Optimizing the Output of a Freelance Editing Model : Value Added by an In - house Reviewing Team

Background: In recent years, many journal editorial departments have begun to employ freelance editors rather than an exclusively in-house team. Although a freelance editing model offers greater editor availability and subject-matter expertise, it necessitates better quality control. We hypothesize that although a freelance model is best equipped to offer subject-matter expertise, a uniformly trained, centralized team of reviewers can help to standardize editorial quality and ensure consistency in style. To test our hypothesis, we assessed the value that an in-house reviewing team can add to a freelance editing model. Methods: The quality of 50 academic research papers in medicine and life sciences was assessed by a panel of external editors in a blinded manner. Each paper had been edited by a freelancer and later reviewed by an in-house editor. All inhouse editors were uniformly trained in the mechanics of copyediting. The edited and reviewed versions of each paper were independently rated on clarity, language, and presentation with a four-point scale (poor = 1, excellent = 4). The results were compared using the Mann-Whitney U test (significance at P < 0.05). Results: The mean [SD] quality score of the reviewed versions was significantly higher than that of the edited versions (P < 0.01). The improvement in score was most significant with regard to presentation (P < 0.01), followed by language (P = 0.01). With respect to clarity, although the reviewed versions scored higher than the edited versions, the difference was not significant (P = 0.06). Conclusions: The results support our hypothesis that a freelance model can reliably offer subject-matter expertise, whereas a well-trained in-house reviewing workforce can help to implement control over language quality and presentation-related aspects of academic copyediting. Future studies could explore technology-based or training-based methods to enhance the output of this freelancer-reviewer model.