An improved collaborative authoring system and method provides for management of complex collaborative works comprising sets of elements related to each other in a hierarchy. The collaborative work is defined as including a plurality of element sets. During a submission period, contributing users are permitted to submit proposed elements for a corresponding element set. Reviewing users, which may include contributing users, can concurrently submit feedback in response to the proposed elements that are submitted, and contributing users can modify proposed elements. At the end of the submission period, one or more of the proposed elements are selected for inclusion in the collaborative work. Multiple submission periods may occur for multiple element sets. The collaborative work can be used to generate an output file that can contain only a subset of the elements submitted during the submission periods.