New Editage report shows that pre-submission language editing can improve acceptance rates of manuscripts written by non-native English-speaking researchers

(Apr 12, 2019; Philadelphia, U.S.) A significant proportion of global research output is produced by English-as-a-second-language (ESL) researchers. These researchers often feel they are at considerable disadvantage because of their low English proficiency level and experience considerable stress when preparing their manuscripts for submission to international journals. Hence, many seek professional pre-submission language editing support.

To analyze if editing indeed offers tangible benefits to ESL authors, Editage—a leading global scholarly communications company—compared the acceptance rate of manuscripts undergoing language editing with the overall acceptance rate of manuscripts submitted to a global publisher. The results show that editing does improve the chances of manuscript acceptance, by 24%, highlighting the importance of good readability in determining the fate of research manuscripts.

Abhishek Goel, co-founder and CEO at Editage, expressed his happiness about the findings of this report: “Through our years of experience working with non-native English-speaking researchers, to help them get their work published in international English-language journals, we understand very deeply how stressful they find it to write their research manuscripts in English. We’ve always received feedback from our customers on how our editing services help alleviate their stress and make their publication journey a bit easier. But we wanted to see whether such services could provide a more tangible benefit towards a researcher’s publication goals. We’re very happy to have found that our edited papers had substantially higher-than-average acceptance rates. With more and more publishers embracing pre-submission editing and encouraging researchers to get their papers edited before submission, this finding is very timely and relevant for researchers as well as the whole academic publishing industry.”

In October 2018, Editage released a global author survey report showcasing the views of almost 7000 researchers on the challenges they face at various stages of publishing. Editage is committed to helping researchers overcome such challenges at every stage and thus make good research accessible and discoverable to the world.

Download the entire report from here.

About Cactus Communications
Founded in 2002, Cactus Communications is a global scholarly and medical communications company with offices in Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, London, New Jersey, Mumbai, and Singapore. CACTUS operates through two main verticals: Editage, a leading consumer technology business that provides editorial, translation, and digital solutions, and Cactus Life Sciences, which provides rich strategic and tactical content solutions to stakeholders associated with global pharma and device-making. The team, comprising over 750 full-time employees and 2,500 freelancers, has served close to 200,000 researchers, doctors, and scientists across 173 countries and has transformed over 900,000 papers across 1,200 disciplines.