Editing Services in the Research Medical Library has 12 editors, many with more than 25 years of editing experience. The editors perform both substantive and copy editing of grant proposals, journal articles, and other reports of original research written by MD Anderson physicians and scientists for the funding agencies, professional literature, and other external (non-MD Anderson) audiences.

Our editing services are available free of charge to MD Anderson’s faculty, staff, and clinical and basic science trainees.

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Editing of Grant Proposals and Journal Articles

Grant Proposal Editing

In general, grant proposals are given highest priority. We typically complete editing of grant proposals within 5 workdays of the time they are received. We also offer preliminary reviews of Specific Aims sections of NIH proposals, and we generally complete such reviews within 3 workdays.

We recommend that you submit grants to Editing Services at least 2 weeks before the deadline in the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) or Office of Research Administration (ORA) to allow enough time for editing and any subsequent revisions.

Please note that we may receive proposals from many researchers at the same time. Therefore, it may be beneficial to schedule editing of grant proposals in advance. Prescheduling grant editing is not mandatory; however, if you wish to preschedule, please

• Contact us about the proposal at least 4 weeks before the deadline in the OSP or ORA and at least 2 weeks before you plan to send us the proposal
• Send us the proposal at least 2 weeks before the OSP or ORA deadline.

If grant proposals are submitted fewer than 2 weeks before the OSP/ORA deadline and/or are not scheduled in advance as outlined above, we will still edit them if at all possible. However, we may not be able to provide a full edit if the timeline is too short.

For multiproject grant proposals (e.g., NIH SPORE) and other proposals consisting of multiple narrative sections, please contact us at least 3 months before the agency deadline to discuss an editing schedule and the scope of our work.

Journal Article Editing

We edit manuscripts intended for publication in peer-reviewed journals on a first-come, first-served basis; only requests for grant proposal editing are given higher priority. Because we serve the MD Anderson community exclusively, manuscripts submitted for editing must meet each of the following guidelines:

• At least one author on the manuscript must be a full-time faculty member, trainee, or staff member of MD Anderson.
• At least part of the work described in the manuscript must have been performed at MD Anderson.

If you have questions about whether a manuscript qualifies for editing, please email Editing Services.

The turnaround time for an edited journal article reporting original research is typically 8 workdays. Longer turnaround times may be required for journal articles that do not report original research (e.g., narrative reviews, editorials) and journal articles of 50 or more double-spaced pages. To help authors avoid inadvertently including previously published text in their manuscripts, we run all journal articles through iThenticate unless the senior author requests that we omit this step.

On-Call Editing

We offer short-turnaround editing of documents that are 5 or fewer double-spaced pages, such as conference abstracts, posters, and brief editorials. These documents can usually be returned within 1 workday. To submit a short document for editing, email Editing Services.

Consultations

Meet with an editor to discuss your manuscript. Editors can provide guidance at any stage in the writing process: planning, outlining, early drafts, etc. They can also offer advice on issues such as authorship, plagiarism, conflict of interest, and choosing a journal.

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