about me
I established BioMedical Science Writers in
Rochester, NY, in 2006 and relocated to my home state of Montana in
2007. I have more than 20 years
experience as a reviewing editor of manuscripts for numerous leading
scientific journals, and served 6
years as an associate editor of the Journal of Immunology. I have been
an academic research scientist for
over 30 years. I have profound understanding of the
“doing” of science
and of
scientific writing. I have authored or co-authored
more than 90 scientific articles and abstracts. I have served
on numerous grant review committees
for the NIH and other organizations, including a 6 year stint on grant
review committees for the National Arthritis Foundation. I have written
and been the
principal investigator or co-principal investigator on numerous awarded
research grants and contracts resulting in over $16,000,000 in
funding. Perhaps more important than the funding total is the fact that
I maintained continuous grant funding for 23 years. I have been a
member of the faculty of the University
of Rochester,
Rochester, NY and of the Benaroya Research Institute, Seattle,
Washington, and have been an affiliate faculty member of the University
of Washington, Seattle, WA.
My skills have been honed over many successful years conducting scientific research, as well as writing, publishing, and editing scientific papers and grant proposals, and reviewing manuscripts and grants. In this, I am uniquely qualified. I will perform English language editing of your manuscript—and will do it extremely well—but another important reason for you to choose to work with me is for the advantage that you gain from the mastery of scientific methodology, thinking, and writing skills that I bring to the task.
How I edit
Editing a scientific manuscript or grant proposal isn’t simply a matter of correcting grammar, syntax, spelling, and punctuation, although it is necessary to do those things. I take a philosophical approach to a manuscript. I want to preserve the author’s style—it is, after all, your paper, not mine—but at the same time, I want the text to read fluently, and I want the text to be comprehensible.
One of the advantages I have as an editor is that my many years of doing and reading science have given me the background to comprehend almost any paper in the biological sciences. My own work has spanned the gamut—microbiology, immunology, molecular biology, biochemistry, and cell biology. I started doing laboratory research as a graduate student in 1973. I retired from active science in 2007. My last primary publication came out in 2011. I have worked with bacterial pathogens, viruses, yeast, mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, and humans. The range of techniques with which I am familiar is similarly broad. I continue to read scientific papers, and I continue to familiarize myself with current techniques and scientific trends.
I have read many thousands of scientific papers during my career. I have been a primary reviewer for several hundred manuscripts submitted to journals for publication. I have been a primary reviewer for nearly a hundred grant proposals and have participated in the review of hundreds of grant proposals at study section. In the past year I have edited over a hundred manuscripts on behalf of my clients.
This doesn’t mean that I am an expert in the area of your research, but it does mean that I can read and understand your paper or grant proposal. Is it important for your editor to understand your manuscript? Perhaps it depends on what you want from your editor. Corrections to grammar, syntax, spelling, and punctuation don’t necessarily require actual comprehension. Intelligent revisions or re-writes of sentences or paragraphs do. Is it important that your editor be intimately familiar with the workings of study sections and the process of grant reviewing? I think that it is. I have numerous clients who will swear that it is.
I am very good at what I do. My clients reap the benefits of that expertise. That expertise has resulted in papers accepted for publication and grants funded. For some clients it has meant, literally, millions of dollars in grant funding.
