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Biological Sciences and Medicine

Armed with an undergraduate degree and graduate coursework in biosciences, this editor has worked as a freelance medical editor for more than 13 years. Besides being a longtime member of the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) and the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences (BELS), she has completed many advanced courses in proofreading and editing.

You belong to an academic society that has many editors as members, don't you?

Yes, I belong to an Editors' Association, and I took part in their conference last week in Austin, Texas. Several medical editors and writers attended; we discussed useful editing tools and macros and exchanged opinions about the use of research databases. The Editors' Association also organizes workshops on techniques of editing figures. At such events, I acquaint myself with recent advances in medicine. This particular conference was an excellent opportunity to refresh my editing knowledge and style.

Why did you choose to become an editor rather than a researcher?

Although I had planned to pursue a career in research, I found that I was more interested in gaining medical knowledge than in actually doing the research myself. I enjoy learning about the discoveries and findings of other researchers. I chose editing as a job because it enables me to learn something new every day. I have two children - 8 and 5 years old. So I think that this job is ideal while I'm raising them, because freelance editors can organize their time in a more flexible manner. To consistently deliver work of high quality is not that easy, especially for freelancers; but it works for me because I have a solid client base.

What kind of clients do you cater to?

I usually get orders from universities in Taiwan and Korea. Almost all my clients are non-native English speakers. I have clients in non-English speaking countries such as Finland, Spain, and in many other European nations.

In your experience, what mistakes do non-native English speakers usually make?

The most common error is repeating things from tables or figures in the results section, thus producing a document that is longer than it needs to be. From a grammatical point of view, mistakes usually occur in word order. I frequently change the construction of several sentences and the order of words therein. Appropriate word choice is also an important factor in editing. For example, I've had to change "while" to "where" and "since" to "because" on many occasions.

This interview will be read by many Japanese researchers whose native language is not English. Please give them some ideas about writing better theses.

I would suggest that they read the abstract repeatedly and verify the results that are presented there. Sometimes, it happens that researchers reanalyze some data but fail to change those results in the abstract. They need to make sure that the results in the abstract are correct and that they match what is depicted in the tables and figures. I recommend a really good book titled Essentials of Writing Biomedical Research Papers by Mimi Zeiger.

You've been editing for close to 20 years now. How do you value your experience as an editor?

As far as language is concerned, what editing has given me is this: the longer I edit the more things I have to look up. That doesn't mean that I understand every consequence of the results obtained by the researchers, but I think that I need to be well-versed with the content and subject matter in order to be a good editor. I think that all editors need to have subject experience, particularly in their chosen field of study. I hope to become a subject-specific editor.

What exactly do you mean by that?

Editors must strive to create a niche in a "specific" area, of their choice and expertise. They must aspire to become thus oriented. I wish to create something special for authors. That is my hope.
Note that the views expressed on this page are of the person interviewed and do not necessarily reflect the views of Enago as a company. Please contact feedback@enago.com if you have any questions regarding the content of this interview.
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