OUROBOROS: A Journal of the Publishing Industry’s Innovations and Reinventions

Students in my Fall 2024 ENGL 3140: Editing for Publication class spent the semester brushing up on their editing skills while reading Dan Sinykin’s Big Fiction, a history of literary publishing and conglomeration in the US. Meanwhile, they put their skills and knowledge to work, creating an online journal that reflects their own interests in the publishing industry and the status of editing as a profession.

The journal is modeled on open access “clusters” like Post45’s Contemporaries and ASAP/J‘s cluster series. Together in editorial teams, the students organized five themed clusters,  submitted essays to a cluster of their choice, and then edited and published their clusters on the site. In addition to copyediting each others’ work, each student also served as a developmental editor or production editor for the journal, trying on some different editorial roles along the way to publication.

You can find their journal here: https://sites.gsu.edu/engl3140/