In the #journal #Nature, an #author asks: "My #English skills are hurting my chances in #AcademicPublishing — how can I improve?"
That is why I, as a longtime #MedicalEditor who respects authors, specialize in #editing physician–authors' #research #papers before those papers are #submitted to #MedicalJournals. Physicians need access to the medical knowledge of professionals all over the world.
Can you trust the accuracy of what you’re reading in science publications anymore? From the blog Retraction Watch:
“Following our coverage this summer of a book with citations [references] that did not exist, we asked you to send us examples of other books with similar issues. One reader took the request as an assignment to find problematic texts.
“Michaล Wรณjcik, a Ph.D. student at the Free University of Berlin, saw a link to our article about the book on LinkedIn. ‘I started thinking that it shouldn’t be that hard to check those references automatically,’ he said. ‘I decided to just spend some time on it, and I had a prototype in a few hours.’
“The Python script he wrote searches through books to verify the existence of each citation by checking if the DOI [(digital object identifier) for it] existed in Crossref. He told us he manually checked citations the script couldn’t identify by looking in other databases and searching on Google Scholar, which takes him between an afternoon and a whole day. …
“As we described in our coverage earlier this year, large language models like ChatGPT often generate nonexistent and error-prone citations. Publisher guidelines often forbid wholesale generation of text by AI [artificial intelligence]. However, AI may be used in other aspects of academic book publishing, like copyediting or translation, sometimes with disclosure requirements. …”
[Which is one reason why highly skilled science and medical editors and translators are losing authors and publishers as clients, to the detriment of readers who seek accuracy. Those clients are hoping to save themselves money by not hiring or contracting with humans.]
“While Springer Nature started using AI to translate books experimentally in 2023, it is not the only publisher pursuing AI translations. In March, the publisher Taylor and Francis announced plans to start using AI to translate books into English.
“The publisher has retracted individual chapters and entire books for references that could not be verified. In total, the Retraction Watch Database contains over 240 books with one or more chapters retracted for a variety of reasons by their publishers. …”
#accuracy #science #publications #ChatGPT #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #fake #citations #books #copyediting #editing #translation #MedicalEditor #translator
The nonprofit Freelancers Union has been around since 1995, advocating for American freelancers' rights. It helps build safeguards, benefits, a voice, and solidarity for the changing workforce, to make freelancing fair. As part of that work, it runs many helpful, informative posts on its blog. Two recent posts there are vital reading for all freelancers in the USA:
After you've read both of the blog posts, taking notes as you read, make an appointment with your accountant ASAP so they can help you with a plan for protecting yourself and your business.
#freelancers #freelancing #SelfEmployment #FreelancersUnion #editing #editors #rights #safeguards #legislation #healthcare #TaxReturns #UnitedStates
I’ve worked in publishing since 1984, first as an employee and then as a self-employed editor, and I must say this: “Publishing, you’re killing the industry by not making sure to keep it diversified. It has been mostly all White forever, and it cannot survive that way. The world is not all White, dammit!”
From the New York Times:
“When Lisa Lucas was hired in the summer of 2020 to take a big job at the country’s largest book publisher, there was a sense that things were finally starting to change in what has long been an overwhelmingly white industry.
“Lucas, who became the publisher of Pantheon and Schocken, imprints within Penguin Random House, was an unusual choice for the job. Executives in the book business often spend decades working their way up the ranks. While Lucas was a well-known figure in the literary world—she had previously been the executive director of the National Book Foundation, which administers the National Book Awards—she had never worked in corporate publishing. …
“This May, Lucas was abruptly let go, informed of her firing just a few hours before it became public. The news stunned some in the literary world who saw Lucas, 44, as a tastemaker and rising talent, and as someone who could help discover and champion writers of color. …
“ ‘These Black women who were brought in, publishers looked at them as disposable rather than creating industry titans, which is what they deserve to be,’ said Dhonielle Clayton, a novelist and the board chair of the organization We Need Diverse Books.
