Academic copyediting services for authors
Improve readability and prepare your manuscript for publishersCreate a polished manuscript ready for publication.
Getting a book or article publication-ready takes more than sharp ideas—it demands clean, consistent, beautifully readable prose.
That level of clarity is tough to produce when you’re juggling research, teaching, and deadlines, which is why our copyeditors step in with a steady, expert hand.
Our team reviews your manuscript line by line, strengthening readability, tightening language, and ensuring consistency across every sentence and citation.
Whether you need meticulous citation formatting, alignment with a press or journal style guide, or a comprehensive polish, we help your work meet the standards publishers expect.
This is copyediting grounded in social justice—careful attention to language, attribution, and context that respects your voice while supporting work that aims to change the world.
Academic copyediting services
Books and chapters
Find the right publisher for your interdisciplinary book
Copyediting focuses on the clarity, consistency, and precision of your writing.
We attend to sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, spelling, consistency, formatting, and citation style—ensuring your manuscript is polished and publication-ready.
Our service includes:
- One round of in-text edits in Microsoft Word using Track Changes
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A style sheet to ensure consistency across the manuscript
Copyediting takes place once your content is complete. We can work with you before peer review—when you’re preparing a full draft for submission—or after acceptance, when you’re finalizing the manuscript for production and aligning it with publisher or journal guidelines.
Rate: USD $0.10 per word
Turn-around: starts at 15 business days for single book chapters, and at 30 business days for full books
Book proposals
Craft a winning book proposal that captures publishers' attention
Copyediting focuses on the clarity, consistency, and precision of your proposal.
We attend to sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, spelling, consistency, formatting, and citation style—ensuring your proposal is polished and publisher-ready.
Our service includes:
- One round of in-text edits in Microsoft Word using Track Changes
-
A style sheet to ensure consistency across the manuscript
Copyediting takes place once your proposal content is complete.
We can copyedit just your proposal draft or your proposal draft + 1–2 chapters you plan to submit to presses.
Rate: USD $0.10 per word
Turn-around: starts at 15 business days for just the proposal, sample chapters extend the turn-around depending on length
Journal articles
Improve readability and get your article ready for publication
Copyediting focuses on the clarity, consistency, and precision of your article.
We attend to sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, spelling, consistency, formatting, and citation style—ensuring your article is polished and publication-ready.
Our service includes:
- One round of in-text edits in Microsoft Word using Track Changes
-
A style sheet to ensure consistency across the manuscript
Copyediting takes place once your content is complete. We can work with you before peer review—when you’re preparing a full draft for submission—or after acceptance, when you’re finalizing the article for production and aligning it with journal guidelines.
Rate: USD $0.10 per word
Turn-around: starts at 15 business days
Full journal editing
Ensure consistent style and formatting across your issues
Copyediting focuses on the clarity, consistency, and precision of each article in your journal.
We attend to sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, spelling, consistency, formatting, and citation style—ensuring each article is polished and publication-ready.
Our service includes for each article:
- One round of in-text edits in Microsoft Word using Track Changes
-
A style sheet to ensure consistency across the manuscript
Copyediting takes place once the content is complete.
We offer monthly and per-issue journal editing packages and are experienced working with a wide variety of journal management platforms and production systems.
Rate: USD $0.10 per word
Turn-around: starts at 20 business days for a full issue
How academic copyediting works
1. We assemble your team
Our CEO Cathy Hannabach personally assembles and leads your editorial team with the help of our editorial director—matching your manuscript with the right editors and project managers for its fields, editorial needs, and publishing context.
2. You deliver your manuscript
You send us your manuscript on the contracted start date, along with the style guides, publisher instructions, or specific elements you want us to focus on for your academic copyediting service.
3. Your team gets to work on your edit
Your team dives in, working together through the manuscript multiple times, shaping it for clarity, flow, and impact. We smooth grammar and punctuation, apply consistency, format citations, and ensure your writing speaks effectively to your intended readers. We also create the style sheet to guide you through the revision process and ensure your ideas shine through.
4. We conduct a final review
Our CEO and editorial director conduct a final review to ensure your argument and voice shine through clearly and consistently and that all copyediting elements have been addressed. We create the final files that present a unified Ideas on Fire edit with detailed tracked changes and revision recommendations.
