ELSS Substantive Editing Challenge - an example for others?

Research Cooperative
13/11/10 06:27:11PM
@chief-admin
Some members of this group may be interested in a 'challenge' that was recently proposed by a scientific editing company based in Tsukuba, Japan.

See: http://researchcooperative.org/forum/topics/the-elss-substantive-editing

The basic idea seems to be to encourage editors of a certain kind (confident and very skilled editors) to accept a challenge in order to have a chance to work with the company, which is well-established, and aims to offer the highest possible level of scientific editing.

Other companies that offer other kinds of language service could also propose challenges and incentives to find the people they need.

The idea of making purpose-specific tests can also be useful for large research institutions seeking help from editors and translators.

The museum where I work is currently building up a system to support the editing and translation needs of the museum, and we have done something similar. After some initial enquiries, we sent different companies and individuals a small set of trial texts for various kinds of communication (exhibition display, formal letter, academic writing and so on).

In our case, the incentive for the editors and translators to accept the challenge was the possibility of developing a long-term relationship with a large research institution with frequent and diverse communication needs.