“ ‘Someone like Lisa Lucas, she’s an industry tastemaker,’ she continued. ‘If you remove these tastemakers, you remove an ability to bring in new voices and conversations and books, and we’re going to see that ripple out.’ ”
Why was Lucas fired?
“A company memo said that Lucas … [was] let go to make way for a more ‘nimble, concentrated leadership team’ that ‘is necessary for our future growth.’ ”
So of course, publishing is sacrificing Black women’s careers and Black authors’ careers on the altar of Big Money. How very American. And how shameful and small-minded.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/21/books/publishing-diversity-lisa-lucas.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ek4.BuAY.KYSkWVdwExFK&smid=url-share
_________________
American publishing’s attempt at diversification at the top:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/books/book-publishing-leadership.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ek4.DcLJ.4U4uAoCZKV9a&smid=url-share
_________________
“Penguin Random House Dismisses Two of Its Top Publishers”
“Lucas, the first Black publisher at Pantheon in its 80-year history, was hired in 2020 from the National Book Foundation, where she was the organization’s executive director. In her time at Penguin Random House, she published titles including ๐๐ฉ๐ข๐ช๐ฏ-๐๐ข๐ฏ๐จ ๐๐ญ๐ญ ๐๐ต๐ข๐ณ๐ด, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, which was a National Book Award finalist, and signed a two-book deal with LeVar Burton.”
As a medical editor and as someone who is in her sixties, I am very much in favor of not using #ageist #language when talking about #older #adults.
As the Institute for Public Health reports,
"Eliminating #bias in language about older adults is important because there is evidence suggesting that biased language evokes #negative #stereotypes about older people. These negative stereotypes have the power to impact #policy, group #attitudes, and the #health of older adults."
That article supplies terminology guidance from the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the Associated Press, and the Gerontological Society of America.
And the Reframing Aging Initiative within the Gerontological Society of America is working to change how all of us speak and think about older adults. The initiative has an informative website with some helpful resources for everyone, from the general public to specialists in various professions.
The words we use matter.
#ageism #bias #stereotypes #predjudice #DailyLife #science #health #medicine #editing #publishing #inclusion #respect
I love style sheets. They're wonderful for ensuring consistency when you're editing a big manuscript, and then again when a professional proofreader is working on page proofs of the typeset manuscript.
But the majority of the manuscripts I edit these days are written by authors who will submit them to medical journals in hopes that the journal will publish them. For these manuscripts, I actually don't create style sheets. That’s because the manuscripts I edit wind up being submitted to any one of 65-plus different journals, and I don’t want to have that many style sheets to keep updated.๐ I use this method instead:
All the medical journals whose authors I edit for follow the guidance of the AMA Manual of Style. When I’m editing, I keep the online version of the manual open in my browser so that I can look up all sorts of style points.
In another window of my browser, I keep open the page of the target journal’s website that lists for authors what particular style points and content points they want authors to follow. Journals are picky about how well authors do or do not adhere to those points, so I want to be able to alert my authors that they need to add something or other to make the journal happy. On rare occasions, I’ve come across journals’ style guides!
Also, I make sure to download a PDF of recent article published in the particular journal that the authors are wanting to submit their manuscript to. I make sure the article is on a topic similar to the one of the manuscript on my screen. For each manuscript, I skim the downloaded PDF to see how the journal handles the following things and more, because although the journals generally follow AMA style, sometimes they make interpret it slightly differently:
If you're a medical editor as I am, I'd enjoy hearing how you maintain style consistency in journal articles.
#editor #MedicalEditor #editing #style #StyleSheets #journals #science #publishing
If you edit manuscripts for academic books and journal articles, you’ll likely run into fake reference lists. That’s because in the academic publish-or-perish setting, authors are desperate to write their articles quickly, and they may use large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, to help them. And what is the one thing LLMs are really bad at? Reference lists. But there’s a tool that can help you detect them.
