Job Responsibilities
This job entails assisting people with grant proposal
preparation, including but not limited to light copy editing,
general editing, revising, substantial re-writing, formatting,
adn professional document production/desktop publishing. You
must know how to make images/figures/graphs/tables for all types
of scientific data. You will assist faculty with the
preparation or writing of peer-reviewed manuscripts and perhaps
textbooks. You must have mastery of all Windows
software/applications, including Endnotes and similar, and be a
trouble shooter when faculty have their own software/application
problems. You must be able to solve (if you ever have any, and
you likely will not) PC issues on your own, minimizing any
downtime that you may incur. Email proficiency is demanded,
also. You will likely work with people who do not speak English
as a first language so you must be culturally competent and
sensitive to all who use your services.
That said, with those skills, your day may start with a request
(via email) to look over a grant proposal to the NIH and make it
totally compliant with NIH guidelines, check for syntax, clarity,
logic, and flow of text, and generate an Endnotes bibliographic
library using PubMed connections. This might take half the day.
While you are working on this, you will field a phone call from a
faculty member who cannot figure out how to take the "highlight"
off the text he is typing. Then, you will look to find 5 emails
for request for services ranging from making 10 figures,
converting them to usable images, and importing them into a
document; to creating a joint publication list for all faculty
and all trainees in a particular department; to making a flow
chart for someone who cannot manipulate powerpoint; to editing 3
papers to be sent to top journals tomorrow.
Also, you may have to spend an entire day reading and re-reading
text line by line and revising until your eyes seem to calcify
all because a foreigner refuses to take English classes to
improve his writing and speaking, forcing you to decipher his
science so he can publish a paper for his promotion and tenure
review. You may write 22 letters of support for a faculty member
who lacks the management skills to encourage his secretary to do
the work, or worse, whose secretary has know knowledge of how to
do the task. Every day will be different.
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Job Requirements
You must have a PhD in a basic science discipline, preferably one
that is multidisciplinary like pharmacology (must know
biochemistry, physiology, statistics, anatomy, chemistry,
calculus, etc to be effective in this job), and you must have a
professional, test-driven certification to be a professional
editor in the life sciences and a strong writing/literature
background. A English or literature degree won't cut it. you
cannot possibly understand the science your are editing without a
rigorous scientific background. You won't know what you don't
know, if you don't have the proper education, and you will
confuse people and make a mess of things. You won't catch
mistakes as readily. Having studied or traveled abroad is a plus
because you will then have the cultural sensitivities required
for some aspects of the job.
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Uppers
The job is immediately rewarding when you hear that a scientist received a large
grant or published a paper because of your input. You "pay your own salary" by
the indirect costs you help bring in when a grant is funded, although
administration perhaps doesn't take this view. When you ably assist someone and
take away the frustration of document production, and you see the relief in the
client's eyes, you can feel good. When you get a nice acknowledgement in a major
textbook for editing services, you feel pretty great. Generally, because I
provide a free service for faculty and this service makes their lives easier, I
am warmly greeted across campus, and, at times, hugged by clients. This is
positively reinforcing.
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Downers
The downside is that once you prove to be expert and reliable,
people want to use you for tasks unrealted to research proposals
or manuscripts. They want you to edit things for their children's
book report/thesis (highly unethical) or they want you to review
all of their correspondence before they mail it (tiresome and
takes up time), or they insist that you perform duties outside
your job description that are more secretarial and less
editorial. Boundaries are difficult to establish with some
people and saying "no" is difficult when it creates resentments.
Also, just because I am a woman in the South, I am constantly
treated as a secretary or as a peripheral component of the
academic environment, and I am referred to as "Ms" instead
of "Dr." For some reason, the if you are a southern woman who,
essentially, takes care of a large group of people, you are
demoted, not highly regarded, viewed as a mother figure, etc.
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Lifestyle
This is likely the most flexible real job I have ever known about. I can do
this from home, and sometimes I do perform components of this job at home.
However, because OSHA has strict rules about working at home, I do not do this
often, and only to tie up lose ends. This job is well suited for the physically
handicapped, if the person can type, phone, and email. It involves sitting a
great deal and using a computer. Pretty simple. My hours are flexible because I
am faculty. Staff have more rigid hourly requirements and time and attendance
reporting issues. The dress code is up to me. As an editor, I can take the
approach that I have a unique job and dress wildly (many clients never see me,
email takes care of 80% of my clients), or I can be scholarly in dress, wearing
the academic uniform of khaki pants and a fitted shirt. Because I have never
been out of the academic environment, I have generally modified my dress to
reflect my movement through the educational process, rather than adopting a dress
code for my job: jeans for PhD work, skirts and inexpensive pants for postdoc
work; dresses, suits, or tailored pants/jackets for my faculty position. I
believe that a well dressed editor will inspire confidence in my clients that I
can assist them. If I am attentive to personal details, I will likely be
attentive to my work.
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Compensation
My salary is highly contingent on my education, and is in the 75-
80,000 range, and I get cost of living increases in addition to
(if deserving) performance pay increases. Because we are a
university, there are no stock options and no bonuses (taxed at
40%, who would want them anyway?). The benefits are nominal. I
get some regularly accrued sick and vacation leave and the
insurance plan offered is pretty terrible and expensive.
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Advice to Jobseekers
I would advise any interested people to finish their education
(PhD) and then try to get into the field at entry level. I
believe that this job will be more prevalent over time as women
choose something to do with their terminal degrees other than
working 80 hours a week to maintain a research career. Thus, I
believe it is an upcoming alternative career for women scientists
(and men, of course) because it nicely blends with having
children and being married to a scientist/other big producer. I
would intern with a science writer/grant writer if possible to
see the daily tasks, and learn how to time manage. I would also
learn to use every feature in Windows applications/software, or
you will not be of much use to anyone who needs help. You must
always know more than your client, or they won't be bothered to
use you at all.
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