Description

So you’re comfortable editing dissertations or books published by scholarly presses. You extract coherence out of STEM jargon-gobbledygook and have a strong knowledge of the style guides that apply to your work. You may also be a competent stylistic, structural, or developmental editor of academic writing. This eight-week program will help you to level up your academic editing, enabling you to expand the disciplines and genres in which you work.

This course will provide you with evidence-based strategies to edit in three key academic genres: the journal article, the grant proposal, and the tenure and promotion dossier. We’ll cover strategies that can be applied in a range of disciplines, from STEM to the humanities, education, and social sciences. By the end of this course, you’ll have a set of materials designed to help you expand the scope of your academic editing business and market to a broader range of scholarly clients.

The course includes over three hours of video lectures, as well as required and optional readings, written or video analysis assignments, and discussion forum posts. Weeks two through seven will include assignments on which the instructor will provide individual feedback; in week eight, participants will create a two-page marketing plan integrating best practices for freelancing and creative entrepreneurship.

Required readings will be from the following texts:

• Stylish Academic Writing by Helen Sword (Harvard UP, 2012)
• Elements of Academic Style by Eric Hayot (Columbia University Press, 2014)

Participants should either purchase these titles or procure a library card from a university library, which should provide them with online access to an electronic copy of these two books, as well as other resources that we’ll be discussing.
Learning Objectives:

• Understand the conventions of journal articles, research grant applications, and tenure and promotion dossiers in a range of disciplines
• Learn evidence-based editing strategies targeted to these three scholarly genres
• Practice working with some of the most challenging documents that academics need to write
• Gain knowledge in effective client coaching strategies
• Develop marketing strategies to expand your freelance academic editing business

Topics covered include coaching your academic client; journal articles with IMRAD and non-IMRAD structures; research grant application narratives, visuals, and budgets; tenure and promotion dossiers, with special attention to statements of teaching philosophy; and ways to market your freelance academic editing business.

Letitia Henville, PhD, is an award-winning instructor and freelance academic editor at shortishard.ca. She writes the academic writing advice column Ask Dr. Editor, published monthly at universityaffairs.ca.