Comprehensive Service

At Lucida Science Communications we understand the importance of clear, lucid descriptions of your work. Lucida's editing service is much more than simple proofreading or polishing. It involves a comprehensive review and rewrite of your document by experienced science editing professionals.

There are three essential elements to first-class science editing:

• Language proficiency: Not every native-English speaker can edit your document. Good writing is a skill that must be learned and developed. Lucida's editors have years of science writing experience.

• Field-specific knowledge: Even the best writer will have trouble editing your document if he or she does not understand the subject. The importance of technical and scientific knowledge cannot be overestimated.

• Editor/author discussion: The complex nature of scientific documents means there will inevitably be points that the editor and author need to discuss. Over 95% of the cases we handle benefit from this discussion, followed by a second edit after these points have been clarified.

We would urge you to look for all of these when choosing an editing company to handle your most important documents. Rest assured that Lucida satisfies all of these requirements.

Specialist Editors

Lucida's editors are carefully selected for their extensive experience and qualifications. The majority of our editors have Master or PhD degrees in the sciences, engineering, and technology. All have years of experience writing and editing technical documents and academic research papers. In fact, most of them have published several papers of their own. Our editors cover all major disciplines — the physical sciences, engineering, life sciences, and technology. You can see brief profiles of some of our editors here.

Quality

Your document will be subjected to a meticulous editing procedure to produce a perfect document that is ready for distribution to your audience or publication in major academic journals. The editing procedure includes three stages:

1. First edit: We review your document to check organization, flow of ideas, and consistency. We then carefully check and rewrite your document word-by-word to craft clear, natural-sounding sentences, as well as to correct grammar, spelling, word choice, and punctuation. We also check your figures, graphs, and tables.

2. Discussion: Most documents have several points that the editor and author need to discuss. This is an essential part of the editing process and allows the author to clarify any questions the editor may have to greatly improve the quality of the final document.

3. Second edit: Once the discussion is completed, the editor carries out a second edit to resolve any outstanding issues. This allows the editor to clearly express the most critical points of your message, and to ensure overall consistency and quality.

Competitive Rates

Our rates are among the most competitive you will find for this kind of comprehensive service. Our rates include the first edit, editor/author discussion, and the second edit described above. In addition, free of charge we will:

• check your list of cited references,

• check your figures*, and

• for academic papers to be published, issue a certificate stating that your document has been edited by a native-English-speaking science editor (this will be helpful in the review and publication process).

(*Applies only to research papers, reports, and other text-based documents whose figures contain a reasonable number of words. Different rates apply to slides and posters for conference presentations, or to other highly graphical material.)

We edit your file directly, rather than editing hard copies by hand. You will receive a 'clean' file that's ready for use. This typically saves authors several hours of work inputting hand-written corrections. We will also send you a 'marked up' file showing all of our revisions in a different color so that you can easily see what we changed.

After you send us your document, we will send you a firm estimate of the cost. You will always know in advance the exact cost of editing your document. Our editing rates are shown below.

Fast Turnaround

We will respond to your inquiry within 24 hours, often within a few hours, with a detailed estimate showing the cost and schedule. We aim to complete the first edit within 3-7 days for most documents, depending on length. For urgent jobs, an express service is also available. More details of turnaround time are shown below.

Technical Fields

Our specialist editors cover all major scientific and technical fields.

Special Offer

We are currently offering 15% off* the rates shown below for new clients.
*This offer applies only to the first editing order received and cannot be used in conjunction with any other discounts that may apply.

Rates and Turnaround Time

We provide Standard and Express services. The Express service is roughly twice as fast as the Standard service. Contact us if you need your document returned even sooner. Please also read the important notes below.

Notes

• These rates include the first edit, author/editor discussion, and the second edit.

• There is a 5-page minimum order size. (Shorter documents will be charged as for 5 pages.)

• One standard page = 200 words (counted using the word count feature of Microsoft Word). The number of pages is calculated by dividing the word count by 200 and rounding down to the nearest 0.1 pages (Example: 3756 words = 18.7 pages). The word count includes the title, abstract, keywords, main body, tables, table captions, and figure captions. The word count excludes the author names, affiliations, addresses, and list of references.

• The list of references and text in the figures are checked free of charge*.
  (*This applies only to figures containing a reasonable number of words. Text-intensive figures containing many words, such as complex flowcharts, will incur an additional charge based on the word count.)