I use Edifix, subscription-based reference-checking software that users access online. Said Edifix on its blog recently:
“2023 has seen the explosion into the public consciousness of ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs), and these AI [artificial intelligence] applications have been rapidly and widely adopted in educational and research writing settings. Much has already been written about the potential benefits and pitfalls of using LLMs in scholarly publishing, including 14 posts on the Scholarly Kitchen blog alone (listed chronologically under ‘Further Reading’ below).
“The rapid embrace of LLMs has brought with it another flavor of potential reference manipulation: fake references. …
“ChatGPT does not have a true understanding of the questions it is asked or the tasks it is set. Among the ‘nonsensical answers’ that ChatGPT can give, one type especially pertinent to research publishing is its inability to generate relevant and accurate citations.
“This failure was highlighted by Curtis Kendrick on the Scholarly Kitchen [blog] just two months after the public launch of ChatGPT. When he asked ChatGPT to provide a reference list for a piece it had written on racism and whiteness in academic libraries, the list of 29 references it provided revealed a number of eye-opening problems.
“First, half of the citations were from just two journals, and typically these references were incomplete, generally lacking volume and/or issue numbers. Partly this reflects the limitations of the dataset used to train the model, which, for example, had access only to open access articles. Much more worrying was that ChatGPT didn’t always admit to not knowing the answer, sometimes appearing to lie instead. Of the 29 references it came up with, only one was accurate; some contained elements of genuine references but with parts transposed, and others were completely fake.”
Now, how the heck are editors to straighten out this mess alone? Fortunately, they’re not.
First, in its blog post, Edifix gives us 3 clues to possible reference fakery:
Second, Edifix parses all entries in each of your reference lists and gives you automated comments when something isn’t right, like this comment:
Crossref does not recognize the DOI [digital object identifier; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier ] “10.1016/j.jaridenv.2019.0”, and reports it is not registered at any other registration agency. Please check the accuracy of the DOI.
Then you’ll have to query the author about those particular references and also likely alert the managing editor or other appropriate person affiliated with the publisher or journal. Meanwhile, read the blog posts from the Scholarly Kitchen that are listed and linked at the end of Edifix’s blog post. You’ll find plenty of good stuff on AI.
#editor #academic #editing #Edifix #ArtificialIntelligence #ChatGPT #FakeReferences #ReferenceLists #PublishOrPerish
Now, this is gonna have me smiling all day!
I was interviewed by Keith Goddard, editor-in-chief of the Editors Toronto blog BoldFace, for the blog's series of posts in the "Editor for Life" category. The post is now up for folks to read. Thank you, Keith!
Oh, and it is cooler than cool that another Katherine (one of those whose middle vowel in their first name is an e, whereas my middle vowel is an a) copyedited the blog post. Thank you, Katherine Morton!
#editor #career #SelfEmployed #freelancer
Science researcher–authors, you need to know this information about text recycling, which is sometimes called self-plagiarism. The term text recycling means reusing some of the text from your previously published papers in new papers you intend to submit for publication.
Says an open access article in the journal Science Editor:
"Deciding whether any instance of text recycling is ethical, legal, and appropriate—and possibly even desirable—depends on factors such as the amount and nature of the recycled material as well as copyright laws and any limitations on reuse that are part of an author–publisher agreement. Thus, there is a need for clear and consistent guidelines on text recycling. ...
"The Text Recycling Research Project (TRRP) defines text recycling as the reuse of textual material (prose, visuals, or equations) in a new document where (1) the material in the new document is identical to that of the source (or substantively equivalent in both form and content), (2) the material is not presented in the new document as a quotation (via quotation marks or block indentation), and (3) at least one author of the new document is also an author of the prior document."
The project has now developed the document "TRRP Best Practices for Researchers," which will help you understand how to reuse and how not to reuse your own work. Please note that, as the document says, "[t]hese recommendations apply only to reusing [your] own work, not using material written by others. Authors should not engage in plagiarism. For advice on avoiding plagiarism, consult" guides available in your science discipline.
