Question: What is the process for submitting a paper for editing?
Answer: Usually people just attach the paper to an email. If the file is too large to attach it, they will post it on a website, like https://docs.google.com/ and give me access. Or they will post it on a website under their control.
One researcher puts a text file on https://github.com/ where they can read my edits, and they can make changes to the edits, as I post them.
Question: What is your availability and estimated turnaround time?
Answer: I am only getting work 1~3 times each month. It takes me about one week to do a 5,000 word paper. I try to educate myself in the researcher’s discipline so I can understand what they are saying.
Question: What are your rates and payment methods
Answer: I charge 0.5NT per word, excluding references (I’m assuming you’re in 台灣, if not, the equivalent in your currency).
I’m in Japan, so you could pay via an international bank transfer into my Japanese bank account.
Most however have been using paypal, https://www.paypal.com/ to pay me. There is also https://wise.com/, but I haven’t been able to set up an account with them yet.
Question: What is your approach to editing?1
Answer: That’s a good question, but giving a good answer is difficult. Let me answer at length at EditingApproach
Question: As what kind of file should I send my paper to you?
Answer: I will edit any file in any format I am sent.
That said, I have an OrderOfPreferences
Let me explain further.
I will accept any format you wish to use. Most researchers submit MS Word files.
My preference is for text files with the figures (and tables?) in image files.
I export the MS Word files into text files in markdown format, which I then edit with a developer-friendly editor.
The mouse-oriented MS Word is not built to make lots of small editing changes easy.
Then I import my changes back into the Word file.
But you don’t need to worry about that. I’m more than happy to get Word files.
Question: Do you understand my argument? I don’t think I understand it myself. Can you rewrite the paper for me?
Answer: No, I can’t do that. See ReWriting
Question Can you read Chinese, Japanese or Korean? Maybe, l need to use my native languagge to express my meanings sometimes.
Answer: Yes, we can do that. See UsingFirstLanguage
Question My major research is in X and Y. It seems that you did not do the related article for English editing. For example, a, b …
Answer I did edit an article on Z a long time ago, and recently I have been editing a c article about the d by someone at U University.
But, no, I haven’t ever edited an X paper.
But I would like to try. I think I would do a GoodJob.
Most of my work recently has been on papers in engineering and related studies.
Question Can you use Track Changes in MS Word so I can see what changes you make?
Answer Sorry, I can’t usually do that. But I have a substitute that may be even better because it lays out the versions side-by-side. Let me explain at TrackChanges.
Question What are your strengths and weaknesses?
Answer My strengths are my English language skills, my attention to detail, my ability and desire to understand difficult material, my fluency in the sciences and liberal arts and my experience. See GoodJob
My weaknesses are that it may take me more than a week to finish a long paper, my perfectionism and my wish that I did not have to deal with MS Word. See FileFormats
Me atBack to AcademicEditingService
Not actually questions I’ve been asked, but one asked of editors at NCKU
In Taiwan, NCKU has (had) an internal academic editing service staffed by foreign teachers associated with the university, NDHU also has one.
Researchers can choose from a list of available teacher/editors the one they wish to edit their manuscript. And the teacher/editors have descriptions of their requirements and their strengths as editors.
Researchers pay the service which pays the editors. (In Korea, Yonsei U will pay for editing by external commercial services and it maintains a list of services with relationships with the school.)
Two of the items that I thought were good questions were Proofreading Approach and Acceptable File Formats.
I wanted to answer those questions myself.↩︎