?

Many of our colleagues have had the experience of being undercut by another editor, obtaining a job only to find that the client proposes to pay peanuts because that's what they've paid previous editors and they don't see the true value of the work or appreciate the skills required. Well-established editors can afford to turn the work down or to negotiate a satisfactory payment; those who are struggling to find work may decide to accept the offer because they need the money, knowing that they're being exploited. So the undercutting circus continues. Accreditation and promotion of the profession in our present and potential markets may help improve this situation; there are no guarantees, but we must try.

Satisfactory contracts: Supervising editors and in-house editors should find it easier to recommend and appoint accredited editors. Some managing editors and in-house editors may also be able to negotiate more satisfactory payments with managers who see no problem in employing editors who may be less than competent, at miserable rates, because they attach no value to the work and cut-price editing is more consistent with their bottom line.

Industry recognition of quality: Senior editors who have established a reputation for excellent work over many years and therefore have no difficulty in finding work will not benefit directly from accreditation, as many people pointed out last December in their comments on the ballot. But accreditation may enable more editors to achieve that position and establish their own reputations over the years. Those who are already in this position will be well aware how long it took them to get there.

Looking to the future: We are asking senior editors who have benefited from the profession to give something back to it, to help other competent editors who may be struggling to find work and gain adequate payment to achieve the same position. In fact, we are asking successful editors to look beyond their own careers and businesses to the future of the profession. They can make a great difference to that future.

How will accreditation be administered? Accreditation Board: The Accreditation Board has been created to administer the accreditation scheme. The Board consists of a delegate from each society, plus a representative from the Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd), and an assessors' delegate who has yet to be appointed. The inaugural meeting of the Board took place in Sydney in May. Members of the Board have begun work on the practical details of the accreditation scheme, based on the Accreditation Working Group FINAL REPORT which accompanied the ballots in December 2004.

The Board's brief is to establish a scheme which will be transparent, consistent and objective. It will take into account professional development, formal qualifications, including editing/publishing courses, employment and representative jobs. But above all, it will be evidence-based; in other words, assessment of applicants will be competency-based assessment.

Secretariat: The Board is planning to set up a secretariat to handle applications and assessors' reports and communicate results to Board members, also to maintain a paper trail.

Position within IPEd: The Accreditation Board will be a subsidiary of the Institute of Professional Editors; it will be a separate body but will answer to the Institute council.

Finances: The financial estimates included in the Accreditation Working Group FINAL REPORT are based on a projection of 200 applications in the first year, then 50 each for the following two years. These are not pre-determined limits; if more than the projected number of editors apply for accreditation, the Board will certainly process all those applications.

We dare not assume that there is no risk of disgruntled/unsuccessful applicants suing the assessors, the Accreditation Board or the Institute over failure to secure accreditation. We are also committed to protecting the assessors and would not expect assessors to pay the necessary insurance expenses themselves. The Board would start to haemorrhage assessors if even one was left to face a legal suit without such protection. IPEd will therefore be providing insurance and legal cover for all assessors, as well as Board and IPEd council members.

How are assessors appointed? First pool - distinguished editors: Our first pool of assessors will consist of distinguished editors nominated by their own societies. These will be editors highly respected in their societies for their skill, depth and breadth of experience and contribution to the profession. The exact process of appointment will vary from society to society. However, in every case the management committee needs to discuss names of possible distinguished editors and agree on names of potential assessors; then the people nominated must agree to accept this responsibility (or not, as the case may be). This gives management committees a stake in accreditation; it also allows committee members to pool their knowledge of their members and ensures the transparency of the selection process.

Most societies have now either appointed distinguished editors or are seeking the agreement of members to accept this responsibility.

Wider pool - accredited editors: Those who gain accreditation will be eligible to join the pool of assessors. All assessors will be required to sign confidentiality agreements, that is, they would not be discussing applications and evidence with anybody other than panel members and members of the Accreditation Board and IPEd. They will also be required to keep all documents in a locked filing cabinet.

