Dear colleagues,

I am currently experiencing the following problems with papers in proofing/post-editing phase. The questions require careful framing, whence the lengthy question. There is a general question that I can propose directly:

Have you experienced proof/post-editing problems due to negligence from the publishers?

I am asking questions about two particularly ugly cases in the remainder of this question. However, I checked my last 30 publications, and I realised that on 24 of them, copyeditors created formal mistakes that took me inordinate amount of time to fix. I am paranoid, but I feel that there is a degree of intentionality at work. Can you shed some light with personal experiences and/or personal knowledge on the matter?

The specific cases (long post):

1. On one paper the journal spent several cycles asking us to revise "technical details" before accepting the paper (e.g. formatting of headings). Upon acceptance, the proofing team sent me a first email after one cycle of proofs claiming that the paper was ready for publication and then sending me the APCs. This was unexpected because there were at least two aspects on which I was not sure that our checks were correct.

After payment, the proofing team sent us a request to change one of the two aspects, and after a few days a request to change the second aspect. I am getting the impression that they are artificially slowing down the publication process.

Is this normal/acceptable post-production behaviour? Can publishers delay the publication indefinitely?

My understanding is that APCs can only be sent to authors once the paper is indeed ready for publication, and thus once the proofing process is complete. Simply put, I feel swindled. EIC, ADM and copy-editing team are ignoring my requests of information.

2. On a different paper, the copy editors made a mistake in the name of the corresponding author. My corresponding author has, by now, requested the name to be changed three times. The copy editors have sent us the uncorrected proofs three times (no, we marked the only one change to be made, in red, yellow, with extremely visible instructions: no change). The EIC and ADM have now intervened, at least.

Is this normal/acceptable post-production behaviour? Can copy-editors refuse to correct their own mistakes? (The EIC showed us that they received the right corresponding author information)

In this case my corresponding author's institution has paid the APCs for Open Access, and my corresponding author is now under pressure.

3. Some journals do not mark who the corresponding author or main author are. As I work at a university in which these formal details are extremely important, asking this information to be inserted is always a source of problems. Some EIC's simply refuse to do this and one EIC claimed not to know what a "corresponding author" is.

Have you experienced similar problems with the reporting of authorship roles?

Thank you for reading this far.

Best,

Francesco-Alessio (Prof. Dr. Ursini)