The Importance of Reviewing and Revising an Academic or Scientific Article
As wonderful as it may be to imagine that an academic or scientific article can reach a state of perfection when first written, this is highly unusual, and very few published authors consider their work perfect even after it has been carefully reviewed by them as well as their colleagues, proofreaders, and appropriate revisions have been completed. Perfection is therefore somewhat elusive, but making a paper as good as it possibly can be before it is published is an attainable goal. Careful review and revision will be necessary to achieve this goal, however, so it is best to be prepared for this eventuality and grab it by the horns instead of shying away from it.
The reviewing process should begin long before you submit your article. A careful read through your paper as soon as it is drafted when your writing is fresh in your mind will catch typing errors and enable refinement of both the language and the argument, while also allowing you to ensure that all formatting guidelines provided by the journal to which you will be submitting your article have been followed. It is a good idea at that point to share your article with a second reader: a colleague or academic supervisor who publishes similar work is an excellent choice, but generous friends or family members can sometimes provide helpful input as well. If you use the feedback you receive as objectively as possible, revisions, sometimes of a significant kind, will usually follow, and often you, too, will have thought of changes to improve the paper. Try to complete all your revisions and polish all aspects of your article well before you plan to submit it so that you can set your paper and all accompanying documents aside for a few days or, better still, a week to give yourself a little distance from your work. Then return to your documents on a day when you have enough time to read through everything carefully at one sitting. It is often the case that errors, awkward phrases, and inconsistent terminology and formatting unnoticed for days or even weeks will suddenly leap off the page when you give yourself this kind of opportunity to be a thoughtful critical reader of your own writing. You may also want to consider hiring a professional academic or scientific proofreader who will be able to provide a qualified set of fresh eyes to catch any remaining problems.
Your revisions will not necessarily end when you submit your article: even if it is accepted unconditionally, you will probably be involved in some of the editorial procedures that lead to publication, and often acceptance for publication is conditional, requiring further changes in response to peer reviews, so keep your mind open to all possible improvements and remember that those who work for the journal are as keen as you are to produce quality scholarship.
Why Our Editing and Proofreading Services?
At Proof-Reading-Service.com we offer the highest quality journal article editing, dissertation proofreading and online proofreading services via our large and extremely dedicated team of academic and scientific professionals. All of our proofreaders are native speakers of English who have earned their own postgraduate degrees, and their areas of specialisation cover such a wide range of disciplines that we are able to help our international clientele with research editing to improve and perfect all kinds of academic manuscripts for successful publication. Many of the carefully trained members of our manuscript editing and proofreading team work predominantly on articles intended for publication in scholarly journals, applying painstaking journal editing standards to ensure that the references and formatting used in each paper are in conformity with the journal’s instructions for authors and to correct any grammar, spelling, punctuation or simple typing errors. In this way, we enable our clients to report their research in the clear and accurate ways required to impress acquisitions proofreaders and achieve publication.
Our scientific proofreading services for the authors of a wide variety of scientific journal papers are especially popular, but we also offer manuscript proofreading services and have the experience and expertise to proofread and edit manuscripts in all scholarly disciplines, as well as beyond them. We have team members who specialise in medical proofreading services, and some of our experts dedicate their time exclusively to dissertation proofreading and manuscript proofreading, offering academics the opportunity to improve their use of formatting and language through the most exacting PhD thesis editing and journal article proofreading practices. Whether you are preparing a conference paper for presentation, polishing a progress report to share with colleagues, or facing the daunting task of editing and perfecting any kind of scholarly document for publication, a qualified member of our professional team can provide invaluable assistance and give you greater 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.
