Editing typically proceeds in two stages. The first stage involves a very detailed reading and revision. Our editing goes considerably beyond the correction of punctuation and spelling. We modify word choice, sentence structure, and sometimes the order in which arguments are presented to make the draft as understandable as possible to a native speaker of English. Many manuscripts also benefit from the removal of redundant material (for example, the detailed reiteration of data in the Discussion section).

When we complete our initial edit, we return a ‘clean copy’ fully-edited manuscript, plus a ‘marked-up’ copy generated by comparing the original and edited versions. The author should carefully examine all changes, suggestions, comments, and queries. We consider our edits to be recommendations. The author will ordinarily accept some of them, modify others, and perhaps add new text.

The author should return the manuscript to us for a second read-through and a final editing after any author revisions. This second round is to ensure a polished manuscript. Again, we return a fully-edited manuscript and a ‘marked-up’ copy so the author can examine each recommended change.

In most cases two rounds of editing are sufficient and the author will be ready to submit the manuscript to a journal for peer review. At this time the author will be invoiced for our work. Note that it is the responsibility of the author to format the paper according to the guidelines specified by each publisher.