_____________________Editor colleagues, please also see "Understanding Text Recycling: A Guide for Editors." Information about members of the advisory board for the TRRP can be found here.
#ResearchPaper #science #authors #writing #TextRecycling #plagiarism #editing #editor #EditorMom
My family and I are dealing with change, and two of the the things it will do for me are (1) decrease stress levels and (2) eventually allow me to get back to teaching editing courses and attending (virtual) editing conferences. I've missed teaching and intense learning so much!
My 86-year-old mother-in-law, who has dementia, has now been declared eligible for Medicaid* coverage, so she can get the constant support she needs in a long-term memory-care facility. This will be helpful for her, and it will provide reassurance and stress reduction for my family. I have been her daytime caregiver in our home for several years now, and things are at the point that we no longer feel that we can keep up with her care needs.
I'm posting this to let those of you new to freelancing know that your career in self-employment will go through stages over the years, and you can find ways to make it work.
Here are the stages that I edited through:
And here I am, still editing. You too can do the tough things.
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*Medicaid provides health-care coverage to Americans who qualify, including those with low incomes like my mother-in-law.
** https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/what-is-stetwalk
#editing #editor #freelancing #freelancer #selfemployment #caregiving #balance #dementia #Alzheimer #Medicaid #stamina #EditorMom
As noted in the white paper "Racial Profiling Among Scientists of Chinese Descent and Consequences for the U.S. Scientific Community," about research conducted by Jenny J. Lee, Xiaojie Li, and the staff of the Committee of 100:
"The problem of racial profiling in the scientific community will not be eradicated with the elimination of particular federal policies or the clarification of procedures alone. More work is needed to combat the current wave of anti-Asian hate in the U.S. Universities should consider similar studies to examine the campus racial climate. As exemplified by some scientists’ comments [in our study], anti-China sentiments within universities exist. Institutional studies might ask: How have the China Initiative, other anti-China policies, and anti-China rhetoric further fueled anti-Asian hate in academia and our university? How does anti-Asian racism negatively impact scientific discovery? How can decentralized institutional units, such as export control, internationalization, and faculty/student support, better align?
"Greater advocacy and support for Asian scientists in the U.S. are especially needed in order for them to continue pursuing scientific inquiry across borders without fear of prejudice, profiling, or persecution. While intellectual security must remain a priority, so too must civil liberties be maintained. With that in mind, an enduring question for academic leaders, policymakers, and researchers remains: How can we maintain the spirit of international scientific collaboration while protecting intellectual property? While we continue to seek answers and propose better solutions, our attempts should carefully consider how we can uphold, rather than sacrifice, America’s academic freedom and global leadership in science."
Zhuo Chen, an author I have edited for in the past and someone I respect greatly, wrote a commentary on the white paper: "Crouching Trouble, Hidden Discrimination—the Predicament of Chinese Scientists in the United States." I agree strongly with what he says:
"It is welcoming news that the Committee of 100 and Professor Lee have taken on this task to assess the impact of the discriminatory actions towards scientists of Chinese descent in the US. As Ambassador Gary Lock forcefully put in his remarks, 'The method the U.S. Justice Department has adapted through efforts such as the "China Initiative" results in unacceptable damage to the lives of innocent Chinese Americans and, if left uncorrected, will likely harm vital American economic and national security.' [6] It is urgent to reverse the discriminatory practices and hate crimes—as the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act and the exposure and shutdown of the 'rogue' unit with the Department of Commerce have rightfully done. [7,8]"
And finally, as reported in the white paper by Lee et al, a non–Asian American professor of engineering said:
"Finding a way to come together with China is necessary for the U.S. to advance in the 21st Century and beyond. The cultures of the world are bound together at this time so the sooner we realize this truth the better it will be for all people. Also, as we move into space exploration and understanding, working together with experts from China will accelerate the advancements to come. To not work together with China will greatly suppress the pace and impact of space initiatives. It will be a substantial setback. The 21st Century is, for the first time, a potentially united world in a broad sense. That is why connecting to China is so critical for all humanity."
