Editors of scholarly books and journals are of three types, each with particular responsibilites: the acquisitions editor, who contracts with the author to produce the copy, the project editor, who sees the copy through its stages from manuscript through bound book and usually assumes most of the budget and schedule responsibilities, and the copy editor, who performs the tasks of readying the copy for conversion into printed form.

The primary difference between copy editing scholarly books and journals and other sorts of copy editing lies in applying the standards of the publisher to the copy. Most scholarly publishers have a preferred style guide, usually a combination of Merriam-Webster's New Collegiate and either the APA Publication Manual, The Chicago Manual of Style, or the MLA Style Manual. The issues of most concern relate to the completeness and correctness of the cited sources and the scholarly form of the presentation.