your editing skills are amazing research

Note: This article is also available as a PDF download. It may include: Coordinating all stages of a project, from an initial proposal or draft material to the final product, and incorporating input from the writer and any others involved with the project. See if your subjects and verbs agree. If you like what you're reading online, why not take advantage of our subscription and get unlimited access to all of Times Higher Education's content? Sometimes people even include complete sections from Wikipedia! Previously, she was editor in chief for The Cobb Group, the world's largest publisher of technical journals. I edit Economic Affairs, a subscription journal published by the University of Buckingham and the Institute of Economic Affairs. A good referee’s report should, in two to six pages, summarise the manuscript’s contribution to knowledge, set out its strengths and weaknesses and end with a publication recommendation, detailing any required substantive corrections in full. My best advice is to be fair but firm – you need to listen to what the authors have to say, but you should never back down when the evidence is clear. Some researchers say these seemingly extraordinary abilities may just reflect the fact that many people with autism have a different skill set than their typical peers do. Bateson had just won a fierce academic battle over whether inheritance was a “digital” or an “analogue” phenomenon: his advocacy of the former paved the path to the acceptance of Mendelian inheritance. Give them the benefit of the doubt, but don’t ignore infractions – and always refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ code of conduct. Writing is no different. Australian Studies was first published by the British Australian Studies Association in 1988, the year that marked the bicentenary of the white settlement/invasion of Australia. Write a sentence or short synopsis of the piece before you begin. If they don't, delete or rewrite them. The complete review cycle for a submission takes an average of three to four months, with most of that time waiting for external reviewers to send their verdicts. You'll get full access to our website, print and digital editions. In fact, you might start out with one and end with one. Fortunately, you can improve your self-editing skills to cut down on mistakes and improve the quality of what you write. Deliver Quality. Reading lots of projects also sharpens your sense of what constitutes both good experimental work and good scientific writing. 8. While there is only one truth, there are many paths towards new knowledge, with different levels of attractiveness to different scientists. He is on the editorial boards of Plos Biology, BioEssays, the Journal of Theoretical Biology and others. Comparative editing often includes aspects of stylistic editing and copy editing, and should be done by an editor fluent in both the source language and the target language. More often than not, authors ask me to thank the reviewers for the difference they’ve made, even when we’ve had to recommend resubmission elsewhere. It includes checking for: Note that proofreading is checking a work after editing; it is not a substitute for editing. Not every editor is so fortunate. But also it is worth remembering there is a battle going on for academics to reclaim journal publishing from the big 5 profit-making corporations, in order to make it cheaper and Open Access - one publisher is in dispute with Projekt Deal in German universities right now. It was an onerous administrative job, but it still managed to be an exciting and stimulating intellectual challenge, and I am proud of the influence the journal has had. It's a difficult phenomenon to beat. We cannot rely on large profit-driven corporations to edit and publish for us anymore, which means allocating our time for the tasks required. In the early days, the field was so small that finding enough submissions to fill four issues a year could be difficult. Recent research conducted with Fortune 500 CEOs by Stanford Research Institute International and the Carnegie Melon Foundation found that 75 percent of long-term job success depends on people skills (aka soft skills) while only 25 percent depended on technical knowledge (aka hard skills.) It retains a tradition of accessible writing, however, and the IEA link also brings guaranteed financial support and an international network of authors and referees. Note: This article is also available as a PDF download. She was editor of Literary and Linguistic Computing (now known as Digital Scholarship in the Humanities). It includes: Also known as line editing (which may also include copy editing). Editing your own work is an exercise that will improve your relationship with both clients and editors. This tip sounds like overkill, but it works. Microsoft Teams: All the new features that you need to know about, Amazon Alexa: How developers use AI to help Alexa understand what you mean and not what you say, Raspberry Pi: Five handy home office projects to try, Why Android 11 is Google's best mobile OS ever, Tech jobs: These are the skills most in demand as companies change their priorities. The journal (now known as Digital Scholarship in the Humanities) was one of the first and most important in digital humanities, and my editorship corresponded with an enormous period of growth in what had previously been a niche subject. First drafts are rarely perfect. After editing your work, make sure it truly honors your point. This is what happened to Australian Studies. A little emphasis is often necessary, but don't overuse it. This is probably the most rewarding part of our work: seeing new fields emerge and capturing them in the scientific record. Knowing that you made your point is the most important step to editing your own work. Absolutely the worst part of my job was having to beg people to anonymously referee essays for no pay or recognition while having little idea if they