Sometimes, I feel it is required for every journal to get a language editor. Do you think it is, or not necessarily required?
Dear Kamoru A. Adedokun
The language editor is not only required for the journal but also its presence is essential. This is due to that many manuscripts contain minor to major typographical and linguistic errors.
Regards
Dear Kamoru A. Adedokun
The language editor is not only required for the journal but also its presence is essential. This is due to that many manuscripts contain minor to major typographical and linguistic errors.
Regards
Dear Kamoru A. Adedokun
Thank you too for this interesting discussion.
Regards
Peer-review process basically ascertain the significance, accuracy, presentation, value and validity of conclusions, and so on. Reviewers would highlight the inappropriate/incorrect use of language, if any. However, they would not going to correct every single mistake of the language use. Editor would also consider the language useage, but concentrate more on the other things than language. Therefore, a publication/publishing house needs a language expert who can fully concentrate only on the language used. Usually, a person with good knowlede in technical writing (plus language) is appointed.
Manjula Wijewickrema this is an excellent comment, your comment succinctly explained every single role involved by individuals in the publishing process with a good central point on the thematic issue. Kudos!
Sadly, I have seen a number of potentially good papers (in the humanities) that were published despite numerous grammatical errors, stylistic infelicities, ambiguous wording, spelling mistakes, and improper punctuation. When these are excessive, readers may become annoyed enough to abort their reading of the paper. Moreover, journals that publish such papers in the first place will not have a good reputation.
Yes, copyeditors at the journal are surely needed, but maybe the worst could be avoided if the author's university had an ESL writing centre to assist scholars, researchers, and students with poor writing skills.
Karl Pfeifer Prof., thank you for this enlightenment, it is indeed scholarly!
My understanding is a language editor helps where the author's primary language is not the same as the journal. A copy editor corrects minor spelling and punctuation errors. There are also technical editors and developmental editors.
It is good to have a language editor to make the manuscript error free. Some journals do have such editors and correct all mistakes during proofing or final round of revision. Currently, top publishers run language services separately. The editor recommends authors to use the service to polish the language use. However, the service charges are expensive.
Ali H. Al-Hoorie and Isaac Dinaharan Docs, thank you for the excellent contributions.
Alice Marino thank you for adding the flavour from your pool of knowledge/experience in publishing.
You're very welcome. It would be hard to guess all of the elements. Thanks for asking.
language editing and academic editing have become separated. I do not think that journal editors do language editing anymore unless the publisher provides money for the editors to employ copyeditors. For this reason, it is always important for authors to get manuscripts copyedited before finalizing it for submission. This does not mean that journal editors and their copyeditors do not do anything. They may do further editing and copyediting. Through multiple rounds of editing and copyediting, we can then be happy to have something of good quality out finally.
In this regard, MEXTESOL Journal is quite unique. As a mentoring journal, the editors are dedicated to supporting its authors in both content and language. In fact, different reviewers are asked to focus on different aspects, Reviewer A on content, and once Reviewer A approves of the manuscript, then it's passed to Reviewer B for language editing.
Xuesong Gao and Shizhou Yang very informative indeed! Thumb-up!1
Shizhou Yang, In fact, that is my thought; isn't it a better way to choose reviewers based on specialities to include the core of the subject, language expert, and even psychosocial experts to make a great publication? If yes, them MEXTESOL journal is doing far better in mentoring, just like you quoted it.
I suppose that we can all have different expectations from the process. But let me do a mathematical analysis here. In most universities, academics (research and teaching track) have the following workload formula (40% teaching, 40% research, 20% service. If we use working days and hours, 2 days, 14 hours teaching, 2 days 14 hours research, 1 day 7 hours service a week). By service, academics are expected to play various roles for their employers and we can work out the amount of time that academics can do for people or organization beyond their institutions is half day (3.5 hours). There are almost no full time journal editors and manuscript reviewers (there could be a few retired academics working full time as journal editors or reviewers). It is very likely for authors to spend 40% of their work time or more (for many months) producing a research manuscript but I do not think that they should expect journal editors and manuscript reviewers to do more than their allocated service hours (no matter what approach they take towards editing and reviewing). I know that on average, I have to ask someone to spend 3 hours copyediting or checking a manuscript (7,000 words) for me before I submit it to any publication outlet.
Yes, we can expect language editing to be provided by the publishers or editors or reviewers, but we really have to be realistic.
Xuesong Gao Great, but can you please spend little time answering the following questions to wrap up the whole explanation for better clarity? 1.What is the role of those huge article publication charges (APC), do you know the cost of an article, sometimes, is more than the salary of a faculty member in some places...considering APC of 5,000 Euro? 2. Must a faculty member be a copyeditor? 3. On my earlier post above, I mentioned breaking the jobs for a division of labour requesting the contributions of more reviewers (to comprise expert of the core subject, language checker, etc), could this be beneficial or time consuming more?
