Frequently Asked Questions

Manuscripts submitted to the standard service will be allocated to one of our editors, who will be solely responsible for editing your manuscript to your specifications and correcting erroneous word choice, sentence construction, punctuation, article usage, grammar and consistency throughout your manuscript. Attention will also be paid to the flow, structure and style of your manuscript.

In addition to the Standard service, for the Premium service, the editor will highlight certain scientific problem areas and make context-related suggestions.

We offer you a 10% loyalty discount on your next project if you have completed an editing project with us in the last 18 months. This includes figure editing, language editing and combined projects. All you have to do is submit a language editing project with the same email address as used previously, and the discount will automatically be applied.

Unique referral codes/referral bonuses are in the following format: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. These are distinct from your project/manuscript reference number: LE-XXXXX

To use these referral codes, please follow these steps:

1. Give your unique referral code to a friend/colleague who needs language editing services
2. The friend/colleague submits an editing project to the Spandidos Publications Language Editing Service, and provides this referral code
3. The friend/colleague completes payment for their editing project with us
4. The friend/colleague receives a one-off turnaround time upgrade from 15 days to 10 days, or from 10 days to 6 days on their next project
5. A 5% referral bonus will be applied to your next language editing project with us.

Referral codes are valid for the 6 months from the date that they are issued. A second referral code will not be issued to a customer until the first code has been redeemed. Referral bonuses may be used in conjunction with a loyalty discount.

The editors at Spandidos Publications Manuscript Editing service have degrees across a broad range of disciplines within the Biological Sciences. Our editors have degrees from top universities in the UK and other countries, with many holding PhDs. All our editors are fluent English speakers and meet the standards of our rigorous selection procedure.

The certificate issued by Spandidos English Language Editing service confirms that your paper was edited by one of our expert staff and is deemed suitable for journal submission. This is based on the assumption that the majority of changes that we proposed were incorporated into the manuscript. This certificate may be submitted to the journal to which you plan to publish with, and gives confidence to the journal editors that the English language in the paper has been proofread and verified.

An example of our certificate may be viewed here.

Manuscripts should be submitted as Microsoft Office Word documents (.docx or .doc).

To ensure your project is submitted successfully, please ensure that the document size is not overly large and the name of the file is in English characters.

You will receive your completed project by email when editing is complete. The email will contain the following attachments: (1) Edited Manuscript; (2) Edited figures (if applicable); (3) Editing Certificate; and (4) Editorial Letter.

Your editor will use the "track-changes" function in Microsoft Word to edit your manuscript. You will be able to view the changes made together with the original text, as well as see comments and suggestions that have been left by the Editor on the document. Therefore, you will be able to go through the changes in the tracking of the edits in Microsoft Word, and choose to either accept or reject any of the changes the Editor has made. This can be found using the "Review" tab in Word. Here you can choose to visualize the document in the following ways: (1) Original; (2) Original Showing Markup; (3) Final; and (4) Final Showing Markup. Changes will appear as a red-colored annotation (red crossed-out words where deletions have been made or red-colored words where they have been inserted). Comments and details of the changes will appear to the right side of your document. You can scroll through the changes using the "previous" and "next" functions in the review pane in Microsoft Word, as well as choose to "accept" or "reject" the comments.

Turnaround times quoted for all services are based on normal working days of Monday to Friday. Weekends and UK national holidays are not included in the turnaround time. Please see the upcoming UK national holidays at www.gov.uk/bank-holidays 

Please note that the turnaround time that you select is counted from the day in which we receive payment into our bank account, or the first business day after, if the payment is received on the weekend or a UK national holiday. 

You do not need to contact us for a quotation unless you have specific custom requests regarding the editing and formatting of your manuscript. Our prices are based upon the number of words or figures submitted to us, therefore the price is transparent. You will need to calculate your word count, as described on our website, and determine which service is most suitable to your requirements. Should you have any queries or problems determining your price, you may contact us using the various methods listed on our contact page.

The following file types are accepted for figure formatting:

• TIFF
• JPEG (saved at the highest quality)

• EPS files or full page (one image filling a whole standard-sized page)
• PSD files for vector figures (charts/graphs) only
• PDF files
• PPTX files
• DOCX or DOC files

We cannot accept images from the following sources:

• BMP, GIF, PCT, PNG, low quality JPEG files or RAW format.

The colouring of the images may be as follows:

• Black and white figures: grayscale mode
• Color or grayscale figures: RGB mode

We can only improve the resolution of the figures to a certain extent. Therefore it is important that, where possible, your figures are sent to us at a resolution of at least 300 dpi/inch. If your figure has too low or too high a resolution, we may not be able to edit it effectively.

Please also ensure that all figures have a maximum width of 20 cm. If your figure is too large, we may not be able to edit it effectively.

Please provide any specific instructions you have in the submission form under 'Further Information' or as a separate .docx file.

If possible, please provide all original, layered images, as well as a final version/diagram depicting your intended layout.

Tables should be submitted in a table format (with columns and rows) within the manuscript document. The text within the tables can be reviewed and edited along with the rest of the text of the manuscript.

Changes cannot be made to photograph images themselves, including the brightness, contrast, coloring or cropping. This is to ensure that at no stage, images have been misrepresented or manipulated by us.

Please ensure that as with other figures, photograph images are uploaded in the highest resolution possible.

When receiving back your edited manuscript, any comments, queries or suggestions will be annotated on the side of the document using the "Comments" feature on Microsoft Word. This may include suggestions related to commonly made changes throughout the text, problems with consistency, clarity or technical problems such as in the numbering of the references. If our edits are not clear or have altered the meaning of the text, you may contact us in order to explain and resolve any issues that may have arisen.

We are confident that the quality of the English will be of a high standard throughout. After completion, the grammar and language will have been significantly improved throughout the language-edited manuscript and therefore, it is highly unlikely that the reviewers should consider the language as unsatisfactory.

If there are any specific issues that the reviewers have with the language of the manuscript, please clearly state these issues and we can then review them for you. Please note that we are not responsible for any additional changes made to your manuscript after our Language Editing Service has been completed.

Please note that our policy is to offer a free re-edit of up to 10% of the original word count for Premium service only. If you need to revise the text in response to reviewer comments, we can offer re-editing of the revised text. If the revised text is 10% of your original word count or less, this is free of charge. However, if it is more than 10%, this will incur an additional fee.

We always aim to provide editing of the highest standard and we hope that you will be fully satisfied with our service. However, should any comments, queries or problems arise following receipt of your manuscript, please contact us using the details on how webpage and we will aim to get back to you as quickly as possible to resolve any problems.

Additionally, should you have any comments you wish to make – you may submit them to us to include in our Testimonials section of the website. We value your feedback and aim to continually work together with our customers to provide the best possible service.