You can download and read the white paper here.
You can download and read Zhuo Chen's commentary here.
If you have connections in the US science community, please consider sharing this post with them. That way, you can perhaps help reduce discrimination against Chinese scientists.
#science #research #China #Chinese #discrimination #publishing #journals #textbooks #editing #editors #EditorMom
Fellow self-employed editors, I want you to know that you can find ways to survive difficult times.
I have been self-employed full time as an editor since 1995. I've always marketed my services by various means, and I have built up a good clientele over the years.
I thought that the COVID-19 pandemic wouldn't affect my workload; it didn't for the most part. But until just very recently, I had been very low on work for about 2 months, because so many of my physician-authors' studies—and thus the articles they would write about them—were put on hold because of COVID. I had been working extra hard on marketing to combat that, and working very, very hard not to let my chronic depression ramp up and overwhelm me.
But now things are getting back on track. Projects are coming in. Whew!
I am fortunate to have a mate whose income mostly covered our living expenses, though there have been tight times and he has had to work a lot of overtime to help bridge the financial gap. I realize, though, that some of you do not have a partner bringing in income, and that can be very difficult.
I am here to tell you that keeping up with my workday routines, including keeping in contact with you in Facebook groups, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, and via email, helped keep me from going off the rails. The editorial community is a generous one, and I thank you for that. When your workload disappears for a while sometimes, do not drop out of touch with the community. Human support is vital.
Do not stop marketing, and that includes keeping in touch with the editorial community and with clients and related contacts.
Do not stop reading editing-related news.
If you can afford to do so, keep taking short courses and attending webinars to learn new things.
Do things that you normally enjoy doing. Do not lie down on the couch and stare at the TV for hours each day. If you were already taking antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds, do not stop taking those, because your life may depend on them.
Do not keep your fears about temporary work loss private from your non-editor friends. Friends are people who support each other. Ask for the time you need from your friends, even if, like I am, you are a major introvert.
Keep doing these things, and the work will come back. It will. You can do this.
#editor #editing #freelance #freelancer #career #workload #marketing #clientele# authors #pandemic #COVID19 #finances #learning #professionaldevelopment #stress #depression #fear #support #friends #EditorMom
Both readers of science journals and researchers seeking to publish articles in science journals need to be aware of the damage that predatory journals can do to scientific truth and science careers. But what are predatory journals? And why are they dangerous?
An article from Nature says:
Predatory journals are a global threat. They accept articles for publication—along with authors' fees—without performing promised quality checks for issues such as plagiarism or ethical approval. Naive readers are not the only victims. Many researchers have been duped into submitting to predatory journals, in which their work can be overlooked. One study that focused on 46,000 researchers based in Italy found that about 5% of them published in such outlets. A separate analysis suggests predatory publishers collect millions of dollars in publication fees that are ultimately paid out by funders such as the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
If you're not familiar with the concept of predatory journals, here are some articles that can enlighten you:
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6174996/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7237319/
• https://instr.iastate.libguides.com/predatory
 |
| Illustration by David Parkins of predatory journals. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03759-y |
This post on the Scholarly Kitchen blog (produced by the Society for Scholarly Publishing) reviews the strengths, features, and weaknesses of the journals blacklist run since 2017 by Cabells, which is accessible only by researchers and institutions who can pay a large fee. Cabells set up its list after academic librarian Jeffrey Beall shut down his free list. Also see this article about Beall's list.
An annual meeting report in Science Editor, the journal of the Council of Science Editors, discusses the impact of predatory journals and how to identify them so that you can avoid them.
