Proofreading Your Research Paper: Five Ways to Be More Efficient
What’s a simple way of polishing your precious research paper and building your professional image in front of other researchers in your field? Proofreading! No matter how good a writer you are, nor what stage of publication your paper has reached, you can’t skip or neglect proofreading your work.
So, what is proofreading?
Proofreading is the process of checking any text for errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and formatting. When you’re proofreading a research paper, it also involves checking citations and references for consistency, as well as tables and figures for concordance with the main text.
How can I proofread more efficiently?
If you want to proofread your own research paper in the best and fastest way possible, we’ve got some simple tips you can follow.
1. Set aside enough time for proofreading
Are you trying to proofread an 8000-word paper in one hour? Don’t! If you rush through the text, you’re more likely to overlook errors, like using “ilium” when you meant “ileum”.
2. Use technology intelligently
There are plenty of online resources to help you proofread, ranging right from MS Word’s inbuilt spellchecker to sophisticated AI-powered tools like Paperpal. When you’re choosing any such resource, you must make sure that it’s customized to academic and scientific writing. Because you don’t want it to change “shotty lymph nodes” to “shoddy lymph nodes” or “malacia” to “malaria”! Always review the output or suggestions made by any tool, before accepting any change in your manuscript.
3. Read aloud or even backwards
Reading aloud or reading the text backwards forces you to slow down and pay attention to every single word. This is particularly valuable for technical terms such as gene and protein names.
4. Take frequent breaks during proofreading
It’s easy to get fatigued proofreading a lengthy manuscript, making you more likely to skip sentences and overlook errors. Take frequent breaks during the process, even overnight ones. Also, try doing each section of the paper separately. You can start with the Results, then the Introduction, then the Discussion, and finally the Methods. In this way, you’re not getting caught up in the flow of the paper while proofreading.
5. Get professional proofreading assistance
An expert proofreading service can be invaluable if you’re a busy researcher, juggling a number of professional and personal tasks. Choose a service that has expertise and experience in your particular field, so that you are assured that your proofreader understands field-specific conventions in capitalization, hyphenation, etc. For example, you want the proofreader to realize you wrote “enuresis” when you actually meant “anuresis” and vice versa, and when to use “humeral” versus “humoral.”
Even if your manuscript has been accepted for publication, you can’t afford to compromise or avoid proofreading it: your target journal article will probably send the final proofs (i.e., typeset version of the article) for you for a proofread. You surely don’t want to be known in the field as the one who couldn’t spell “Escherichia coli” or mixed up “perineal” and “peroneal”, do you? Follow the above tips, and avoid those minor but embarrassing errors in your research paper.
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