You can waste a considerable amount of time when reviewing and editing draft documents, particularly when it is being done by an inexperienced team. When you send a ‘raw’ text out to a team for review you can multiply the number of ours you expect to spend on a manuscript by the number of people on the review team.
Your reviewers may also have their own writing style and poorly prepared documents (not ready for circulation) can result in heavy re-writes by your reviewers. This not only has the potential to waste their time but also your time navigating how best to combine additional text and possible tables/figures into the work returned by the other members of the review team.
I know I have my own exacting requirements when I review draft documents and also like to provide ‘training’ to the review team, explaining the choices you have made. It may seem somewhat nonsensical, but I may even add edits and comments to sections that I ask to be removed. There is such a potential for all parties to burn time. There are few texts where I don’t provide comment of some form or another. In response I have developed a structured approach that has served me well in providing timely reviews. To be clear, I only use these techniques on documents Niche has been employed to deliver and fir with our clearly defined writing and editing services within appropriate ethical boundries relating to contributions made to documents.
Research review: involves evaluating various aspects of the research including whether the literature of the field has been interpreted correctly, whether the methods used were appropriate, correct use of the methods (including any statistical analysis) and the results are clearly presented. It is also important to cross reference the conclusions against the projects objectives, endpoints and whether the conclusions drawn from the results are robust.
Document structure: Addressing the flow of the document – effectively its storytelling. This tends to consider the larger structural aspects of a document. Interrogations includes:
Text editing: This includes phrasing, transitions between paragraphs, and grammar usage. In addition, the process involves cross referencing links to tables, figures and appendices and finalising the references. The order you address these different aspects can be down to personal preference. As you tend to be closer to document completion when you get to text editing, it can be useful to adopt a structured approach: structural components (tables and figures), punctuation and abbreviations and finally grammar.
This approach may not necessarily be considered as addressing the aspects of the document in order of their importance, rather they are addressed in order they are most likely to extend the review and finalisation process. Clearly, all three aspects are critical to produce a high-quality document – but, rather, they are ordered according to how disruptive the changes at each phase would be to the other aspects of document development.
It can be difficult to coordinate larger editing teams when you are trying to adopt a considered, time efficient three-phase approach to editing. It is far too easy to start line editing a manuscript and miss the larger fundamental problems with the research or the structure of the document. Reviewers often get to the end of the document and find that they have made a lot of comments and conclude, “that’s enough changes for one round of editing,” and fail to address these other, larger issues. For that reason, it can sometimes be best to identify a smaller review group who can perform a first research review edit. Only distributing to the wider team once all the kinks have been ironed out.
In the past, Halloween has meant the end of the crop and the start of the dark, cold winter.
I have never been great at conferences. People don’t believe me but I am painfully shy and far too worried about what.
Our team are exploring different and novel ways for young people to enter the pharmaceutical industry.
Welcome to the seventh issue of the Refractory Asthma Stratification Programme (RASP-UK) newsletter
Every year, a huge amount of scientific data is released. It's out there, but how do you find it?
Finding the best vehicle in which to publish your research findings is a perennial challenge.
Concerns about readiness of the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) Clinical Trials Information System persist as the.
Experience at Niche has taught us that clinical study protocols are born in the white-hot fire
I am continually reminded that I must work toward better relationships with my sons than the one I had with my dad.
The proceedings of the Association for Human Pharmacology in the Pharmaceutical Industry (AHPPI)
Scientific knowledge should be accessible to all and if you are those communicating science
We all need heroes - people who can champion our cause - helping the world to understand our rationale
Since 2013 we have been sharing our understanding on key issues with friends and clients via our Insider’s Insights.
We recently encouraged writers (of all kinds) in our recent Insider’s Insight to experiment with large language.
The largest pharmaceutical companies not surprisingly rely on the largest contract research organizations
Get our latest news and publications
Sign up to our news letterResources
Social
Contact us
Address
Niche Science & Technology
Unit 26 Falstaff House
Bardolph Road
Richmond TW9 2LH
United Kingdom
