Why would anyone want to volunteer to help someone else?

The reasons vary, but perhaps the most likely reasons are:

1. A general altruistic wish to help others.

2. A wish to support our own research field, with a very specific volunteering offer (e.g. to read or edit papers on XYZ topic, for XYZ journal).

3. A wish to get experience in order to become professional - as an editor or translator for example.

4. A wish to build working relationships that may lead to opportunities for paid work later (e.g. by offering to edit the first paper for free, for a new potential customer).

There are many ways to explain an offer of volunteer help, and equally many ways to ask for help.

A major goal of our network is encourage volunteering as basic core activity of research communities, so that researchers can build practical, useful networks with other researchers and with language specialists.

For further discussion of volunteering in research communication, please join our group for Volunteers ! You don't have to be a volunteer to join.

Volunteers can use any of our forums and groups to offer help to others.

Researchers or publishers can use any of our forums and groups to ask for help.