FAQs for professional editors

A student has approached me to edit their thesis. What is the scope of services I can legitimately provide?

You should be familiar with the guidelines, ‘The editing of research theses by professional editors’, which provide information on the scope and limit of editing services you can legitimately provide. Services you may provide in editing research theses are limited to copyediting and proofreading. Refer to the Australian Standards for Editing Practice (ASEP), for clarification on these (Standards D and E). You should also check with the student whether their institution requires editing in hard-copy or in electronic format.

What are the Australian Standards for Editing Practice (ASEP)?

The ASEP were devised by the Standards Working Group of the Council of Australian Societies of Editors (CASE), forerunner of the Institute of Professional Editors Limited, the national peak body for Australian editors; approved by the members of all Australian societies of editors; ratified by CASE; and published in 2001. The standards were developed for editors to use as a basis for judging the comprehensiveness of their own knowledge and skills when promoting themselves and the editing profession generally.

I will be editing the thesis in hard copy. What do I need to bear in mind?

The student should provide you with a clean copy of the thesis. They should also provide you with any style guide, manual, or other guidelines to which the thesis is required to conform.

You should outline your specific requirements of the student’s role during the editing process.  Most importantly, you should remind the student that they are responsible for reviewing each change or correction suggested before accepting it.

If you identify any problems in matters of substance or structure, you should not correct these, but alert the student to them. You may wish to provide the student with examples of how to resolve errors of substance or structure. You should keep all versions of the marked-up hard copy.

I will be editing the thesis electronically. What do I need to bear in mind?

The student should provide you with a clean copy of the thesis. They should also provide you with any style guide, manual, or other guidelines to which the thesis is required to conform. You should outline any specific requirements of the student’s role during the editing process.

Most importantly, you should remind the student that they are responsible for reviewing each change or correction suggested before accepting it. This is particularly important when working with electronic copy (when it is very easy for the student simply to accept all suggested changes without checking them individually). Ideally, text marked up electronically should be returned to the student in PDF format so that the student is required to consider each suggested editorial change.

If you identify any problems in matters of substance or structure, you should not correct them. However, you may choose to alert the student to them and provide the examples of how they might be resolved. You should keep all versions of the marked-up electronic copy.