CCEB's Clinical Research Services: Editorial Service
MARCH 30, 2009The CCEB serves as an interdisciplinary resource for clinical research throughout the School of Medicine and offers a range of services, primarily to faculty, residents, fellows, and research staff within the University of Pennsylvania Health System, but also to clinicians and scientists throughout the Delaware Valley with interests in such services. These services are identified and described as a regular feature of this newsletter.
The editorial office of the CCEB has recently expanded its service and is now available to faculty, staff, residents, and fellows throughout the School of Medicine. Formally, the mission of the CCEB editorial office is to rewrite or modify rough drafts of grant proposals and manuscripts to improve clarity and readability; read copy to detect errors in spelling, punctuation, and syntax; verify facts, dates, and statistics, using standard reference sources; rewrite or modify copy to conform to publication style and editorial policy; develop and write web page text for use by Penn and SOM faculty, staff, and outsiders; create CCEB educational brochures/catalogs to be used for recruitment and attracting future students to the University; writing, editing, formatting (or laying out), and distributing the CCEB Newsletter for external use to Penn SOM faculty seminar speakers, former MSCE and PhD students, affiliated faculty, and interested others.; writing rough drafts of articles intended for journal submission from Powerpoint presentations, notes, journal articles, and/or other resources provided by faculty; and creating Powerpoint slides or posters based on completed manuscripts and/or other source material.
Fees for these services are assessed at the rate of $38.03/hr. The length of time required to complete an assignment varies from project to project and depends on the depth and complexity of the work requested. However, the following estimates can be used as a guideline: manuscript from Powerpoint presentation (40-80 hrs.); Powerpoint slide presentation from manuscript/other sources (30-40 hrs.); writing/collating a grant proposal (30-40 hrs.); editing a grant proposal (10-20 hrs.); editing a book chapter (10-20 hrs.); editing a journal article (8-16 hrs.); and editing brief sections of text/promotion letters, etc. (up to 1 hr.).
For nearly five years, the CCEB has had a resident wordsmith offering a wide range of editorial services. Initially, the position was expected to focus primarily on grant editing as the top priority, followed by the editing of manuscripts by CCEB faculty and/or students for journal submissions, and, ultimately, resurrecting the CCEB Newsletter (which had been suspended in the mid-90s). Within a year, the newsletter was re-launched, with an external version prepared for the School of Medicine, alumni, affiliated scholars, and others, and internal version directed to the 550-member CCEB. Originally designed as an online publication, both versions of the newsletter have enjoyed widespread interest in printed form. The newsletter remains a steady but concomitant function of the editorial service. Grants and manuscripts remain the top priority of the service.
In relatively short order, the editorial position also evolved into credited work co-writing textbook chapters, serving as contributing author in journal articles, editing textbooks, editing special editions of journals, and creating tables, figures, and flyers as needed. These services are also now available to the rest of the SOM. In addition, the editorial office serves as a standing resource for staff who need assistance in using EndNote or Reference Manager. The service has been well received overall and, in particular, by several junior faculty as well as those for whom English is a non-native language.
To ask questions or to place an editorial request, please contact Edmund Weisberg directly (eweisber@mail.med.upenn.edu, 215-573-6867). The document(s) to be edited, along with any pertinent instructions (e.g., tailoring for a particular journal, or cutting to meet journal or funding agency guidelines), should be included in the initial e-mail. Upon receiving the request, the editor will forward the CCEB Editing Assistance Request Form with work duration and cost estimates for approval by the requester before work is begun.