were collegiate and constructive or territorial and bullying. Sometimes that is because the topic lacks novelty or is not suitable for our journal. But the job also has its challenges. I do elementary editing on most accepted papers, although the copy-editing grunt work is done by my colleague, Michael James, whose attention to detail is beyond praise. And although you often hear objections to peer reviewers’ abuses of power, I’ve rarely come across a referee playing the role of callous or self-interested gatekeeper. See initiatives like radicalopenaccess for more info. Being an editor certainly isn’t for everyone. It is easily possible to spend more than a day a week on it, and this can seriously impede your own scholarship. Still, some authors wait only a week before getting in touch to ask us why their review is not finished. I, as general editor, terminated it in 2015 because the workload involved had become unsustainable. But don't depend on these features because they don't catch everything. Submissions from authors who have clearly never read the journal and send us 40 pages of econometrics, with 15 tables and 30 charts, all in the style of a bad PhD draft. The practice will pay off: By helping others, you'll improve your skills as a writer and an editor. Web of Science and Google Scholar can help you find impartial referees in the right area with good publication records and appropriate affiliations. I tried (usually) to deliver the bad news in the most encouraging way possible, silently correcting any failures by the reviewers to be polite and constructive. Not everything in your outline has to be in the finished piece, and the finished piece might have items you didn't include in the outline. This usually defeats academics, requiring me to mediate between them and our publisher, Wiley. Vary paragraph length. Christoph W. Sensen is head of the Institute of Computational Biotechnology at the Graz University of Technology, Austria, and is chief editor of the Journal of Biotechnology. The following are definitions of the skills most commonly required for editing English-language material. Good editing can transform a mediocre piece of content into something great. And a newly minted editor of the journal Cell Systems once rejected a manuscript from my lab on the ground that none of the algorithms used in the analysis was novel. I advise strongly against special issues of invited papers, even if you fob them off on to a guest editor. Editing involves carefully reviewing material before it is published and suggesting or making changes to correct or improve it. It is acknowledgement of your expertise and leadership within a subject, which has a knock-on effect for both promotion and grant applications. With most issues, my name was attached only to the introduction, yet many essays required a lot of often thankless work (early career writers needed particular mentoring, as did guest editors). Try to copy-edit at least one manuscript a month and you will notice the difference in your own writing. We would like to speed up the process, but this can happen only if more of our fellow scientists are willing to perform peer reviews, and are able to do so in a timely manner. Get the key facts on a wide range of technologies, techniques, strategies, and skills with the help of the concise need-to-know lists featured in TechRepublic's 10 Things newsletter, delivered every Friday. All rights reserved. Then, review them as a whole again for the following: If you're an outliner, compare the edited version to your original outline. The same noun/verb construct is boring if used repeatedly. Examining material after layout or in its final format to correct errors in textual and visual elements. This is always messy, but managing each situation properly is a critical part of the job. In all cases, the editor should strive to make all changes without altering intended meaning or introducing errors. It will always take more time than you imagine. Others agree to provide reviews but then “forget”, or simply never get around to preparing their comments. And I felt free to do my own research again, after years of playing midwife to that of others. We carry roughly 40 full-length essays and 100 reviews every year, handled by a four-editor structure established in the 1980s to provide specialist expertise from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf, with one editor also handling book reviews and another the general editorship. What matters is that everything that needs to be in the finished piece, is. I am firmly on the side of the reclaimers of knowledge - and I would never relinquish a whole well respected journal, like Australian Studies, because it was setting a path that we all need to follow (despite the workload). Moreover, we all want to see a fair system in which the best research is published, unacceptable research refused and gaming called out. Automatically sign up today. One was the journal’s interdisciplinarity. Evaluating proposals or manuscripts to ensure their fit with the publisher's mandate, guidelines, and other titles, as well as their commercial potential. About 15 years ago, a well-respected senior colleague approached me during a conference to extend an invitation to become an editor of the Journal of Membrane Science . On the whole, I enjoyed the level of engagement and commitment. It’s one of the most important aspects of the writing process, but a surprising number of writers underestimate its value. With my review editor, Juan Castaneda, I try to find people to write our long review essays. Being on an editorial board is also good for the CV. However, I also get quite a number of compliments. I often doubt it. You can even direct that evolution by commissioning special issues, reviews and editorials, highlighting new trends. If you feel strongly about a change, make a note in the margin. Make use of technology and run a spelling and grammar check. I had a “weight-off-my-shoulders” experience that was