As students or academicians we all are required to write research papers, they reflect our work and give us a platform to express our ideas and even test our thesis. They also can add to a great body of academic work which already exists. Research papers do not end at the writing bit, they require intense revision and editing.
While editing it is crucial that you focus on your content, your tone, structure, and your writing style. But all of these cannot be done at once, so what is the way you can go about editing your research paper? Here are a few tips you can keep in mind at the time of revision and editing:
- Edit in Phases – Determine the Why of Editing
Any written work, especially research papers, requires to be edited in more ways than one; there will be grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, addition and subtraction in the content, and many more. All these changes cannot be made in one go. The research paper you write should be its best version, one way to go about it would be to determine why you are editing, is it for grammar? Is it for content? Is it for coherence?
You can do this by making a checklist of all the aspects:
• Grammar and Spellings
• Content (of the introduction, conclusion and body)
• Evidence
• Structure
• Coherence and flow of the paper
• Clarity in arguments
• Academic tone of the paper
• Guidelines of Journal/Writing format you are following
• Proofreading
You can, in a similar manner, come up with your own checklist and work towards checking everything off.
This of course means that you will be revising and going through the paper more than once. While this may seem to be more time consuming than going through the paper once and editing everything out, it actually is not. This is an efficient way to ensure that you do not miss out any errors in your research because you have edited by going into each aspect separately.
- Take a Break – Separating the Writing and Editing Process
Take a break, take a few hours or even days away from your work. While writing the paper, we often cross reference and wish to go in one flow. We can therefore not write and edit at the same time. It will be useful then to relax and refresh your mind before you get down to editing.
Use this time to engage in other activities and not think too much about your research. It will ensure that you come back with a fresh mind to your work and can see the errors and communication of the paper with more clarity.
This being said, be mindful to not leave the editing till the last minute. Manage your time to ensure that even within the editing process you have ample time on your hand, as this will allow you to take small breaks in between the editing phases.
- Start with the Content
The content is the hero of the paper, you have to ensure it is accurate, well written and conveys what you wish to argue or say – your thesis. After writing, content checking can be your first step; you can ensure you have included everything you wanted to right from the introduction to the conclusion. Checking the paper for its content will help you answer questions like:
• Is the paper answering the research question?
• Is there flow?
• Do I wish to add anything else?
• Is there any unnecessary information that can be eliminated?
• Is the paper making sense? Is there a logical coherence?
• Is the evidence accurate?
• Are my arguments/points being communicated well?
Thinking along these questions will ensure a well rounded research paper. Once you are done with the content, a large chunk of your work will be completed leaving you with smaller edits.
- Tonality of the Work – Keeping it Academic
Writing a research paper is an academic pursuit, and therefore it is crucial that the tone of your work reflects it. The tonality of your work includes how you reach your reader, what are the words that you choose, sentence construction, and how you distinguish your work from another write-up. The tone is similar to the tones we use in verbal expression, we do not narrate an incident to our friends the same way we may present in class.
To break it down further, an academic tone in writing would mean backing your work with evidence, using terms that are commonly used to describe concepts or phenomena, using a more formal way of writing, and at the same time engaging the reader– one way to do this would be by talking briefly about its relevance in our lives. Keeping the academic tone also brings a certain style of writing to the work, distinguishing it from a newspaper article, blog post, social media post.
- Check for Clarity of Writing
While you are editing any paper, checking on your sentences while keeping them concise and clear is essential. It is easy to get lost in the flow while writing, oftentimes we end up over explaining or forming sentences which are long and contain extra information. Editing however, gives us the opportunity to make our writing clear and to the point.
Mindful sentence construction and use of words can ensure that what you wish to say is conveyed to the reader clearly. Give an argument, back it with evidence and literature. Keep it crisp.
You can also ask someone else to review the paper for you to ensure clarity of your work. This will contribute to and enhance the quality of the work that you are carrying out.
6. Structure of the Paper
Spend some time to ensure the flow and structure of the paper. This is to ensure that the paragraphs flow from one into the other, as well as the sections. Even when we are moving from one argument to the other, we can ensure that the flow of the paper remains.
One of the ways to ensure that the paper has a structure is to read it out loud. It might be a bit odd at first, but hearing what you have written is a great way to check the flow and even the logical coherence of the paper.
Typically, a research paper includes introduction, methods, results and a discussion/conclusion. When the paper is longer such as when you are writing your dissertation work, it will also include a literature review. Ensure that you include all the sections, as they all play a crucial role in contributing to the paper and making sense of what is written.
- Grammar and Spellings: Editing the Copy
Checking for the punctuations, the spelling mistakes and even at times the words that we may have missed out in the process of writing. One of the quickest ways to check the grammar is to put the paper through grammar checking tools such as Grammarly.
You must keep in mind however, that even then the copy will not be absolutely error free, you will be required to proofread it again. If you are unsure of the use of punctuation, it is always helpful to go back and check if you are using it correctly.
You can again use this phase of editing to check for tonal inconsistencies and fix them.
8. Writing Format/Citations and Guidelines
Every writing format such as APA, MLA, Chicago, AP has a different format when it comes to the citations, spacing, font and even the font size. It is crucial to stick to the prescribed format while writing editing. You can find the format guides online or ask your professors and colleagues for it.
For the purpose of citations, you can use citation generators, they have inbuilt formats and will ensure that the citations have been done correctly. These will allow you to search the books, papers, articles that you have used online and cite them for you, e.g. Citethisforme, citation machine, and many more.
If you are publishing your article in a journal it is imperative to follow the guidelines that have been specified by the journal. The guidelines can determine if your paper gets selected or not so it is important that you follow them.
9. Peer Review
While writing and editing we may tend to miss out on some things, it is natural. Having a peer review your work and going through it can bring more accuracy in the work. They can help you check everything from content to structure to grammar and even provide you with inputs that can help you better the paper you have written.
It is important that we do not get discouraged by their criticisms or inputs, rather see them as an addition to our work. Always believe that you know best what your work requires, this will allow you to filter out inputs which you wish to include from the ones that you can choose to ignore.
10. A Final Proofread and Plagiarism Check
Finally! Once you have gone through the entire process of revising, making changes, making additions, and checking your work, it is time for a final proofread. This is where everything is in place and you are simply checking if you have yet missed out on anything.
You can also get someone else to proofread for you, in order to do this you can provide them with a checklist of everything that they need to keep in mind while reading, this can include your research questions as well so they can make sense of what your work aims to achieve.
This is also the time you can run your paper through tools such as Turnitin or Scribbr to check for plagiarism. There is a certain percentage of plagiarism which is excused which primarily stems from our citations of different sources. Other than that your paper must be plagiarism free and original.
Editing and revising a research paper can be a long process but is essential to achieve the best version of your research and allow all the hard work that has gone into the research to shine bright. Always remember to create a checklist and edit in phases to ensure that you have covered each aspect of your work, take small breaks, check tonality, check for any structural gaps, any gaps in the flow of the paper. It is equally important to proofread the paper and ensure that it is plagiarism free!