And finally, this website lists and links to suspected predatory journals. The site was set up by a small group of scholars and information professionals who wanted to anonymously resurrect Beall's list.
#science #journals #predatory #deception #research #peerreview #scholars #editorial #editing #quality #EditorMom
We editors should all listen to our authors when they tell us how their names should appear on what we edit.
I think that in the USA it's purely privilege—both white privilege and male privilege—that causes the gatekeepers in English-language publishing systems to tell any authors with two surnames that they're doing it wrong. Grrrrrrrrr!
"Now I needed to ask [the committee member] the question that had been nagging me since I began to work on the manuscript: 'How should I publish my name?' 'However you want,' she replied. 'It is time for people to understand that Latin American scientists have two last names.' ...
" 'Two last names are too much for 'them' to handle, and they will butcher them anyway,' my Latin American friends say when explaining why they hyphenate or use a single last name for their publications. ... This is not an isolated issue for Latino and Hispanic scientists; it also affects members of other groups whose names do not conform to a 'first-name last-name' norm. And insisting on being able to present our names as we choose is not 'picky' or 'capricious.' It is a matter of respect for our identities as scientists and as citizens of the world. ...
My mate and I encountered this "you're doing it wrong" attitude in the 1990s. When he and I married in 1993, we decided to both hyphenate our surnames. Before marriage, my surname was O'Moore, and his was Klopf. So we both took the surname O'Moore-Klopf. Now, we're privileged white people, yet he still caught grief for the first few years that he had the new surname, because, you know, "men don't hyphenate"! That annoyed both of us so much. All these years later, we have two grown sons who inherited the surname O'Moore-Klopf.
"When in doubt, ask scientists how they would like to be addressed. When you cite their work, check their previous publications, their ORCID account, and their web pages. Next time you add a paper to your reference manager, double-check the author line to ensure the system has imported it correctly. Above all, make sure researchers from all backgrounds have the opportunity to claim their identities and feel validated in their workplaces."
Back in 2014, I wrote a blog post because I "wanted newbies to know that I have hard days too—and that I love freelancing despite those days." Well, it's 2021 and I'm still self-employed, and there has been a pandemic, so it's time for an update.
My children are now 19, 26, and 38. And for the last couple of years, I have been the daytime caregiver for my elderly mother-in-law, who lives in my intergenerational household. She has dementia and is now 86 years old; she also has type 2 diabetes, as I do. While all the other adults are out of the house at their day jobs, I provide her with nutritious meals and monitor her blood sugar levels and adjust as needed the amount of insulin that I inject her with.
The 19- and 26-year-olds still live here, along with the 26-year-old's mate and their now 6-year-old daughter (our brilliant and fun youngest grandchild). (The 38-year-old, who is the mother of our two older wonderful grandchildren, comes by on Friday nights to hang out with us.) The 6-year-old is attending kindergarten remotely here at home, because we're wary of exposure to COVID-19 from outsiders. (All 6 adult family members who live in our home now have had at least one dose of a COVID vaccine; all second doses will have been had by the end of this month.)
My office is still in my kitchen, even though my handy guys (my husband and our two adult sons) have built me a lovely 12 foot × 12 foot office in our backyard. If they ever quit having to work overtime on Saturdays (they're all cabinetmakers) and it quits raining here on Sundays, we'll move me out there, and I'll be delighted. But I'll still be my mother-in-law's caretaker.
Fortunately, the county agency for the aging has grants that fund the services of a health-care aide who works here to take care of my mother-in-law on 4 days of each week, for 5 hours each day. This does give me some mental space for working, but not as much as I want, of course.
The woman who would become my mother-in-law used to commute by train to her job in Manhattan, just as I did: she was a designer of children's clothing for a clothing manufacturer; I was a full-time employee for a publisher. We became such good friends that she introduced me to her only son in 1992. He and I fell in love very quickly, and we married in 1993. It is that great gift of hers that helps me continue to provide care for her on the days when things get tough.
