Fees and Terms of Service
What You as a Researcher Get for My Fees
You can pay another editing service less to edit your manuscript, but will you get the same level of attention and care that you can get from KOK Edit?
Journal editors want manuscripts that are spelled and punctuated correctly. They want manuscripts to have proper grammar and to follow the journal's preferences. And other editing services will do that for you.
But journal editors want more than that. They want manuscripts to be well structured, to have the right tone for their publication, and to tell a research story rather than just recite data. That is where I can help you.
In addition to having extensive training in editing, I am board-certified as an editor in the life sciences. I will advise you when a table or figure will illustrate your findings better than text alone, help you report your research concisely, and even help you write a cover letter to accompany your submission.
For more than 2 decades, I have been editing manuscripts written by multi-language authors, so I know exactly how to help you hone your writing to meet journals' expectations. Authors whose manuscripts have been rejected by journals often come to me for help and then achieve publication after my in-depth editing.
You will face competition from many other researchers when you submit your manuscript to a journal. I will work with you to set deadlines that will honor your manuscript, so that I can take the time necessary to help you make your manuscript its best.
When I edit for you, I am your advocate in the publishing process. I help you communicate your research well to your English-speaking peers worldwide. I polish your writing so that it sounds as if you are a native English writer. And I help you decrease the amount of jargon in your manuscript so that more people will want to read it. Contact me today to get started.
For more information about the valuable skills and training that medical editors have and how those help your writing be its best and be more likely to be published, see "A Comprehensive Guide to Medical Editing."
How Much Will Editing Cost?
Why do I not post a fee schedule here? Because every manuscript, just like every author, is different. If no two authors write alike, there cannot be a one-size-fits-all fee for editing. The level of editing needed, and thus the amount of time spent editing, varies with each project. Some clients prefer to pay page rates or project fees instead of hourly rates. Fees are negotiated for each project, depending on level of editing, project parameters, and project time frame.
Note: In all fee negotiations, 1 manuscript page is defined as 250 words. Microsoft Word's physical pagination is irrelevant.
I cannot determine the cost of editing for your manuscript without having the opportunity to assess its subject matter, quality of writing, complexity, length, and the level of editing it needs. I also need to know how many rounds of editing you desire, what your deadlines are, and what your manuscript's target audience is.
For large projects, I require periodic partial fee payments to be made during the editing process. Many times, I require a down payment of one-third to one-half of the fee for a large project. I accept rush projects when possible, but they incur higher fees than nonrush jobs do.
All fee quotes are valid for 30 days; I reserve the right to revise a quote if you take more than 30 days to decide to go ahead with the project. If the size or scope of the project increases after a quote has been accepted, a revised fee will be negotiated.
Terms of Service
As a highly experienced editor, I do top-quality editing of your manuscript. However, because I am human, I cannot guarantee that your manuscript will be perfect.
If I edit your manuscript and then you make more changes to it that you do not allow me to review before you submit it for publication, the journal or publisher may think that you did not have your manuscript edited. I am not responsible for such an outcome. It is your responsibility to give me a chance to review all changes that you make to your manuscript before submission.
Sometimes after I have edited a manuscript for you and you have submitted it to a journal or publisher, you will be asked to revise it for content-related reasons rather than language-related reasons. You can then ask me to edit the revised manuscript before you resubmit it. But does that mean I am going to edit only the sections that you tell me are revised? No. Here is an explanation.
Journals require complete transparency about authorship and about editorial assistance. Therefore, I require that you include the following sentence in the Acknowledgments section of your manuscript: Medical editor Katharine O'Moore-Klopf, ELS (East Setauket, NY, USA) provided professional English-language editing of this article.
Please note that when you received an edited file from me for your review, the Track Changes function in Microsoft Word will be turned on. You will not be able to use the Accept/Reject Changes function. This is to make sure that I can easily find your changes or comments to review them. If you do not agree with a particular edit, you can delete it, and your deletion will be tracked by Word. If text must be added, you can insert it, and your insertion will also be tracked by Word.
If you do any of the following 3 things, I must charge you an additional US$400 because of the extra work they cause for me:
- Manipulate the Tracked Changes feature by copying and pasting the edited text into a new document
- Remove the template from the document
- Change the applied Word styles
Payment is accepted electronically via PayPal or in the form of bank wire transfers or business checks; personal checks are not accepted. Please note that if you pay using a bank wire transfer, your bank will charge you a fee for doing so. You will have to request bank account details from me for your bank to be able to complete the wire transfer. Late payment of a KOK Edit invoice may result in an additional fee of 15% of the original invoice amount.
Until I receive full payment for editing your manuscript, I retain copyright ownership of the work that I have done on the manuscript. This means that no journal or publisher can legally publish your work if you have not paid me for my editing. When I receive full payment from you, I no longer have any copyright claims on your work.