5. You receive your edited manuscript
We return your edited manuscript and style sheet, with tracked changes you’ll integrate to create a submission-ready text. You can be confident that your work meets professional publishing standards and truly reflects your scholarly voice.
Recent academic copyediting projects
Frequently asked questions: academic copyediting
How do I know what kind of editing I need?
Most manuscripts move through three editing stages:
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Manuscript review and developmental editing: focus on argument, analysis, structure, and organization
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Copyediting: focuses on clarity, style, grammar, consistency, and citation formatting
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Proofreading: a final check of typeset page proofs before publication
If you're just getting started with a dissertation-to-book conversion, you can start with a manuscript review.
If you’re still shaping the argument or structure, you likely need developmental editing.
If the content is set and you’re polishing the writing, you’re ready for copyediting.
If you’re reviewing publisher-issued page proofs, you'd benefit from proofreading.
For a deeper explanation, see our article When to Hire an Academic Editor or Indexer.
Can you help me turn my dissertation into a book?
Yes, this is one of our specialties.
If you’re early in the revision process, we typically recommend a manuscript review, which provides big-picture guidance on how to reshape a dissertation into a publishable book.
You might also check out our First Book Publishing Series, covering everything from finding a great publisher and preparing your book proposal to navigating peer review and marketing your book.
What kind of manuscripts do you edit?
We work on academic and scholarly publishing projects in the interdisciplinary humanities and social sciences, including:
- Academic books, proposals, and chapters
- Scholarly journal articles, special issues, and full journals
- Institutional and department-based editorial projects
We work with individual authors, scholarly publishers, and institutional partners including museums, research institutes, academic departments, scholarly associations, nonprofits, and cultural institutions.
You can see examples of our work on our portfolio page.
Do you format citations?
Yes. Our copyediting service includes citation formatting and consistency checks.
We regularly work with Chicago, APA, MLA, ASA, Harvard, and publisher- or journal-specific styles.
How is my editing team assembled?
Each manuscript we work on is supported by a collaborative team throughout the entire publishing journey.
Our CEO Dr. Cathy Hannabach handpicks and leads each team, ensuring the exceptional quality our editing projects are known for.
This collaborative method provides your manuscript the benefit of multiple professional perspectives and Ideas on Fire’s unique, holistic publishing support.
Learn more about our outstanding team members on our team page.
Can I reschedule an editing project?
Yes. Please get in touch with us as soon as possible to adjust your start date.
What other publishing support do you offer?
Unique among editors and indexers, we provide comprehensive publishing support for books, including strategic book promotion and targeted marketing campaigns designed specifically for academic and crossover audiences.
We leverage our extensive interdisciplinary network and expertise to maximize your book’s visibility and impact through coordinated social media campaigns, conference placement, email newsletter features, blog posts, website showcasing, and other strategic promotional opportunities.
We know interdisciplinary scholarship can help build more just worlds, which is why our goal is to ensure your ideas reach the widest possible audience while maintaining the scholarly integrity of your work.
How do I pay for services?
We will send you an invoice with the edited manuscript, and payment is due within 15 days.
We accept credit/debit cards and bank transfers. We do not accept paper checks.
If you are using university funds, please confirm with your university before the project begins that they will pay via credit/debit card or bank transfer.
We are a registered vendor with hundreds of colleges and universities so the process is streamlined for payment.
If we are not already on your institution’s vendor list, we will register to enable direct payment.
Do you offer ghostwriting?
Absolutely not.
We have a strong ethical and political commitment to academic integrity. For scholarship to have credibility, it needs to be researched and written by the person whose name is on it.
Academic editing should never include ghostwriting or creating original content for an author.
Further, we will not edit any manuscript that contains plagiarized material.
Do you have any additional resources on scholarly publishing?
Tons! Check out our extensive scholarly publishing resource library.
And for those of you working on your first book, check out our comprehensive First Book Publishing Series, featuring advice from more than a dozen leading university presses.
Your strongest manuscript—delivered
Help your ideas shine with our academic copyediting services.