extraordinarily, and physically, intense. But often it is because the manuscript contains large stretches of work that has already been published. The most important thing is to ensure that the review system is as efficient and honest as possible. Toronto, Ontario They don't have to match. Still, there are many more reasons to do it. William Bateson had been founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Genetics for four years when he received Thomas Hunt Morgan’s manuscript describing a first physical mapping of the positions of genes on all the chromosomes of the fruit fly. When it does occur, it’s an easy thing for editors to spot and fix. But research in the past 10 years has generated some controversy about the actual incidence of savantism. Other dishonest practices by authors include plagiarism, salami-slicing and gift author-ship. Susan Sales Harkins is an IT consultant, specializing in desktop solutions. Lack of imagination about other cultures of thought and alternative standards of evidence addled Bateson’s judgement. But, for me, it points towards the best reason to spend up to an afternoon a week reading manuscripts that are often of only modest interest to you, and then finding and chasing reviewers for them. Correct typos, spelling, grammar, and punctuation. If necessary, getting all approvals throughout the process. It was delivering top-quality research, commentary and discussion completely free, and achieving phenomenal hit rates, not just in Australia and the UK but internationally. Your mind will glance right over even the most obvious errors. This can be incredibly frustrating, yet it is still my responsibility to ensure that every submission receives fair consideration – trying to blame the referees never goes over well with authors. Obviously, he equated innovation with use of novel approaches, not with new insights. While this dramatically speeds the editorial process, it also obliges me to explain my decision to the authors. Another good piece of advice is to position your role as mentoring and leadership when talking to appraisers, performance managers and promotions committees. They must then be personalised on every outing. Editing an academic journal is a vital and rewarding task, but also time-consuming and often frustrating. Government-driven funding cuts at the NLA meant that it could no longer support any further editions; the existing ones would be archived in a system ominously named Pandora. Reviewers are the weak link: they can be slow, poor and even unethical. For a start, someone has to. It had been a real roller-coaster ride. This is the premier international publication in the membrane field and, at that time, there had been fewer than 10 editors in its 30-year history, so I was truly honoured. Long paragraphs are acceptable, but avoid one-sentence paragraphs. Get a month's unlimited access to THE content online. Don’t be afraid to reject a review if it fails on any of these scores. I’ve been able to read about exciting new research results before the data were even published. It’s important, of course, not to be seduced by the time-saving features. I occasionally solicit other articles, often after hearing something interesting from a conference or seminar speaker. Our rejection rate is quite high: between 75 and 80 per cent. She was editor of Australian Studies. Editors Canada uses it only as defined above. But editing a small journal in a small field means that you inevitably know many of the authors who are submitting, making the difficult task of rejection even harder. It may include: It may also include fulfilling contractual obligations, such as requesting complimentary copies for contributors or sample pages for approval, updating clients' rights management databases, and submitting final permissions logs and paperwork. Still, I edited Literary and Linguistic Computing for 14 whole years, from 1996 to 2010, and lived to tell the tale. If you have more than a few italicized words in the same piece, you probably have too many. Everybody loves to hate information management systems, and we all have our special bête noire. There's a cadence to every piece, and reading it aloud is the only way to make sure the words flow soundly through the entire piece. Check for redundancy. We can stay on top of the workflow wherever we are in the world (my predecessor once processed several submissions from a bunker in a war zone), and we never have to file a thing. Despite the downsides, I would recommend journal editorship to anyone. But, apart from the futility of such behaviour – Morgan went on to win the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the chromosomal theory of inheritance – it is simply unethical. You need discipline, organisation, patience and a thick skin. Research Fellow - School of Education and Social Sciences, Research Assistant/Research Fellow - Division of Biosciences, Receive World University Rankings news first, Get job alerts, shortlist jobs and save job searches, Participate in reader discussions and post comments, Unlimited access to news, views, insights & reviews. Ignore mistakes and read for comprehension. The complete history of every submission is all there. It includes: Comparing the content of a translated text to its source text to ensure the translation is faithful to the original. It includes: Note that "copy editing" is often loosely used to include stylistic editing, structural editing, fact checking, or proofreading. Astonishingly, materials and methods sections are often copied verbatim from other papers. In addition to grammar, spelling, and punctuation, look out for redundant points and overused words. And don’t be surprised if you spend more time editing than writing. For every great paper that breathes new life into your academic world, there are 10 that make you sigh with despair. Inserting codes or styles into a document to indicate the document hierarchy and design elements. Producing an alphabetical (or otherwise