Salient Papers Proofreading offers professional PhD thesis editing and proofreading services for PhD students across all academic areas. Learn more about how to submit your PhD thesis or doctoral dissertation to our PhD thesis editing and proofreading services.
The PhD thesis editing and proofreading team consists of just such highly qualified and well-educated (all PhD holders) editors and proofreaders, who are native speakers of English with academic and scientific experience in many different disciplines and subject areas. They have written their own dissertations and theses to earn their PhDs, have taught and examined at the university level and have published their own scholarly writing. Proofreaders who specialise in proofreading and editing doctoral theses are available through us, and their expertise in the writing of advanced students working on a wide variety of topics at many different universities can be incredibly useful as you work to prepare your thesis for examination. Our PhD thesis editing and proofreading services will give you more confidence in the work that you submit.
Years of planning, research, discussion, writing and editing (not to mention tuition) are invested in the PhD thesis that is usually required to earn a doctoral degree at universities, yet a PhD student can risk failure after all that hard work if the university or department guidelines have not been followed or the thesis contains too many grammar, spelling and punctuation errors. Our professional academic and scientific editors and proofreaders can help you to eliminate this risk by carefully checking the accuracy and consistency of your writing and formatting, correcting errors where necessary and suggesting possible improvements.
Successfully completing a PhD degree is not only an enormous intellectual accomplishment but also an essential step towards many academic and scientific careers. Years of research are often required to earn the degree, and in some cases years of coursework as well, so the financial investment can be significant indeed. A great deal of time and effort is usually dedicated to planning, designing, drafting, discussing, revising, proofreading, editing and polishing a lengthy thesis that will make a unique contribution to knowledge. For many PhD candidates, this thesis will be their first long piece of formal academic or scientific writing and thus their first opportunity to construct a sustained and persuasive argument over several chapters of text.
All of this would be enough of a challenge in itself, but there are also matters of language, editorial style and formatting to consider while writing a thesis in the English language. The grammar, punctuation and spelling in a PhD thesis must be correct in order to discuss and communicate complex material in a clear and sophisticated manner. Any guidelines, instructions or templates provided by a student’s university, department or supervisory committee must be carefully applied to the structure and content of the thesis. Often these instructions include advice on editorial styles or referencing techniques, which must be followed with precision and consistency throughout the thesis, and if no such guidance is supplied, effective presentation methods must be developed for the thesis and used consistently. Not all doctoral candidates will possess the aptitude or the desire to proofread and edit such details, but neglecting the requirements and introducing too many errors, no matter how small and insignificant they may seem, can result in failure when a thesis is examined, even if the research is well designed and carefully conducted and the results and analysis groundbreaking.
Some helpful guidance can be found in PhD Success: How To Write a Doctoral Thesis, a free ebook available here. However, the services of a professional proofreader who specialises in academic or scientific writing should not be underestimated. Such a proofreader can check and correct your grammar, punctuation and spelling; he or she can ensure that your formatting and presentation meet the guidelines that you have been given or, if there are no guidelines, help you to establish effective and consistent patterns throughout your thesis; and he or she can check abbreviations, numbers, quotations, references, tables, figures and a wide variety of data to make sure that minor errors do not compromise the accuracy and quality of excellent scholarly work.
The input of a professional proofreader cannot, of course, be considered a substitute for the feedback of your supervisor and other members of your thesis committee, but he or she can certainly help you to polish your thesis before it is examined. On the other hand, if you discover during your thesis examination that your writing is in need of editing before your degree can be granted (as is sometimes the case, particularly with candidates who are not native speakers of English), our proofreaders can assist you in perfecting your work, and you may want to consider engaging the services of a professional proofreader before final submission of the thesis even if no such conditions have been established. Your thesis is, after all, not just the culmination of your doctoral work; it will also appear on your CV as the first major document in your prosperous new career, so getting it right is essential.
