Biological Sciences and Medicine
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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.
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You belong to an academic society that has many editors
as members, don't you?
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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.
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Why did you choose to become an editor rather than a
researcher?
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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.
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What kind of clients do you cater to?
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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.
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In your experience, what mistakes do non-native English
speakers usually make?
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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.
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This interview will be read by many Japanese
researchers whose native language is not English. Please
give them some ideas about writing better
theses.
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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.
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You've been editing for close to 20 years now. How do
you value your experience as an editor?
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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.
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What exactly do you mean by that?
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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.
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Note that the views expressed on this page are of the person
interviewed and do not necessarily reflect the views of Enago
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