All About English Editing You Need To Know To Get Published
Whether you are pressed for time when you receive an editor’s request for revisions in a paper you submitted for publication in a scholarly journal or happen to have all the leisure in the world to reflect and make changes, a professional academic or scientific proofreader can be immensely helpful. There are, of course, certain changes that only you will be able to decide upon and implement effectively, so if the editor or a peer reviewer has asked for revisions to the content of your article or a careful review of the data you report in your results section, you will be the person best qualified to determine where changes are necessary and carry them out. However, there are many kinds of changes that a qualified proofreader or editor can make or at least assist you in making. The following list includes some of the most common issues that an academic or scientific proofreader will be well qualified to tackle.

• Problems with language including errors in grammar, syntax, spelling, punctuation and typing as well as awkward phrases, inappropriate vocabulary and unclear or imprecise statements. A professional proofreader can ensure that your prose is clear, correct and sophisticated, whether you are writing in your native language or not.
• Neglecting to follow the guidelines or author instructions provided by the journal. Although some guidelines are lengthy, detailed and occasionally confusing, an academic or scientific proofreader who specialises in your field will be familiar with scholarly conventions and expectations in your discipline and accustomed to deciphering and applying all aspects of author instructions.
• Issues arising from incorrect formatting. Many journals are very particular about the format of headings, tables and figures in papers submitted for publication and others go much further than that in dictating how every aspect of a paper should be laid out. Academic and scientific proofreaders not only have a sharp eye for such elements of a paper, but also tend to be expert users of the software programs with which they work, so they can reformat your work quickly and effectively.
• Problems with the style, accuracy and thoroughness of bibliographical references. You may need to provide missing information for obscure sources, but academic and scientific proofreaders are particularly good at tracking down such information, recording it with absolute precision and doing so consistently throughout a document. They are also familiar with many different styles of referencing, so a professional proofreader can definitely help you get your references right.
• Deciphering editor requests that may be somewhat unclear to you. Keep in mind that people who proofread for a living encounter new texts everyday and they are necessarily highly accomplished at determining what is intended even when the prose describing it is less than clear. If you are unsure about the exact meaning of editorial comments, share them with your proofreader – he or she may well have extremely helpful suggestions.

You may prefer to make all the required changes yourself, especially if you possess the sharp eye for detail and penchant for perfectionism that characterises most proofreaders, but even if this is the case, do consider engaging the services of an academic or scientific proofreader to check your work once you have completed the revisions. It is impossible to emphasise just how easily errors creep into complex text when changes are made, and a professional proofreader will be able to catch and correct tiny mistakes that tend to slip past the scrutiny of an author who already knows what he or she intends to say.