Scientific Editing

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Scientific Editing

Get the best out of your writing with expert in-depth editing and advice from our Nature-standard editors.

We specialize in research papers, reviews and grant proposals within the natural sciences (medicine, biology, chemistry, physics and earth sciences) and engineering.

Nature-Standard Editors

Your work is edited by Nature-standard developmental editors who:

  • are PhD-qualified in a relevant topic
  • have mostly worked as editors at highly selective journals (at a variety of publishers), in some cases as Chief Editors
  • understand the publishing process, know what top journal editors and reviewers look for, and are aware of what can stand in the way of success

We won’t show your paper to any Nature journal editors, so you can be confident that when you later submit to a journal, the editor’s decision will be independent of your original text and our suggestions.

Read Our Ethical Policies

These policies relate specifically to Nature Research Editing Service. Please see also our Terms of Service for other core principles, for example regarding the confidentiality of your documents.

  • Our aim is to serve the interests of authors and institutions, not the editorial and publishing interests of Springer Nature journals.
    • We openly and clearly declare to potential and current customers that we are part of Springer Nature, and we inform potential customers about our independence from the publishing process.
    • We aim to be publisher-neutral in our editing and advice, and especially in our journal recommendations (where applicable). We take steps during the editing process, when giving advice, and when recruiting and training editors to help us achieve this aim.
    • Nature Research Editing Service does not measure its success in terms of the publication of edited documents by Springer Nature journals.

  • We do not involve ourselves in the publishing process.
    • We do not guarantee publication of papers or funding of grant applications. We expect journal editors and grant review panels will make these decisions entirely independently of Nature Research Editing Service and other author services providers.
    • Draft journal articles and their scientific content are not shared with professional editors who make decisions on research papers at Springer Nature journals.
    • Any comments that we make regarding the suitability of specific target journals are explicitly presented as opinion and not as a definitive prediction of the outcome of submission.
    • If an author indicates that they mainly want to know whether or not their paper is acceptable to a specific Springer Nature journal, or has any other query for which a Springer Nature journal editor is the most appropriate contact, we will suggest that the author contacts the journal directly.
    • We do not suggest peer reviewers.

  • We do not infringe on authorship.
    • When editing documents, wherever possible, we provide our edits and comments in an easily reviewable format. We encourage authors to review our input critically, rather than accepting all of our edits and suggestions without review.
    • We never confirm that any document is ready for submission, submit anything to a journal or funding body, or correspond with journal editors or peer reviewers on behalf of authors.
    • We do not ghostwrite or completely rewrite large passages of text, and we do not directly introduce ideas that are not already present in the documents submitted to us. Our editing focuses on improving how the existing research is communicated.

  • General policies
    • We do not engage in or encourage practices that contravene relevant ethical guidelines.
    • For Scientific Editing, if we suspect unethical practice in a submitted document or correspondence, we will point it out and explain it. If we suspect severe infringement of ethical requirements or laws (particularly unacceptable harm to humans or animals), we act on this where possible.
    • We review these policies on a regular basis and keep up-to-date with issues arising in the publication ethics landscape.
    • We train editors to follow these policies, we monitor adherence to these policies, and we take action in the event of any failure to follow them.

Our Process

Stage 1: Language Edit

Your work is submitted for English Language Editing as the preliminary stage. This allows the editors in the later stages to focus on your ideas and not the language usage.

Stage 2: Developmental Edit

This is the main stage of the scientific editing process. It is performed by a Nature-standard developmental editor who is selected specifically for his or her understanding of the science within your paper. The edits and advice encompass:

  • how well your argument reflects your central question or objective
  • the structure, clarity, flow and relative emphasis of the arguments
  • the description of your rationale, your methods and how your conclusions were derived
  • the presentation of context and of any objectively justifiable implications of the research
  • the clarity and suitability of your figures, tables and supplementary information
  • any sections that lack detail or are unnecessarily long
  • the effectiveness of your cover letter and other supporting materials (if provided)

Stage 3: Quality Assurance Edit

In the final stage, your text is comprehensively reviewed by another Nature-standard editor. This editor examines the text again in detail and provides additional edits and feedback to ensure that our editing and advice are as useful to you as possible.

Feedback Report

In addition to your edited files, you will receive a custom 4–8 page report containing:

  • feedback on the most important issues identified during the edit
  • journal recommendations based on our scientific assessment of the paper (if your text is a journal article)
  • insight into how journal editors, peer reviewers and readers might view your text
  • advice for improving your writing in the future

Note: you can request only the report, if you would like to revise the paper yourself based only on our overall editorial feedback. You can also request only the editing.

Click on the links below to download an example of an edited manuscript and the accompanying report.

Where our customers have published

Papers that we’ve edited have been published in many highly selective journals. Here are just a few:

  • Advanced Functional Materials
  • Cancer Research
  • Developmental Cell
  • Earth and Planetary Science Letters
  • Energy and Environmental Science
  • Genome Biology
  • Geophysical Research Letters
  • Journal of Experimental Medicine
  • Nano Letters
  • Nature
  • Nature Climate Change
  • Nature Communications
  • Nature Genetics
  • Nature Geoscience
  • Nature Medicine
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States

What Customers Say

I would like to express my sincere appreciation for your work. You did really an excellent job. What I liked in particular was that you gave comments with substantial suggestions how to improve. Although I have published till now quite a number of scientific papers (>300) and many of them in high impact journals I learned a lot throughout this. I Iook forward to future cooperation of mutual benefit.

Professor · University of Bayreuth · Germany

…the objective critiques enabled us to write a stronger paper that caught the eye of the editors at the Journal of Experimental Medicine and impressed the referees that reviewed the manuscript.

Research Fellow · University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) · USA

The editing service is outstanding and unique in its depth! Offering developmental edits and having experienced editors who worked for and have published in high-impact journals was the major reason for choosing your particular editing service.

Assistant Professor · Johns Hopkins University · USA

Thank you for your editing. It is really informative for me in enhancing the quality of my study.

Request a Quote

Note: this is for Scientific Editing. If you’re looking for English Language Editing, click here.

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Please note that the Scientific Editing office is closed between 19th and 22nd April inclusive.