The Balance between Academic Ideals and Publication Realities
It would be difficult to find a scholar willing to deny that an ideal publication scenario would be one in which the article he or she submitted for consideration by the acquisitions editor of a top-tier academic or scientific journal was immediately accepted with rave peer reviews and then published without a single change or hitch. The very thought brings a pleasant sigh, but from a less subjective perspective, such a situation would only be suitable for the very best research and the most refined of writing. For most scholarly authors, the complete experience of publishing is more onerous, but it is a process designed to improve scholarship, and when it functions at its best, that is exactly what it does. The trick lies in finding the balance between your ideals about your work and the accommodation of the useful if sometimes frustrating realities of publication.
Following the author guidelines provided by most scholarly journals is a case in point. You consider your research unique, and its unique qualities have not only required somewhat different procedures than are normally used in your field, but also necessitated a different organisation of material than most journals publishing in your subject area request. You have searched exhaustively, but you simply cannot discover a journal with more flexible structural guidelines that is also well suited to your work. You could, of course, submit the paper to a less suitable journal, but that may prove to be little more than a waste of time, and the wisest option is to choose the journal best suited to your work and adjust that work to fit within the parameters its guidelines indicate. There is usually considerable space for flexibility within even the more rigid guidelines, and structuring your paper to meet journal requirements can sometimes help you enhance its argument and render your research more accessible for the readers you anticipate. Besides, if you are planning an academic or scientific career, you will need to master the shaping and reshaping of text for grant applications, publication proposals, teaching materials and many other documents in addition to publishable manuscripts, so it is never too early to figure out how to manipulate and reformat your writing. While you restructure, be sure to keep an eye on length limitations, preferred documentation style and the proper placing and format of tables and figures as well.
Adjusting your ideals is much more difficult when it is the content of your writing that is at stake. Finding a balance between the ideal content you submitted and the revised version envisioned by the editors and peer reviewers who offer criticism on your paper may seem impossible when first faced with their feedback, but careful and objective consideration of the comments of thoughtful and informed readers usually leads to improvements. This does not mean that the best policy will be to throw your ideals to the wind and agree to every change, but taking the time to determine exactly what you can and cannot change and how your overall plan for revisions might effectively resolve the problems identified by the reviewers will give you a strategy for revising your work in ways that successfully accommodate the needs of the journal without compromising the integrity of your research.
Writing style is another aspect of scholarly documents that tends to require refinement before publication. You may, for instance, prefer a more informal and chatty style for an article about the attendees of football games, and such a style would certainly be appropriate when quoting the words of your participants, but advanced scholarship should be presented in a formal prose style. If you want your article to be taken seriously, you therefore need to adopt this sort of scholarly style. In addition, your prose should be clear and correct without errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling. If writing in the English language is not among your specialties, it may prove very difficult to retain your own voice and style while applying the rules and principles that will guarantee accurate and precise communication of complex concepts and procedures. In such cases, a professional proofreader or editor who specialises in scholarly writing as well as your discipline may be the most reliable means to finding the perfect balance.
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At proofreading services we pride ourselves on the exceptionally dedicated team of academic and scientific professionals who provide our English editing and proofreading services. Our editors and proofreaders are highly educated native speakers of English who have undergone rigorous training in expert editing practices, and their fields of study and specialisation range so widely that we are able to help our clients improve and polish research manuscripts of all kinds for successful publication. Many members of our research paper editing and proofreading team focus on journal editing, manuscript editing, scientific manuscript editing, academic proofreading, academic editing, dissertation proofreading services, professional proofreading, thesis editing services and scientific proofreading, assisting authors with articles that will be submitted to scientific and academic journals by ensuring that the formatting and references in their manuscripts conform to the relevant guidelines with precision and by correcting grammar, punctuation, spelling and typing errors to enable the clear and accurate communication of original research that acquisitions editors expect in publishable papers.
Our scientific editing, medical editing, bioscience editing, life science editing, environmental science editing, pharmaceutical science editing, physical science editing, agricultural science editing, LaTeX paper editing, social science editing, political science editing, engineering paper editing, psychology editing, research paper editing, manuscript editing, humanities editing, journal article editing, biomedical science editing, planetary science editing, plant science editing, material science editing, veterinary science editing, behavioural science editing and neurosurgery editing services for authors of scientific papers and reports are especially popular, but we also excel at book editing and have the experience and expertise to proofread and edit books and papers of all kinds across every scholarly discipline. Some of our carefully trained editors and proofreaders work exclusively on PhD thesis editing, master’s dissertation proofreading, bachelor’s dissertation proofreading, thesis editing, dissertation editing, thesis proofreading and dissertation proofreading, applying their education and instructional skills in providing thesis editing and dissertation proofreading services that help advanced students to improve the formatting and language of their theses and dissertations and thereby increase their chances of degree success. Whether you are preparing a conference or class presentation, putting the final touches to a professional report for colleagues or tackling the challenging task of editing any kind of academic or scientific document for publication, a qualified member of our outstanding proofreading and editing team will be delighted to provide proofreading and editing services and boost your confidence in your written work.
If you are in the process of preparing an article for an academic or scientific journal, or planning one for the near future, you may well be interested in a new book, Guide to Journal Publication, which is available on our Tips and Advice on Publishing Research in Journals website.
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