Is this a fair rate for proof reading?

[Bonnynorton1]

My upgrade report for Mphil/PhD is ready. It's been gone through with a fine toothcomb by my supervisors and I, but I'd like someone with a fresh eye to double check section numbering, references, punctuation etc.

I asked a friend if he could do it. He has a translation agency, teaches academic writing and has a post graduate degree in the same field. I did say it wasn't a favour and I didn't want mates rates. So, he has quoted £800 for £15,000 words. That sounds a lot to me as there is no editing or re writing involved. Or am I being a cheap skate?

PedantHere why wouldn't it be "... my supervisors and me"? Genuine question.

Lobster you were in there first, “my supervisor and me” .....always put yourself last.

PedantHere and Yellowshadeofgreen - thank you; I realised that the pronoun should be "me" but I've always put myself last. I often change this when proofreading documents so wondered if there was a context where "I" appear first.

So what is the going rate for proof reading?

Don't you have EndNote for your references? Or Mendeley/RefWorks? I would have thought that at PhD level that would be considered essential

No, I don't use EndNote or anything else like that for my references. They are just tools, they are optional, by no means essential. It was suggested to us when we started as part of the academic training sessions but I don't know anybody who does use them. At the risk of sounding chippy, I am doing my PhD at one of the most prestigious universities in the country in a world leading department. My supervisors are happy with my writing. Thanks for the suggestions but I only came on here to ask about reasonable proof reading rates.

As I mentioned before, by reference checking I mean somebody to check that all my references are included in the bibliography. Just a matching task. Definitely not against the regulations.

Anyway, I did it myself in the end and saved £800.

Thanks for the helpful replies.

Pedant, I think Lobster understands that, but was asking whether it is better to say 'my supervisors and me' rather than 'me and my supervisors'. I would actually say lobster's way sounds better.

And OP, don't bother with professional proof reading for an upgrade.

No, I don't use EndNote or anything else like that for my references. They are just tools, they are optional, by no means essential. It was suggested to us when we started as part of the academic training sessions but I don't know anybody who does use them. At the risk of sounding chippy, I am doing my PhD at one of the most prestigious universities in the country in a world leading department. My supervisors are happy with my writing. Thanks for the suggestions but I only came on here to ask about reasonable proof reading rates.

OK, at the risk of sounding annoying, people who have done a PhD will advise you that reference management software cuts down on SO much work. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Gosh, I don't know many people who don't use Endnote etc. I'm one, and I wish I weren't.

But what do I know? I did my PhD at a prestigious institution; my supervisors were happy with my writing, and I still had my corrections returned to me because the level of proofreading was too poor. Ouch! Not a fun experience.

Did your friend misread the word count - £150k words, not 15k? £800 for 150k words and bibliography check sounds right to me. It's a time consuming process checking the bibliography and that all quotes and citations have the correct page references. DH does it sometimes.

Where did that £ sign come from?

Ok, you risked sounding chippy, and you sounded....chippy

If you had used EndNote, or a suchlike programme, with the CiteasYouWrite plug-in on Word, you would know that your references are all in your bibliography, because they would have been inserted, removed, and managed, no matter how many edits you made to your document.

If you had used Microsoft Word as intended, with its full functionality, using style sheets, in-built contents page and the navigation pane, you would know if your sectioning was correctly tabulated, because you would see any errors from the contents page and the navigation pane.

But, what do I know? I've only written at Masters level from a mid-tier university. That probably doesn't qualify me to give advice at all. No matter, you didn't listen to advice given at your academic training session at your "prestigious university", so I doubt you'd listen to anyone.

I would definitely recommend that anyone writing a long piece of work use Mendeley (or similar). It saved me literally hours of work. You still have to check for errors though. (I had a few but they were all my errors!)

Using Menderley and EndNote is sometimes easier said than done though. EndNote is very expensive and Menderley plug in doesn't work on Mac's latest version of Word.

I'm 6m into my PhD so watching this thread with interest.

EndNote is £89 for registered students. I would have thought that was a good investment at PhD level? It's so versatile and the Word plugin makes referencing a breeze.

I know one professor who doesn't use Endnote or similar. We all laugh at the time he wastes.
We have it on Uni linked computers for free and I paid the £89 or whatever it was for my laptop.

£800 sounds a huge amount. Is this really what people submitting PhDs have to fund?

Endnote's £106 actually (£89 + VAT). Again I'd be worried about the compatibility of the plugin but I assume if it didn't work you'd at least get your money back.

All I've heard is criticism of Endnote though, from multiple, completed PhD candidates. This thread is literally the only positive feedback I've ever heard! Maybe I should look at it again, do the free trial. Thanks ladies!

Many academics I know don't use Endnote, Mendeley, etc. because they write multiauthor papers and something always breaks when it comes back from a co-author. Having to check for breaks and then fixing them ultimately takes as long as a manual trawl, so they decided it's not saving them any time after all.

Mac vs. Windows vs. Chrome OS; Word 2016 vs. Word 2010 vs. LibreOffice vs. OpenOffice vs. Pages vs. Google Docs... It's impossible to keep every in-text citation hooked up properly to a particular type of reference software when co-authors use such different setups.

I can see how handy it would be for a thesis or a solo-authored paper, or maybe if you had a co-author who only gave comments rather than editing and writing the main text, but it doesn't work for everyone in practice.

We use Endnote only for the last version before submission, once all bAck from the co-authors. It's still better than manual! And if you need to resubmit to a different journal post submission it reformats!

I use Endnote with the manual tags and then put in the formatting at the end.
I know other people prefer Mendeley etc but everyone except this mad guy uses something

I have recently resorted to Google Scholar references to fill in the reference section of a Frankenstein paper that used an unusual (for me) reference format. It wasn't the worst. I had to fix fewer errors than the last time I used Endnote.

Worst does he type all the references out??

I imagine there's a good deal of copy and paste.

" £800 for £15,000 words."
that is outrageously expensive.
I do academic proofreading and charge £12 per 1000 words, with discounts for work of over 10,000 words, return customers, and PhD theses.
It was £10 per 1000 for quite a few years until very recently.

I don't know anybody who does use [referencing software]... I am doing my PhD at one of the most prestigious universities in the country in a world leading department.

OMG, OMG: is it Cambridge? History or geography, maybe?! Please say I won a prize for correct guess.

I nearly applied for a job there. This was about 1997. They wanted FIVE paper copies of my entire CV and application form. Meanwhile, my scrappy little non-RG uni only barely accepted offline applications. I was applying widely elsewhere; nobody else needed more than one hardcopy of everything.

So that's still my lasting main impression of Oxbridge: "we're too posh to learn to use a photocopier." I bet they collectively WOULD reject any of that modern new-fangled referencing software.

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Almost all my coauthors use MSWord. There are a few Latex geeks about, but I bend them to my evil MSW ways. One guy gushed How much journals love Latex b/c the journals themselves use Latex for typesetting. Naturally, having almost finished the paper entirely in Latex, we choose a journal that only takes MSWd for submissions (sigh). Google Docs is great for converting pdfs to MSWd, in case you didn't know that.

Google Docs is great for converting pdfs to MSWd, in case you didn't know that.
I'll tell you who doesn't know that, the Trump aide who was indicted for money laundering.