About you Daniel Native-speaker of American English from the USA. Experience in the publishing and academic editing industry. Mark Native English speaker from the USA. Scientific research background in medical… Read More →
Category: Insider info on editing, writing & publishing your research
What is your job role and why have you chosen this occupation?
Daniel: I’m Daniel Boles, the Project Manager at Uni-edit. My job has to do with the day-to-day operations between customer service and experts at the job and task levels. I… Read More →
What would you like to tell customers who feel embarrassed to use a professional English editing service?
Daniel: I would say that there’s no need to be embarrassed to use an editing service. In my opinion, all publication quality writing needs to go through multiple editors before… Read More →
Authors worry about quality, reliability, and confidentiality. How to safely choose an editing company?
Daniel: Customers should not focus on the language, as it is only one of many components that determine if a paper is publishable or not. In my experience, the quality… Read More →
What is the benefit of using a company for English editing or translation over using a freelancer, such as a friend in the US?
Daniel: The main advantage of using an editing and translation company over a freelancer or a friend is that you will get more than one pass over the document by… Read More →
Why can’t authors submit machine-translated English for editing? Aren’t Editors supposed to be able to decipher unclear English anyway?
Daniel: Machine translation is uneditable. The reason for this is that machine translation often doesn’t have the context and emotive aspect of language which creates non-human sounding English. Therefore, your… Read More →
How can I know the quality of the English editing after I receive the manuscript back from the editing company?
Daniel: The truth is that in most cases you, if you are not a native speaker of English, won’t be able to know with 100% certainty that the English is… Read More →
Please share with me your favourite Uni-edit customer success story.
Catherine: In fact, my favourite success story is from a Japanese customer (please see the following) because it made me feel more real compared to the other testimonials. Nagoya Institute… Read More →
What makes Uni-edit services for customers special?
Mark: I comment below about the different kinds of Uni-edit customers. I guess a unique characteristic of ours is that our services works for all kinds of customers: the customers… Read More →
What makes working with the Uni-edit team different from working at other companies?
Catherine: The team is very small and you can feel everyone shares a close bond, even though we’re all working from different geographical locations. Yuki: I agree. I think it… Read More →
What is the best question you have received from a Uni-edit customer, and how did you answer it?
Sally: The customer was trying to come up with a new name for a technique, but the new name had to fit an old acronym, so that people would still… Read More →
What do you believe Uni-edit customers want most in the English editing service?
Mark: It’s difficult for me to generalize because Uni-edit customers come from a range of backgrounds and motivations. Perhaps living in a country where English is not the native language,… Read More →
What online websites and technologies do you know about that might be useful for researchers who need to write and publish papers?
Daniel: www.ginkoapp.com → awesome writing tool www.zotero.com → citation management www.citationmachine.net → good tool to make a quick citation www.overleaf.com → awesome LaTeX collaborative writing tool Catherine: Installing some grammar-check… Read More →
What’s a controversial opinion you have about academic publishing, which most people in the industry wouldn’t agree with you about?
Daniel: In my opinion, too much emphasis is placed on the importance of language by authors and editors, relative to the merit of the research. Language is important, but it’s… Read More →
What English blogs do you like to read?
Sally: Wait But Why (www.waitbutwhy.com) Catherine: Try www.cambridgeenglish.org to review and sharpen your English writing skills. Leigh: No specific ones. However, I previously worked for a bank. I am more… Read More →
What English authors do you like to read?
Mark: David Foster Wallace. Achieving fame as an author of American fiction, Wallace has become just as famous for his highly observant non-fiction and crystal-clear expressions of human thought processes,… Read More →
What’s your favorite academic English “fun fact” I wouldn’t easily find in a textbook or dictionary?
Sally: Not sure if this is really academic, but there are at least two words that have two meanings that are more or less diametrically opposite: Cleave: 1) To split… Read More →
What advice, in regards to language, can you give to an author who needs to publish many papers in the near future?
Daniel: Something I have always told students is that they need to write often and read journal papers in the journals they want to publish in. The truth is that… Read More →
In your opinion, how can a non-native speaker of English best improve his written academic English?
Daniel: Writer, write, write, and write some more. If you are having a hard time writing, then write it in your native language and then rewrite it in English (but… Read More →