Introduction

This website is provided by A Fine Line Scientific Editing. The terms and conditions below govern the use of our website and services. All contents of afl-edit.com are protected under the International Copyright Act. All rights on this website are reserved. No part of this website can be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without our permission, including translation into another language.

These terms and conditions shall be governed by and construed in accordance with New York State law. All disputes arising from them shall be submitted to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New York State.

Manuscript Submission

Before submitting a manuscript to A Fine Line Scientific Editing, the author must agree to the terms and conditions detailed on this page. We reserve the right to change our terms and conditions at any time, and anyone using our services is responsible for checking for changes here. Authors who do not accept these terms and conditions should not use our web site or services.

We will accept a manuscript for editing only if authors submit their document by e-mail and include a statement of agreement to our terms and conditions. We are best equipped to handle manuscripts presented as Microsoft Word documents. Other formats will be considered on a case-by-case basis. An author may submit a manuscript to us for the first time after it has already been reviewed. We will consider post-review projects if we have access to the reviewers’ comments. Fees and turnaround times will be established by negotiation between us and the author before editing begins. We reserve the right to reject any editing projects.

Authors are solely responsible for observing copyright laws and for the scientific content in their manuscripts. We assume that all information in a manuscript is technically correct and will not attempt to check facts, conclusions or hypotheses. A Fine Line Scientific Editing is not responsible for potential ethical or legal concerns arising from the assignment of authorship, citation, data validity, conflicts of interest, or any consequences attributable to the scientific content. If publication of a manuscript requires that an author disclose the use of our services, this will be the sole responsibility of the author.

If we accept a project, we cannot accept liability for failure to provide editing services when caused by factors beyond our control.

All information provided by an author is held in complete confidence. We do not share information with third parties unless explicit permission is granted by the author who submitted the manuscript to us.

Editing

Editing usually proceeds in two stages. When we complete our initial edit, we will return a fully-edited manuscript plus a “difference” document generated by comparing the original and edited versions. The author should examine all changes, suggestions, comments, and author queries. Some modifications may affect the order in which topics are presented.

We consider our edits to be recommendations. The author will ordinarily accept some, modify others, or perhaps add new text. The author should return the manuscript to us for a second round of editing after making revisions, along with any concerns or questions. The second round is already included in our fee unless the author introduces so many changes that the paper must be re-edited in its entirety.

Our guarantee is that no manuscript edited by us will be rejected by a journal editor or reviewer due to poor English. If a manuscript that has been edited by us is rejected due to poor English, we will re-edit the manuscript to address the problems for free. This free service requires that we have access to reviewers’ comments and that these comments describe specific deficiencies in English useage that require correction.

Sometimes, a paper is rejected on the grounds of poor English because the author changed the edited version that we returned to them. We take no responsibility in such cases if the author made these changes without prior consultation with us. We do not accept responsibility for rejections due to reasons other than poor English.

Cancellations

If an author cancels an editing project after we have inititated the editing process, we will request payment based on the original agreement, prorated according to the amount of effort we expended prior to cancellation. If an author cancels after all editing has been completed but before we have returned the revised version to the author, the charge will be the full cost based on the original agreed price.  If cancellation occurs, we will return a copy of the manuscript that contains any edits we have made once the the cancellation fee has been paid.

Payment

Payment is due as soon as we send out an invoice to the author. We expect payment to be made using the credit card gateway at our web site within 30 days of sending out an invoice to the client. No additional manuscripts will be accepted from a client until payment has been made.

Miscellaneous

Any issue that arises that is not covered by any of the above will be dealt with on a case by case basis.  The final interpretation of any of the above lies with A Fine Line Scientific Editing.