Our Product
Standard Error offers researchers and academic departments preprint-level manuscript editing,
completed by human editors with an advanced degree and relevant disciplinary expertise, to bring the presentation of their new research up to standards appropriate for initial circulation among academic audiences, as well as further editorial support throughout the journal submission and review process.
We edit research manuscripts in the following quantitative social science fields|
Economics
Finance
Accounting
Management
Marketing
Operations research
Business
Political science
Public policy
Psychology
Sociology
Who Needs an Editor?
- Are you about to present new research or upload a preprint for circulation and want to make sure that all your is are dotted and ts crossed?
- Have you been desk-rejected or dinged by a reviewer for the quality of your writing in English?
- Are you resubmitting a manuscript after an R&R and want to make sure that the revisions are well incorporated and your response letters are tidy?
- Are you headed onto the job market and need to ensure that your job market paper is in immaculate condition?
- Do you need a partner available for occasional consultations to provide editorial guidance during the process of drafting a manuscript?
In all of these cases, you can benefit from the support of a seasoned editor. Our service is particularly useful for writers of English as a second language who may not feel confident expressing themselves, but it also helps authors whose first language is English ensure that their manuscripts and submission-related correspondence are presented professionally and in line with the conventions of their field.
Why Choose Standard Error?
- Editing by subject matter experts with experience in academic publishing
- Transparent, flexible and accessible pricing
- Responsive customer service
- In-house editing for affordability and efficiency
- No intermediaries
- Fast turnaround times
- Long-term collaborative relationships
What Do Our Editors Do?
We apply preprint-level manuscript editing to authors’ manuscripts. This sentence-level editing is appropriate for manuscripts whose content and paragraph-level organization has largely been finalized but that are generally still at the submission or review stage. Rather than applying a certain style, we ensure that the manuscript aligns with widespread academic writing conventions so that upon acceptance the paper can later be easily tailored by the publication’s own copy editors and proofreaders.
The key elements of this level of editing are as follows:
- Ensuring logic, clarity, precision and naturalness of phrasing and expression in English
- Checking and correcting spelling, grammar, syntax and structural and mechanical issues
- Ensuring internal consistency in the use of conventions
- Checking for accurate translation and/or use of jargon or vocabulary specific to the area of study
- Ensuring accurate and/or appropriate diction and consideration of inclusive language standards
- Ensuring logical and rhetorically effective transitions between sentences, paragraphs, and sections
- Ensuring economy of expression
- Trimming the manuscript abstract or body to meet journal word count limits
What Does It Cost?
Our baseline rate is $57 an hour at a minimum editing pace of 2,000 words an hour.
We prioritize keeping our service accessible by only billing our clients for the actual work required to bring the language in a manuscript up to submission standards. Articles that arrive to us in good condition or that have already been through prior rounds of editing can often be edited at a considerably faster pace—you will only ever pay for the amount of work that your manuscript needs at whatever stage of the publication pipeline it’s in.
Institutional subscriptions are priced at a discount on this rate that depends on the subscription tier, which can be selected on the basis of the number of faculty and students accessing the service.
What Formats Do We Edit in?
We edit .doc and .tex files and projects. Changes are tracked in Word documents and Overleaf projects with the built-in track changes feature. For non-Overleaf .tex files, we use the latexdiff script to provide a compare PDF showing the markup of additions and deletions alongside the edited files.