And yes, I still do find joy in being self-employed.
My authors who write reports on their research for publication in medical journals tend to use a lot of jargon. I try to help them make their writing easier to understand for the very reason discussed in this New York Times article:
"[A] team of researchers has analyzed jargon in a set of over 21,000 scientific manuscripts. They found that papers containing higher proportions of jargon in their titles and abstracts were cited less frequently by other researchers. Science communication—with the public but also among scientists—suffers when a research paper is packed with too much specialized terminology, the team concluded."
I'm not at all suggesting that my authors completely eliminate jargon in such reports. But I ask them to use plainer language wherever possible, and even to define some of the terms, because people other than their departmental supervisor, who insisted that true professionals write impenetrable prose, are going to read their articles. And those people need to be able to understand the articles so that nonscientists in government and in the general public don't make unscientific decisions concerning public health and the environment.
Take a look at this blog post by my colleague Mike Pope on "good" and "bad" jargon.
And such behavior is exactly how structural racism is perpetuated.
Thank goodness that after public outcry, JAMA's editor-in-chief asked for and accepted Livingston's resignation.
And the American Medical Association itself issued a statement:
"To be clear, structural racism exists in the U.S. and in medicine, genuinely affecting the health of all people, especially people of color and others historically marginalized in society. This is not opinion or conjecture, it is proven in numerous studies, through the science and in the evidence. As physicians, and as leaders in medicine, we have a responsibility to not only acknowledge and understand the impact of structural racism on the lives of our patients, but to speak out against racial injustices wherever they exist in health care and society. ...
"Importantly, the AMA is investigating the circumstances that led up to the podcast and tweet and will make the changes necessary to address them. The AMA and JAMA have taken immediate actions in this past week, and more will follow. ..."
________________________
Sources:
It's always so satisfying to establish a good working relationship with my authors. After working through 2 revisions of a manuscript for a research report on a procedure for repairing spinal cord problems, I told the corresponding author that I like to have photos of my authors so that I can picture them helping patients in doing the procedures and techniques that they research.
This made my author happy. He said, "I am very glad to do it like this."
So this an operating-room photo of 4 of the 15 authors of the manuscript. Left to right, they are Dr. Jing-Chuan Sun, Dr. Chen Yan (the corresponding author), Dr. Hao-Yuan Tan, and Dr. Huai-Cheng Jia, all from China. The patients on whom they and their coauthors operated and whose cases they studied to determine best practices for a particular surgical technique came through any of 7 different hospitals: Changzheng Hospital, Changhai Hospital, Shanghai First People’s Hospital, Linzhou Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Fifth Hospital of Southern Medical University, Shenzhen Hospital of Beijing University, and General Hospital of Nanjing Military Command.
I'm so glad to know that these surgeons—and all of my other surgeon-authors—are out there working to make life better for so many patients. And it is an honor to be entrusted with editing for them so that they can share their research findings with English speakers around the world.
I don't understand why self-employed editorial pros don't find social media useful for getting work. And I'm an introvert.
I’ve long used LinkedIn, along with Twitter and Facebook, not to ask people for work or referrals but to post links to articles about editing, medical editing, and self-employment to make clear that I have a wide and deep knowledge of editing and to sound so interesting (in my commentary on the linked articles) that people think of me whenever they need a medical editor. This is not sales or bragging; it’s sharing knowledge and resources. And it works well for me. I get inquiries from potential clients and referrals from colleagues because of it.
It's not that you do sales pitches on social media. You just must be consistently present, in the particular venues that feel comfortable to you, and you share ideas and information about the things you know about in your profession. You don't brag, and you don't say, "I'm sharing this because I want you to see how smart and skilled I am." You just share helpful stuff and answer questions about it when asked. You'll be remembered as that helpful person who has #editing or proofreading or indexing experience in, for example, astronomy or animal health or human rights or public education.
Remember, this technique doesn't work overnight. It's part of playing the long game of marketing.
