Editing by numbers

We’ve already written about why we think hiring the services of our editors represents excellent value for money, especially when you take your own (very valuable) time into account. Nevertheless, we know that taking the plunge and sending us your paper can be a bit of a leap into the unknown, especially for people who haven’t used this type of service before. Will they be any good? How long will they spend on my paper? Will I be pleased with the results? How can I trust them? There are some pointers here to help you come to a decision, courtesy of Nature, and you can read about what we’re doing to deliver the best possible service here.

However, we also thought it might be useful to share some of our own data with you, generated from real papers that our customers have sent to us. We decided to audit fifty manuscripts submitted to us for editing in early 2013 in order to paint a picture of what you can expect from us.

This is “Nextgenediting by numbers*”:

Total number of words: 195 684
Average number of corrections per manuscript: 1042
Average number of words written as comments by our editors: 428
Average number of formatting changes per manuscript: 102
Average time taken editing each line: 32 seconds
Highest impact factor journal: 25**
Average impact factor of intended journal: 3.2
Lowest impact factor journal: 1.3**
Number of authors failing to get published: 0***

* fifty consecutive manuscripts submitted to Nextgenediting for full editing.
** Verified published by Pubmed citation.
*** At time of writing, and according to available data and feedback from clients.

Thirty-two seconds spent editing each line of text (of approximately 10 words). Thirty-two seconds of expert scientist or clinician reading your carefully crafted words, and then sculpting them some more. That’s quite a long time. Take a look for yourself by playing this video:



Of course, these data are not without their limitations - variability between editors, variability in the quality of submitted work, and the limitations of the tracking data generated by MS Word, to name a few. The acid test is whether our customers are happy. So let’s give you one or two more numbers:

53% of those papers were from repeat customers. And 20% of those customers have submitted three or more papers for editing. That’s how pleased they are, and you can read some of their reviews here.

We know you won’t be disappointed if you choose Nextgenediting. Submit your manuscript now.






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How can you afford not to?

As if thinking up ideas, writing grants, planning experiments, hiring staff, performing experiments, suffering the lows of failed experiments, relishing the highs of successful experiments, interpreting data, giving talks, going to conferences, being criticised, being commended, writing grants (did I mention that?), writing papers, supervising, teaching, marking, lecturing, course planning, peer reviewing, journal editing, and (if you are clinically trained) treating patients weren’t enough!

Breathe.

These days, particularly with some of the open access journals, if you want to publish you now have to be copy editor, graphic designer, computer geek, desktop publisher, artist, statistician, and expert in ethics and governance. The English must be perfect, the grammar impeccable, and perhaps most importantly, you must be able to communicate the importance of all your hard work.

Breathe.

You need to be fluent in Photoshop, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Adobe Acrobat, SPSS, Endnote, and Reference Manager. Depending on what you’re doing, you might need to be able to code in R or use LaTeX. You need to navigate author guidelines, file submission systems, and image and table formatting guidelines. Get it wrong and - ping! - the manuscript comes straight back.

All a bit of a heartsink, right?

Of course that’s where we come in and say, “Well, Nextgenediting can do all of that for you”. And that’s right, we can, but if you are not familiar with using professional science editing services, you may have doubts about how much time you can save, and how much the service costs. With tightening budgets and a cold funding climate, forking out a few hundred pounds can seem a little steep.

So what is the real cost of professional science editing?

Well, let’s look first at what the actual cost of editing is as a proportion of total publication costs (i.e. not including research costs). In the table below there are some indicative examples of publishing costs for a few standard research articles to typical journals. The cost of professional editing is presented as a percentage of total publishing cost. A few assumptions have been made: you are publishing colour figures, you have selected open access publishing, and you have submitted your article to one other journal (where it was rejected - a sad but real fact for most authors). Your time is worth about £30/$50 an hour, and you have spent 12 hours preparing the first submission, and 4 hours on the second. All prices are GBP, and there are 1.6 USD to the pound.

Table

So what are the messages here?

Firstly, professional editing is on average only 10% (range 3.4%-17.9%) of the total cost of publishing. Just publishing. As a proportion of the total value of the research, it is likely to be a tiny, tiny fraction of that, for most biomedical subjects.

Think of what you get for that, with Nextgenediting at least (see our prices and payment options here). Collaborative editing, so that your science is presented in the best possible way: logical flow, clear statement of aims and hypothesis, contextual improvements in your writing. Perfect spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Your manuscript has its hand held through to acceptance, however many re-edits that requires. You don’t have to worry about journal formatting, because we do that for you.

But the column to really study is the cost of professional editing vs your time. We are cheap compared to you. Editing your own work is a false economy.

Think about what that time could be spent on: writing grants, planning experiments, hiring staff, performing experiments, suffering the lows of failed experiments, relishing the highs of successful experiments, interpreting data, giving talks, going to conferences, being criticised, being commended, writing grants (did I mention that?), writing more papers, supervising, teaching, marking, lecturing, course planning, peer reviewing, journal editing, and (if you are clinically trained) treating patients.

Or, if like most of us, preparing manuscripts happens out of office hours, how about more time with the family or doing the things you enjoy doing?

Food for thought. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.






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