Will I be able to get accreditation?

The aim stated in the report circulated last December was to place accreditation within the reach of most working editors: that is, accreditation was to be neither absurdly easy nor impossibly difficult.

ASEP: Assessment will be based on the Australian Standards for Editing Practice. The Board has discussed at length the minimum standard of performance required to demonstrate competence. Applicants will be required to demonstrate that they have achieved a minimum standard of competence in editing, but will be assessed only against those standards applying to the work they currently do, e.g. copyediting, project management, multimedia and online editing. They will not be asked to address every one of the standards; we do not expect people to jump through impossible hoops.

Evidence: The kind of evidence assessors would require could include correspondence with clients and designers, style guides used and developed, queries to authors, before-and-after online products, references, and work-in-progress, that is, copies of work undertaken with marked or tracked changes to show what the editor has actually done. That is most important. Work-in-progress could include voluntary, unpaid work and could consist of as little as 20 pages. Applicants may need to submit only one manuscript, and they can present work done two or three years ago. It doesn't have to be very recent to be valid, provided that it relates to the sections of the standards the editor refers to in their application.

Some people commented in December that it would take them six months to complete their application. The Board will provide applicants and assessors with detailed guidelines and instructions, to make their task less time-consuming and spell out what the Board expects of them.

Standards revision: We have also considered ways of making the Standards easier for assessors and applicants to interpret.

We are well aware that the Standards were completed five years ago and need to be updated. For example, the people working on the Standards will look at expanding some sections and add a section on online editing.

Performance criteria: Board members have also discussed the addition of performance criteria to the Standards where necessary. People who have worked with TAFE or another registered training organisation would be familiar with the use of performance criteria to supplement elements of competency; they are provided both to students and to assessors or markers, so both sides know exactly what is required to demonstrate competence. This would also ensure that the process is as objective as humanly possible.

How can I possibly provide this evidence?

We are acutely aware of the difficulties many editors face in producing satisfactory evidence, because of the nature of their work.

Confidentiality: Confidentiality is a major problem: for example, somebody working on classified or commercial-in-confidence material will have real difficulty in producing work-in-progress. We will make every effort to accommodate such applicants and we welcome all suggestions on ways to overcome this challenge.

It may be possible to submit copies of sections of manuscripts or web texts you have worked on without breaching confidentiality agreements with your employer or clients, particularly if the works in question have already been published. To do this, applicants would have to obtain permission from employers and clients, and we recognise that it will not always be given. This is one of many aspects we will confirm with our legal advisors, the Arts Law Centre Australia in Sydney.

Confidentiality will be a problem for in-house editors, but is likely to be a greater problem for freelances. It is important to remember that the assessors would all have signed a confidentiality agreement with the Board and undertaken not to discuss applications or evidence with anybody other than the assessors' panels and members of the Board and IPEd.

Written v. verbal evidence: Several editors commented in December that they would have difficulty in producing supporting evidence such as correspondence with authors because their negotiations with authors and/or project managers are done verbally. That would certainly be a problem with past jobs. However, this is a good opportunity to change work practices, with accreditation requirements in mind. It should not take much extra effort to obtain and keep a written record of all negotiations with clients, designers, project managers, content reviewers, etc. Such work practices will make it much easier to demonstrate competence in the relevant standards and will also help us in our everyday work.

I am having great difficulty in finding work. How can I apply for accreditation if I can't produce any evidence?

At this stage we're looking at one level of accreditation, according to the brief given in the December report, with the evidence requirements already mentioned. We are well aware of the problems faced by newcomers to the profession and are looking at possible solutions.

 Experience: On the one hand, we have a large number of experienced editors with no formal qualifications whatsoever in editing; they have learned their skills by experience and perhaps also through in-house mentoring schemes. This group includes most of our senior editors, including many of the top people in our profession; most editors over the age of 50 would fall into this category.

Training but little experience: On the other hand, we have the editors and would-be editors who are working through or have completed a course of study in editing and publishing, but very often have great difficulty in gaining experience. Many people commented in December on the difficulty they would have in finding work so they could produce evidence. And we know from conversations with our own members just how true that is.

