About
Who works on your manuscript
Not a pool of freelancers bidding on your file. Editors are recruited into subject areas, tested on real academic text, and assigned by field.
How an editor joins us
Subject first
We recruit for a discipline, not for “academic editing” in general. Applicants hold a postgraduate degree in the field they will edit in, or have several years of editorial experience within it — usually both.
A real test
Every applicant edits an unpublished sample from their own field, containing errors we planted and problems we did not: an ambiguous claim, an inconsistent term, a statistic reported two ways. We read what they changed and, just as carefully, what they left alone and what they queried.
Supervised first orders
New editors' first orders are reviewed in full by a senior editor before delivery, at our cost, until the work is consistently at standard.
Continuing review
A proportion of live orders is sampled and reviewed. Editors whose work drifts are retrained or stop receiving orders. Your feedback after delivery feeds directly into who is assigned to your next document.
What we test for
- Restraint. Knowing when a sentence is fine as it stands. Over-editing is the most common failure in this trade.
- Query discipline. Asking the author rather than guessing, and asking in a way that is quick to answer.
- Consistency. Holding a decision across 90,000 words, and recording it so somebody else can hold it too.
- Genre knowledge. Knowing what a methods section, a grant case for support or a monograph introduction is supposed to be doing.
- Terminological care. Recognising a term of art and leaving it alone.
Translators
Translators are held to the same recruitment standard and one additional rule: they translate into their native language only. A Bengali-to-English translation is produced by a native English speaker who reads Bengali at a professional level, and the reverse for English to Bengali. Every translation is then revised against the source by a second linguist before delivery.
Confidentiality obligations
Before their first order, every editor and translator signs a confidentiality agreement covering non-disclosure, a prohibition on retaining copies after an order closes, and a prohibition on submitting client text to third-party services, including public AI tools. Access is granted per order, not per person. The operational detail is on the confidentiality page.
Subject areas we cover
Clinical research, public health, epidemiology, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry
Molecular biology, ecology, genetics, agriculture, food science, veterinary
Civil, electrical, mechanical, materials, computer science, data science
Physics, chemistry, earth and environmental science, mathematics, statistics
Sociology, anthropology, economics, development studies, political science
Pedagogy, educational policy, cognitive, clinical and social psychology
History, literature, philosophy, linguistics, religious studies, art history
Public and private law, management, finance, marketing, accounting
South Asian studies, Bengali literature and regional history are covered by our Bengali-language editors.
Working for ProofreadLab
We are always reading applications from editors and translators with postgraduate training in their field. The test is paid, the rates are stated before you take it, and we tell you the outcome either way.
Send a short note about your discipline and editorial experience, with a CV, to editorial@proofreadlab.com with “Editor application” in the subject line.
Apply to edit with us