On Monday 12 August 2024, editors across Australia and New Zealand will sit the Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd) accreditation exam. It will be the 10th IPEd accreditation exam. The first exam was held in 2008.
“More than 500 editors have become accredited since the first exam,” said Charlotte Cottier AE, chair of the IPEd Accreditation Board.
“The accreditation badge is a symbol of trust for employers and clients, assuring them of an editor’s skill and competency.
“Beyond the career benefits, accreditation is a mark of personal achievement. It’s a testament to an editor’s dedication to professionalism and a milestone in their editorial journey.”
On this significant milestone, IPEd acknowledges the considerable effort that went into establishing the exam and the ongoing work of maintaining and improving accreditation. We celebrate the enduring value of accreditation for the profession.
A decade in the making
Today, the accreditation exam is a key part of IPEd’s work to advance the profession of editing and to support and promote Australian and New Zealand editors. But its foundations are more than 25 years old and can be traced to a meeting room in Melbourne in 1998.
In the late 1990s, Dr Renée Omar DE was the president of the Victorian Society of Editors. She recalls the members of various state-based societies of editors gathering in Melbourne. On the agenda: rates of pay and federation.
“By the end of the meeting we had agreed, in principle, to work towards achieving both, and we formally established the Council of Australian Societies of Editors (CASE), which later became IPEd,” Renée said.
But establishing rates of pay presented challenges until it became clear what was missing.
“To create a credible, justifiable schedule of rates we needed to define the role(s) and tasks of editing, as well as a method for determining competence at a basic level. We needed a set of standards against which to test competence and then a system for testing and maintaining accreditation. Only then could we justify a schedule of rates.”
The inaugural accreditation exam
What followed was a decade of work, countless meetings and many hours of discussion and development – all of which culminated in the first accreditation exam in 2008.
“There were many, many meetings of different working groups and smaller teams within those where we knocked around ideas, argued their merits and aimed for consensus. The work always continued from such consensus, rather than by vote, and it was an excellent way for all the volunteer members involved to have their say and contribute in a meaningful way,” Renée said.
“It’s important to note that a lot of work was occurring simultaneously from 1998 onwards – we’d established CASE and the different working groups, and work continued steadily towards the federated model that eventually became IPEd.
“There were many people from the societies who played key roles and who wore many hats, including leadership of their state or territory society. Some of us put in many hundreds of hours of personal time to make it all happen.”
The very first accreditation exam was held in every Australian capital city – including Darwin.
“It was a paper-based exam,” Renée said. “Candidates were expected to use traditional mark-up in ink, and it was an open-book exam so they could bring along all their usual references. Imagine those editors all lugging copies of their Macquarie dictionary and AGPS Style manual into the exam room!”
Desolie Page AE sat the first accreditation exam in 2008. She recalls preparation workshops focusing on style sheets and, yes, lugging her reference books into the exam.
“I was nervous about sitting a 3-hour exam – it had been nearly 40 years. And 3 hours of intense pen-and-paper concentration using proofreading marks was a bit daunting,” she said.
Pamela Hewitt AE also sat the 2008 accreditation exam.
“I remember exam day well. I took a copy of the Macquarie dictionary and the Style manual into the exam room – and didn’t consult either of them,” she said.
“I attended with an out-of-town friend at the universities’ centre in the Sydney CBD. We calculated the decades since we’d last sat a pen-and-paper, timed and invigilated exam. My friend, a well-known and esteemed editor, said, ‘Shit, Pam, what if we fail?’ I (rightly) assured her we’d both be fine. We celebrated afterwards with a glass of champagne.”
The value of accreditation for editors
For editors like Desolie and Pamela, who have been AEs for more than 15 years, the value of accreditation is obvious.
“Accreditation is essential to our industry,” Desolie said. “I look forward to the day when people assume that the editor they’re considering hiring is accredited, just as they expect a plumber, a counsellor or an engineer to be appropriately qualified and to work to their industry standards.”
For Pamela, regular renewals deepen the value of accreditation.
“Each time my accreditation is due for renewal, I find it helpful to look back on the previous 5 years to survey the major projects I’ve worked on, the conferences and workshops I’ve attended, the courses I’ve run and papers I’ve presented. It’s a reminder that editors are part of a national and international community and that we are in control of our professional directions,” she said.
Accreditation renewal time is also a reminder of the effort that went into creating the accreditation exam.
“Editors today may not realise how controversial accreditation was in the years leading up to the adoption of the scheme or how vociferous the opposition,” Pamela said.
“Until the adoption of a national accreditation scheme, a patchwork of mechanisms administered by state and territory societies of editors vetted members’ professional status. This inevitably resulted in uneven scrutiny of the professionalism of editors.”
Celebrating a milestone
This year, 60 IPEd members will sit the accreditation exam at locations across Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Right now they’ll be busily preparing: sitting sample exams, collating their notes, and reading the tips provided by accredited editors.
Many of them will be unaware of the years of dedicated work that went into establishing this now-essential mechanism for them to demonstrate their competence. But they will enjoy the results of decades of effort from their fellow editors and a steadfast commitment to continuous improvement from the Accreditation Board.
“The accreditation scheme exists because of the tremendous vision and hard work of editors at the turn of the century,” Renée said. “We rode the wave of a revolution in IT and communications by upskilling and insisting on maintaining high standards. By not giving in to a ‘race to the bottom’.
“I hope that today’s editors and those who follow us will uphold this legacy, and that the IPEd Standards and accreditation will continue to serve their professional needs.”
IPEd CEO Karen Lee said the story of the accreditation exam illustrated the commitment to professionalism and professional development that Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand editors consistently demonstrate.
“The accreditation exam is one of the key initiatives that IPEd coordinates. That we have such a valuable tool for editors to demonstrate their skill and competence is thanks to the pioneering work of the Council of Australian Societies of Editors.
“Today the IPEd accreditation exam is the only accreditation exam for editors in the Asia Pacific. We’re incredibly proud of that and we look forward to celebrating more milestones as we continue our work to advance the profession of editing.”