On 24 Hour Turn Around Times

We sometimes get requests for same-day or 24-hour turnaround time on editing jobs and many editing companies offer this service. What are the considerations for tight turnaround times?

The first question is whether your paper will be machine-edited or edited by an experienced academic. Computers are available to help you 24/7 but they are likely to miss the more nuanced aspects of the editing task, can misinterpret names and technical jargon, and sometimes change the paper in unexpected ways.

Another important aspect is that there are sometimes mismatches between the author’s, project manager’s, and editor’s time zones. (Not all editing companies have project managers, but many do.) If author sends the paper after the project manager is offline for the day and if the project manager sends it to the editor after they are offline for the day, 12 hours or more could be lost in transit. In addition, many academic editors have full time jobs and can only edit before or after business hours. Even at a company like Midwest Academic Editing, many of our clients are overseas and time zones do affect our operations.

But the most important aspect is that good technical editing involves more than one pass through the document. On the first pass at Midwest Academic Editing, we fix obvious and easy-to-correct issues, flag issues that are more difficult to address for later, and otherwise focus on understanding the paper – its content, its style, and its terminology. During the second pass, we address the more difficult issues and perform a more comprehensive and sensitive edit. At the end of the second edit, the paper should be very clean. A third and final pass looks for smaller and more subtle issues that might have been overshadowed by problems that were addressed in earlier passes. At this point, the editor should be proofreading, not editing.

A key point is that these passes are usually done at different times of the day, and preferably with a good night’s sleep in between. Even the best editor will see things tomorrow that they missed today. And they might have better ideas of how to address today’s issues tomorrow. Thus, a high quality edit takes two or three days. Many editing companies will give their editors 5 to 7 days for a journal paper so the editor has the time to do the required passes and set aside time when they are focused enough to do the work.

Some editing companies have a second editor review each draft before returning it to the client to ensure that the paper is as good as it can be. This improves quality, but increases editing cost and turnaround time.

We are happy to provide quick turnaround service when we are able to do so. But it is important to note that something can be lost in the process.