FAQs | AES

FAQs

What can your editing service do for me?

A scientific and medical editor like myself can:

Deliver an error-free, publication-ready manuscript
Make your writing clear, concise, coherent, correct, consistent, and compelling
Provide a fresh perspective on your manuscript
Align your manuscript with gold-standard publishing style guides such as the AMA, Chicago, CSE, APA, IEEE, Oxford, or NLM
Ensure that the word choice in your manuscript is idiomatic and consistent with the preferred technical terminology and nomenclature of your field
Address issues in your manuscript questioned by a regulatory agency, journal editor or referee, dissertation committee, publisher, institutional review board, or grant funding agency
Align your manuscript with the writing guidelines for authors from a journal, a university, or grant funding agency or regulatory body (NIH, FDA, NSF, etc.)
Fact-check your manuscript
Adjust the tone of your message, including formal or informal tone, or a tone for expert or lay audiences, including plain language summaries
Fact-check and edit AI-generated text (ChatGPT, etc.)
Help you meet an urgent submission or publication deadline
Improve the quality and clarity of your manuscript so that it is ultimately accepted for publication

Because your research provides invaluable data and insights, which drives innovation in your field of study, it deserves to be published and read widely. Writing a clear compelling research story will make your manuscript memorable and help you get published so that your research and findings reach the widest possible audience and have maximum effect in the world. Whatever type of manuscript you are writing, my goal is to help you tell your best research story.

What specifically do you edit in a manuscript?

It varies and depends on the text I am editing, but like most copyeditors, I edit a list of common items.

Click on this link to find details about what I commonly edit in a text.

What is your editing process and primary goal?

I read most manuscripts twice. The first reading is slow and methodical, whereas the second reading is quicker with the aim of checking items I may have missed or not understood on the first pass. My primary goal is to preserve the author's vision, voice, and message, changing as little of the text as possible, but I counterbalance this by also considering the manuscript from the reader's perspective. As I read a manuscript, I consider if a reader will perceive the text as clear, concise, coherent, consistent, and compelling. If not, I revise accordingly, typically with the goal of aligning the manuscript with an industry-standard style manual. Click on this link for a list of the style guides I can apply to your manuscripts.

Do you do proofreading, copyediting? substantive editing? developmental editing?

I do all four types of text editing. These terms describe the type and degree of editorial intervention done to a text. These categories fall along a continuum of editing ranging from light to heavy. A proofreading is the lightest degree of editing and only applied to a manuscript that has been approved for publication.

The next level of editing is copyediting, involving a medium-heavy degree of editing. Finally, substantive and developmental editing involve a heavy degree of editing, including possibly rewriting, reorganizing, or removing entire sections of texts. See my Services page to learn more about what specifically is included in these different levels of editing.

Who uses your editing service?

The majority of individuals and groups who use my service are medical communication publishers and editors, researchers, scientists, physicians, professors, graduate students, CROs, and medical communication managers from pharmaceutical, software, biotech, and medical device companies. I am available for short-term editing tasks or long-term contractual work.

What type of manuscripts do you edit?

I revise scientific journal articles, NIH grant applications, doctoral dissertations, regulatory documents and FDA submissions, continuing medical education materials (CME), and monographs (scholarly books). I have revised numerous manuscripts based on randomized controlled trials, meta-analyses and systematic reviews, observational studies, case reports, cost-effectiveness analysis, short communications, conference proceedings, conference posters, abstracts, resumes (CVs), letters of correspondence with editors, medical blogs, business websites, product brochures, manuals, video transcripts, feasibility studies, white papers, patent applications, business reports, marketing materials, and just about any formal, technical, academic, or scholarly document you may have.

Are you familiar with the process of publishing in peer-reviewed journals?

Yes. I have earned a professional certificate from the University of California San Diego Medical Writing Certificate Program with a capstone project in Journal Article and Publication Development. I edit a wide variety of manuscripts and texts, but I have a great deal of experience in editing scientific manuscripts. Specifically, I have revised over 2,000 scientific journal articles, many of which have been published in various peer-reviewed journals. Click on this link for a listing of some of the journals that have published manuscripts I have edited. And click here for a sample of peer-reviewed journal articles I have edited.

Do you edit papers from a particular area of research?

The majority of the manuscripts that I revise are from biomedical, medical, life sciences, pharmacology, veterinary, dentistry, soil science, chemistry, computer science, and engineering fields. However, I have revised a wide range of manuscripts from the physical sciences, natural sciences, arts and humanities, law, and social sciences. Click on this link for a listing of specific fields of study and areas of research in which I have done copyediting.

Can you align my manuscript with a writing style guide?

Yes. Click on this link for a list of the style guides I can apply to your manuscripts. Journals, academic institutions, funding agencies, and book publishers typically adhere to one of these style manuals or follow their own in-house style preferences. If you are unsure as to what style you should follow, check out the guidelines for authors page on the journal you are targeting. If you are writing a dissertation, your affiliated university, college, or advisor can tell you their style guideline preferences. If you are writing a grant proposal, your funding agency may prescribe a specific style guideline. While some journals or funding agencies may allow you to follow whatever style guide you prefer, they do expect consistency in style throughout a manuscript and not a mix of different style guidelines. Click this link for a list of gold-standard guidelines preferred according to field of study.