ordered) list of names, places, subjects, and concepts that appear in a work. Unfortunately, catching mistakes in your own writing is difficult. Don’t be a titular editor with a low work rate. Some provide reviews with so little detail that they are almost useless. Rewrite run-on sentences by deleting extraneous words and phrases. Despite our best efforts, most of us make mistakes while writing. Be sure to add this downtime to your schedule. When you stumble over a word or phrase, simply rewrite it. But there were challenges. It may include: Also known as developmental editing or editorial management. It includes: Assessing the content and organization of a work, and commenting in depth on such factors as characterization, dialogue, setting, plot, structure, subject relevance, believability, research required, and potential legal issues. Sui Huang is a professor at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. About a decade ago, we started using an online submission and peer-review system, and I took over as general editor a year or two later. But that did not exempt me from the even more hateful task of dealing with authors who still insisted that the reviewers didn’t know what they were talking about and that their paper was, in fact, the finest scholarship of the decade. While the bar for accepting a manuscript must be set high, an equally high bar must be set for rejection in order to give innovation a chance. In fact, they often won't. Assessing and shaping draft material to improve its organization and content. I took up the position in 2011 in the aftermath of the discovery that the association’s former treasurer had run off with most of the money. Download Definitions of Editorial Skills. What can a professional editor do for you? Most peer reviewers are strenuously committed to making scholarship as strong as possible, and to helping juniors advance their careers. So he rejected Morgan’s manuscript. It’s important work, and there’s no better way to keep abreast of the best new research. TechRepublic Premium: The best IT policies, templates, and tools, for today and tomorrow. Of course there are downsides to getting involved with journal editing. Editorship also gives you a privileged vantage point from which to observe how your discipline is evolving. Checking the accuracy of facts, citations, and quotes by referring to the writer's original sources or to other authoritative sources. The high points of the job? It's just too fresh in your mind and you will read what you think you wrote and not what you really wrote. Bateson was a person of such integrity that his verdict likely had no sinister motivation. Creating a formatted document, web page, or ebook from an electronic file according to the client's or designer's instructions or template. Moreover, the field was quite diverse, so there were often only one or two scholars working in a particular sub-area, which made finding reviewers challenging. Writing for journals myself, I know that there is nothing more depressing than waiting for four months and then getting a one-line rejection. Receiving original, well-written pieces that you know will go down well with readers, and getting unsolicited praise from authors pleased with how we have refereed or edited their work. Even if you decide to get a pro editor or beta reader, it never hurts to take a crack at self-editing first. I spend too much time mopping the tears of frustrated peer reviewers when they’ve lost their work to a crash. Editing skills require patience, discipline and a good eye for detail. It allowed me and various assistant and reviews editors to seek out submissions by attending conferences, writing to scholars working on interesting topics and suggesting special sections and special issues on emerging topics. I always provide at least two or three specific points of concern so that they know what they need to improve in future submissions. It was one of those offers you couldn’t refuse – as was the invitation, five years later, to step up to editor-in-chief. This is annoying, and we now respond only to serious issues – otherwise Maria’s and my days would be gone entirely. Don't try to edit your own writing as soon as you're done. The journal also demanded an inordinate amount of time given the limitations on how the work could be bean-counted by university performance managers. Changes may be suggested to or drafted for the writer. There are manuscripts to assign, authors to soothe, contradictory reviews to resolve and editors at the publisher to placate when your delivery of proofs lags behind their print schedule (proofing on Christmas Day is one thing I don’t miss). Creating new material based on content supplied by a writer. Exclamation points are appropriate, but only if you really mean them. Can also involve coordinating long-term projects, such as major websites. That way, you can check your changes. The most important rule to successful self-editing is often the hardest to apply: Put it aside for a few hours or even a few days. Marilyn Deegan is professor of digital humanities and honorary research fellow at King’s College London. It includes: 1507-180 Dundas Street West In about half the cases, my verdict is negative. The Review of English Studies, published since 1925, is a big operation. Knowing that they are going to be published without going through a fully blind refereeing process encourages lazy writing by authors, and destroys any ability they might otherwise have to meet deadlines. Editing to clarify meaning, ensure coherence and flow, and refine the language. Andrew Zydney is distinguished professor of chemical engineering at Pennsylvania State University and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Membrane Science. My experience has been that editing is far more rewarding than many other scholarly tasks. It can be tempting to take the path of least resistance and opt for the authors’ suggested reviewers, but there may be conscious or unconscious bias in their