Erin McGuire is the director of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Horticulture. She was working on an academic manuscript analyzing the scaling of agriculture innovation for social transformation, and turned to Written Progress for support with smoothing out the different writing styles and cadences of the various authors while keeping it under word count limits. Together, we got it publication-ready.
How it worked
Erin was eager to involve the students from a course she taught as co-authors on the paper, empowering them as true collaborators. Having students from various backgrounds and regions contribute to the paper helped bring in different viewpoints and approaches that she knew would strengthen the final product. Doing so was worthwhile, but the collaborative, non-hierarchical approach presented some challenges in maintaining consistency in voice and tone.
After receiving feedback from journal reviewers, Erin decided to work with Written Progress to get the draft publication-ready.
We facilitated an iterative editing process to ensure the substance and tone were maintained. Our first pass at the paper involved plenty of changes and cuts—most of which were in service of crafting a consistent voice that still managed to integrate the diverse perspectives of the student co-authors.
The result: the manuscript was accepted and published by Agricultural Systems Journal! Check out Erin et al.'s amazing work here.
Why it succeeded
Erin delivered relevant context —and then trusted us to facilitate the process. Erin is familiar with Written Progress' deep expertise in the agriculture and development domains, and was happy to allow us to make thoughtful choices about what was need-to-have information, and which nice-to-haves could be cut or reduced to stay within word count.
This meant we were able to provide substantive feedback of our own, in addition to reworking the flow, improving the concision, and polishing the messages to crystal clarity. We meaningfully and efficiently developed content and messaging that aligned with Erin's intentions.
Since then, Erin’s office has set up an ongoing contract with Written Progress, so Erin has us on speed dial for several more manuscripts. And we know her writing style, so the work is even smoother!
If you’re working on an academic manuscript and need your chorus-sized team to sound like a soloist, we can help. For best results, get in touch with us as early as possible.
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