• Examples of fees:
  615 words = 3.0 pages → 5 pages (minimum): 5 × ¥3,350
  5,000 words = 25.0 pages: (20 × ¥3,350) + (5 × ¥2,750)
  9,275 words = 46.3 pages: (20 × ¥3,350) + (20 × ¥2,750) + (6.3 × ¥2,500)

• The turnaround times are in business days and do not include weekends, public holidays, and company holidays.

• A surcharge may apply to documents requiring excessively heavy editing. If this applies, we will inform you in advance.

• We cannot accept machine-translated documents for editing.

• Japanese consumption tax (10%) will be added to the above rates.

Process

1. Send us your document and place an order

Preparing your document

Text. Prepare a file containing the text of your document, including title, abstract, main body, equations and formulae, references, and figure and table captions. File formats accepted: Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx), Rich Text Format (.rtf), LATEX (.tex), and plain text (.txt).

Figures, tables, and images. We prefer to receive your figures, tables, and other images in a separate file from the text. File formats accepted: Adobe Portable Document Format (.pdf), Postscript (.ps), standard graphics formats (.jpg, .gif, .bmp, .png, .tif, .emf), Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt), Microsoft Excel (.xls), and Adobe Illustrator (.ai).

Presentations and camera-ready documents For presentations, camera-ready documents, and other documents containing figures and tables laid-out with the text, you can send us a single file containing both text and graphics. (If possible, please also send a PDF version.)

Compressed files. If your files are large or if you need to send us numerous files, please compress them. We can accept most compression formats, including ZIP, Stuffit, LHA, TAR, GZIP, and BinHex. (Note: our online form can accept up to 10 attachments, maxium total size: 100 MB.)

Sending your document

Use one of the following methods to send your document.

• Online form (preferred method): Complete our online form to upload your files.

• Email: Please use this email template. Fill in the requested information and attach your files (maximum 25 MB). For secure transmission, we can receive SSL encrypted email. Please contact us first to request our digital certificate.

Get quote and place order

Once we have received your files, we will send you an acknowledgement message by email. Then, within 24 hours and often within a few hours (excluding weekends and holidays), we will send you a firm quotation by email showing the cost and schedule. Once you accept our quotation, we will start editing your document.

2. First edit

We will edit your document as described above.

During this edit, we will add comments and questions about any unclear portions or to ask you to confirm our revisions. You should read these comments and respond as described in Step 3 below, 'Author/editor discussion (Q&A)'.

After the first edit, we will send back:

1. A 'Clean' version of your document with all our revisions applied. This document will be in the same format as your original, for example, Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format, LATEX, Powerpoint etc.

2. A 'Marked up' version showing all our revisions in a different color. This will allow you to easily see what we changed, added, or deleted so that you may check our revisions.

3. A list of comments and questions for discussion. If you send us a Microsoft Word document, these comments will be inserted into your file using the Comment feature of Word. For Rich Text Format, LATEX and Powerpoint documents, we will list the comments in a separate file.

3. Author/editor discussion (Q&A)

Here is a brief description of the author/editor discussion step.

1. Using the Marked Up version of your document (see Step 2 above, 'First Edit'), you should review the edited document and confirm that all our revisions reflect your intentions.

2. Read the editor's questions and comments and write your responses. If you need clarification or further discussion, you can communicate with the editor via email. Since our editors are native English speakers, please write your responses in English.

3. If you wish to make any changes, use the Clean version. Please note that the second edit (see Step 4 below) is designed mainly for re-editing the points under discussion in this Q&A step. Therefore, if you make substantial changes or additions to other parts of the document, there may be an additional charge for editing the new material.

4. Send back your responses and the Clean version of your document if you made any changes.

4. Second edit

We carry out the second edit based on your responses to our questions and any additional changes you made. We then send back the final version of your document, both Clean and Marked Up versions. All comments and revision marks are removed from the Clean version to make it ready for publication or distribution to your audience. The Marked Up version will show any revisions we made in the second edit.

For documents that will be submitted to academic journals for publication, we will provide you with an 'Editing Certificate' (free of charge) stating that your document has been edited by a native-English-speaking science editor. This often helps to avoid problems in the review process.

This completes our comprehensive editing service. Any further editing after this stage will incur additional charges.

5. Invoicing and payment

We will send you invoice documents in any format you require. We usually request payment within one month, but your organization may settle the invoice according to its standard payment procedures. Payment should be made by bank transfer to our account (details are provided on the invoice).