selections. Depending on the piece, you'll probably want to replace passive verbs with active ones. Moreover, you do it for no pay, on top of all your other duties – which usually means at the weekend. Registration is free and only takes a moment. In all cases, the editor should strive to make all changes without altering intended meaning or introducing errors. Whenever I meet a fellow journal editor, I take the opportunity to compare notes. While writing, it's easy to add emphasis to your words. Not rejecting too quickly is difficult, but it is one of the most rewarding aspects of being a good editor. MSP best practices: Server maintenance checklist, Guide to becoming a digital transformation champion, Comment and share: 10+ ways to improve your writing by self-editing. Another big challenge is dealing with plagiarism. But the journal also requires my own daily attention for a couple of hours: I split it between the early morning and the evening so that it doesn’t interfere with my own research or social life too much (my kids have already left home). Move paragraphs and even individual sentences to support the flow of logic, if necessary. It’s an efficient, companionable structure that works very well. Such power attracts some people into journal editing. I end up doing editorial work at all times of the day and night, both when I am home and when I am travelling: I easily put in 10 or more hours a week. When our part of the editorial process is complete, the finalised text moves seamlessly into production. Once registered you can read a total of 3 articles each month, plus: Already registered or a current subscriber?Sign in now, Les Hatton and Gregory Warr give their two-pronged solution to the problems of peer review, Wise and honourable assessors of grant applications must be allowed to use their discretion, says Sui Huang, Professor finds 86 English-language journals on the sector and lists the 28 ‘most reputable’, Scholars are ignorant of many aspects of peer review, and part of the problem is that researching it is a bit like kicking the hornet’s nest, says Martin Eve, Traditional forms of assessment, such as exams and essays, are largely irrelevant once students arrive in the workplace – we need new methods that relate to jobs, now more than ever, Science communication experts reflect on how scholars can improve their public speaking skills, Tougher action is needed to stop researchers dishonestly using spurious credits to bolster the credibility of their papers, says academic, Publications must always permit debate on the quality and relevance of research – plus the efficacy and costs of derived policy, says Robert Dingwall. While comments from authors in the field have been gratifying about my efforts, 'official' recognition of the work involved has not been forthcoming. The more time your work sits, the easier and more productive your editing effort will be. The paucity of unsolicited submissions was also an opportunity, however. You also need to command the respect and trust of your professional colleagues – particularly when rejecting papers from a senior researcher. This includes responding to complaints from authors who feel that their papers were handled inappropriately. I look through each submission before sending it out to referees, and usually read it in full when I receive their reports. The editor should also be aware of the legal and ethical dimensions of the publishing process, including issues involving copyright, plagiarism, libel, privacy protection, and confidentiality, and the need to address biased, non-inclusive, and offensive material. And you don’t receive any pay for your troubles – or even any time in lieu. But every so often my blood runs cold when colleagues tell me that they’re still organising everything through their own email accounts. Also known as image research, picture research, or photo research. I’ve had an opportunity to interact with all the leading researchers in my field, both as authors and as referees. If you are starting out as a journal editor, try to get the time involved factored into your department’s workload formula. We try to offer a verdict within four weeks, and we supply authors with detailed responses that give them something constructive to think about, whether positive or negative. I do so in spite of a 'workload model' that does not recognise it adequately. And I’ve been able to help a large number of young researchers improve their publications, through both my own comments and those of the referees. Repeat this step as many times as necessary. The editor in you will still spot errors, just don't belabor them -- keep reading. Exerting the opportunity to silence your rivals or promote your friends is one potential reward for the many hours the role takes up (far more than could possibly be merited by the prestige of one extra line on your CV). An editor who understands your field can provide even more useful feedback. Knowing your weaknesses will make it easier to correct your work thoroughly. We have to reject many manuscripts without even sending them out for review. Moreover, some scientists focus primarily on the elegance of those paths, while others are more impressed by the beauty of the destination. And people who don’t respond to requests for full details of their references. Most colleagues recognise that you should referee several pieces for each one you write. Such science is diverse and involves schemes of thought beyond your own epistemic habits. How to edit a book in 5 steps. Only correct glaring errors. Vary sentence structure if necessary. It may include: Also known as desktop publishing or production design. Also known as citation checking or reference checking. For example, the editors we work with are PhD-level professionals selected according to your research area, so they have the subject matter expertise experience necessary to understand and critique your work on a deeper level.

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