From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 19:18:36 +0800 EDANZ: Heard a presentation today in Singapore at the annual Fiesole Retreat (very strong program here!) about a company called Edanz --- www.edanzediting.com (see also: http://www.casalini.it/retreat/) Their pitch is that they work with scientific journal authors who need help getting published. Their focus is on China and Japan, where they believe there are large numbers of worthy scientists who have inordinate difficulty getting published. These are scholars and scientists and physicians and the like who need help at several levels: editing the English of their articles; identifying appropriate journals to which to submit; interpreting the sometimes curt and cavalier communications of journal editors surrounding peer review; and revising for resubmission. They have a fee schedule, rapid turnaround time (a week for a fairly heavy intervention), and a stable of native-English editors standing by to help you. The presentation was thought-provoking in several ways. The speaker argued that journals should emphasize an author-centric perspective and work hard to deliver a positive experience for authors. He backed this argument with surveys and anecdotes that make clear that peer review is often a hard barrier to climb for the non-English speaker just at the level of figuring out whether this letter from the editor really is an acceptance, a rejection or a revise-and-resubmit letter. And almost anyone could use their find-a-journal service, which they animate by taking a chunk of your text and pattern-matching against many journals to see whose content is most like what you are writing; then they look at impact factor, selectivity, and turnaround time and make recommendations. Several major publishers work with them happily. This was a description of a service that I had never imagined was needed; but on hearing, immediately recognized the appeal. I could imagine such a service run in an exploitative way (the "Famous Writers School" of yore comes to mind), but I can equally imagine one -- and this seems to be Edanz -- genuinely interested in making a living by offering a *real* service. (Another presentation at this very good retreat had figures suggesting that Chinese and Japanese scholars have much more likelihood of having grant money to support publication than US and European scholars do. Spending some of that money fixing up your prose and finding the right journal makes perfect sense.) Jim O'Donnell