Thursday, May 8, 2008

How you say it can be as important as what you say, according to journal editors

Excerpt from a letter to an author:

"Both reviewers complained of technical and editorial errors throughout the manuscript. I believe very strongly that it is not the job of scientific reviewers to perform technical editing. Please take pains to make the manuscript as coherent and well written as possible. You may wish to obtain the services of a technical editor before submitting your revision.

"To protect my reviewers, I will read the revision and reject it without further review if it appears that insufficient effort has been applied to the technical editing, organization and presentation of the manuscript".

Jim Hansen, Ph.D.
Editor, Monthly Weather Review
Naval Research Laboratory
Monterey, CA

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You are so right in bringing this to the attention of readers. So many science students think, "I'm going to study Math, computers, etc. —what do I need English for?"