Article processing charges for open access? If this is the case, the authors are not paying the editors and reviewers but they are paying for readers to download and read. Of course, publishers make a lot of money from the process. Whoever the copyeditor is, there will be costs. I am not sure if editors and reviewers are paid to cover the hours that they need to do the copyediting. In my field, they are not.
In agreement with Xuesong Gao 's earlier post, I'd just like to add that authors shouldn't leave copyediting in the hands of journals. I was very naïve by not checking as carefully as I should have in a couple of my early papers, expecting that because the papers had been accepted for publication that any typos or formatting issues would be ironed out (my thought: surely the editor/copyeditor will make the corrections). This didn't happen. Furthermore, on several occasions typesetters (who sometimes also act as copyeditors) have introduced errors into the manuscript. This is incredibly frustrating, but is another reason why authors need to double and triple check their papers before submission and after acceptance (checking the proof). Leaving it in someone else's hands can be problematic.
In terms of article publication charges, don't pay them. There are plenty of top-tier journals that don't charge processing fees. Paying for open access is a different story and has nothing to do with editing.
Kamoru A. Adedokun It is essential and this is what they do, so they have to send back the articles to authors for language editing and correction before publishing.
I agree that authors need to do careful editing themselves, as much as they can, before submitting their manuscripts, and that they should not expect journal editors to do the editing for them. As for MJ, all reviewers and editors are all volunteers, who believe in the philosophy of mentoring authors. Accordingly, they allow as long as it takes to help authors to develop a publishable manuscript and also provide help with editing once the content is ready. During the later stage, three copyeditors will go through the same manuscript to improve its readability. But this is a unique case. What Xuesong Gao mentioned is a realistic portrait of most journals. I also agree that journals need to be mindful of equality issues in publication, not rejecting submissions purely based on deviations in language. With high OA fees in some cases, I'd suggest trying free open access journals such as L2 Journal.
I think its crucial to have them. Due to possible discrepancies among reviewers, there needs to be a judge to make the final fair decision on the linguistic aspects. Besides, some reviewers do not read works as thoroughly as they should, therefore it is sound to have a supervisor as the editor.
I suppose every author should feel accountable to do meticulous editing, but a language editor or typesetter can make the MS much refined. It is not necessarily the responsibility of the reviewers to read and check every single word to check the language.
Ali Derakhshan , Negin Samoudi , Shizhou Yang , Justin Nicholes , Fady M. A Hassouna and Nathan Thomas thank you for the valuable contributions.
Copyediting is the sole responsibility of the publisher. It goes beyond grammar check; it involves formatting, typesetting etc. The cost of this is included in APC. However, grammar check is the role of all (authors, reviewers, & editors). This will ensure proper communication of findings.
With regards to high APC, there are many subscription-based and even open-access journals that do not charge any fee. Some journals also grant waiver (as high as 100% waiver). Whether or not the journal/publisher charges is not a pointer to the quality of the journal, it is only a business model.
Hence, authors need to choose journals base on the policy of their institution(s), funding agencies, etc.
Of course they do! When a manuscript is sent to reviewers, they examine it focusing on the quality of research and not language/style. I believe a submitted manuscript is scrutinized for language and style several times, even after reviewers' approval to make sure it is language and style error-free. Therefore, having a language editor is not an option; it is a must.
Cheers,
Roland Eghoghosoa Akhigbe thank you, Doc. Your contribution is educative.
yes! I definitely give some feedback on language, but I agree with Mohaildeen Alotumi that I focus on the quality of the research and not so much of the language/style.
Sure, most journals need that role not only a language editor but also proofreader/copyeditor.
Each reviewer deals with different issues, and some don't care much about language typos, and their main role to give an idea of the quality of the paper rather than language use, style, etc. The journal should be consistent in terms of style and language use. In that case, rather than reviewers editors (copyeditors/proofreaders) help a lot to the journal and to authors, too.
I would say YES. Copyeditor would help a lot on finalizing the draft both language-wise and format-wise. Mostly, journal editors and reviewers might be responsible for content and argument (although they point out typos/grammar issues as well). However, I guess authors before submission should also get copy editing service to give the best shot of their manuscript.
Yes, it is. Especially for those who are not natives English speakers.
Ge Lan , Anıl Kandemir thank you for your valuable contributions. Thumb up to these contributions.
Xuan Ha and Marie Webb thank you for the valuable contributions.
Akhmad Habibi and Farhad Tabandeh thank you for the contributions.
Yes, it would help improve the presentation of work elements.
Yes, sometimes, even the best reviewer may miss out on some obvious grammar error.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Publishing