 In our societies, we encourage new members to offer their services to voluntary organisations, sports clubs, churches and any other organisation, free of charge if necessary, just to get a start in the profession. It's not the ideal way to start, but given the current state of the publishing industry, it looks like the way of the future. That is an option the Board would also urge newcomers to the profession to consider; we will certainly not be restricting evidence to paid work.

How will applications for accreditation be handled? Allocation to assessor: First of all, each application will be sent to an assessor who works in the same area as the applicant, e.g. corporate editing, online editing, fiction editing or editing illustrated children's books, in another state or territory. Interstate assessment is the first strategy to eliminate conflict of interest. Assessors who know the person applying for accreditation will be expected to disqualify themselves on the grounds that they cannot make a fair assessment. Applicants will not find out who assessed their application.

Decision by panel: All applications, supporting evidence and assessors' recommendations will then be sent on to an assessors' panel whose members will possess the range of skills and experience needed to assess these applications. The panel members will then make a decision to award accreditation, seek additional evidence or deny accreditation. So individual assessors will only be making recommendations; they will not be making the decision to award or not award accreditation. That will be done by a panel. For most applicants, the panel's decision will be the end of the matter.

Appeals: There will be an appeal procedure. People who are denied accreditation will be able to appeal to the panel, the Accreditation Board and the Institute of Professional Editors. Applicants and assessors will use standard forms to maintain transparency and consistency.

Will non-accredited editors still be able to obtain work?

Yes. When our members returned their votes last December, many expressed their concern that all publishers and other potential employers would demand accreditation in a contractor or employee and that non-accredited editors would be unable to obtain work.

This will not happen. First of all, it will take many years for a combination of accreditation, promotion of the profession and national representation of editors to achieve widespread change in the thinking of publishers and other clients. We're not talking about months here but years - many years. And obtaining work with publishers and individual clients is largely achieved by word of mouth. That will not change; what we hope will change, bit by bit, is the value individual clients and employers attach to accreditation.

When will the Accreditation Board be calling for applications?

The Board will not be calling for applications before late 2006. The processes we are working on will not be cast in concrete and will be reviewed after the program has been in operation for 12 months, but we must make sure that the program we offer editors will be workable to begin with. This is not a light undertaking.

How will all this fit in with the national organisation?

The existence and effective functioning of a formal national organisation is essential to the future success of accreditation. Without that national organisation, accreditation would have no teeth. It would certainly be possible for one of our societies, presumably one of the larger ones, to organise a state or territory-based pilot accreditation scheme, provided they could find sufficient volunteers and enough funding to take on the enormous amount of work involved. But however soundly-based the scheme was, it would still lack the authority of a formal national organisation of the type that exists in other professions with accreditation or registration. Our societies have earned respect in their own states/territories from those who are aware of our profession and its value, but we don't have that kind of clout.

It is important to remember that accreditation will not be a stand-alone program. While the Board will be responsible for the administration of the scheme and the practicalities involved, our activities will be closely tied in with those of the national organisation. And the Institute's activities will certainly include promotion of the profession: this is essential if editing is to become the highly valued and well-paid profession it should be.

Other Institute activities will also affect the success of the accreditation program. They will include revision of the Standards; this revision is crucial to an effective accreditation scheme. The people working on the Standards will also be contacting educational institutions and employers to gauge their use of the Standards; the results of this investigation should be very helpful in establishing ties between training providers, the Accreditation Board and IPEd and perhaps in influencing the content of courses to reflect accreditation requirements in the future.

How will we know what's going on with accreditation?

The Board will be promoting the accreditation scheme vigorously through the delegates' societies, using their newsletters and web sites. One method of doing so will be a column called CredAbility that will appear in all our newsletters; CredAbility will consist of brief tips on how to obtain accreditation - a newsy how-to guide presented in instalments.

Robin Bennett Chair, Accreditation Board