Edit to polish the writing, or edit to polish the writer?

Image: Polishing the chimney of a Burrell Traction Engine.  © Oast House Archives, CC BY-SA 2.0.  What? You think this is only tenuously connected to the post?  My friend, tenuous connections are my thing.

One of the most exciting parts of being a mid-to-late-career researcher is seeing the scientific writing produced by the early-career researchers (ECRs) I’m mentoring: Honours undergrads, grad students, postdoctoral fellows.  It’s a treat to see a new manuscript (or more often, a new piece of a manuscript*) ping its way into my inbox.  A treat, but of course also a new obligation, because I put a lot of effort into editing ECR manuscripts.  The question, though, is how much effort?  And what kind of “editing”?

Once upon a time, I would simply take an ECR manuscript and make “track changes” edits until I was happy with the results.  In other words: I would polish the writing (albeit with the use of “track changes” so the ECR could see and learn from the edits I made).  I don’t do that any more. 

What copyediting is, and what it isn’t

Image: a snippet of the (excellent) copyedit for my forthcoming book.

Over the last six months, I’ve had several pieces of writing go through the copyediting process: a few papers, and one book.  Over my career, I’ve seen closer to 100 pieces of writing through copyedits.  It’s a stage of publication that was, for a long time, rather mysterious to me, but contrasting two of my recent experiences provides a pretty good illustration of what good copyediting is, and what good copyediting very definitely isn’t.

Why would anyone want to be an (Associate) editor, anyway?

This post is jointly written by Steve Heard and Kathe Todd-Brown. Using the first person for Steve and the third for Kathe seemed less awkward than alternatives, but this should not imply Kathe’s contribution was less important than Steve’s. Disclosure: Steve has been an Associate Editor for The American Naturalist for 13 years. Kathe has not yet taken on an AE role.

So the other day this question (above) popped up in my Twitter timeline: a question from Kathe Todd-Brown, an early-career biogeochemist who’s thinking about how much – and what kinds of – service to take on. I dashed off a superficial reply along the lines of “well, somebody has to, and it’s pretty interesting”.

Then Kathe explained her thinking a little more. When she did, I realized that I’d wondered all the same things at his corresponding career stage. So, here’s Kathe’s longer-form question and my attempt at an answer – not so much directly to her, but to my own early-career self and to anyone with similar questions.