Quality and competition

What quality guarantee do you give?

We have some clients who have used our services for more than 25 years. The fact that our revenues have increased every year since 1984, and have doubled since 2005, indicates that clients keep returning and new ones seek out our services. Obviously we cannot guarantee that your paper will be published, since the quality of the English is only one of many parameters that the referees will use.

Why should I have my article corrected?

Unfortunately more papers written by Italians are rejected than those of most other countries. Here are the results of some research on the reasons for papers being rejected:

Although there was not a direct relationship between the acceptance rate and the amount of language errors, there was a clear indication that badly written articles correlated with a high rejection rate. The US/UK acceptance rate of 30.4% was higher than for all the other countries. The lowest acceptance rate of 9% (Italian) also had the highest error rate. The reasons for rejection are manifold but certainly one reason cited by many referees is poor level of English. Many factors could influence the rejection of an article. However, we found clear indications that carelessly written articles could often have either a direct or subliminal influence on whether a paper was accepted or rejected. On equal scientific merit, a badly written article will have less chance of being accepted. This is even if the editor involved in rejecting a paper does not necessarily identify language problems as a motive for rejection.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11827675.

Before I submit my paper I would like to have some references from people who have already used your services, is this possible?

We guarantee that all the comments and feedback from our clients that you can see in this website are genuine. We would be very happy to give you the names of some of our clients who you can then contact directly.

I am worried that because you may not be not familiar with my field of research that you will make unnecessary changes and that there will be inconsistencies and inaccuracies. How do you avoid this?

Feedback from our clients highlights how happy they are with our level of understanding of what they have written. This derives from several factors: 25 years of experience means that we are familiar with many types of scientific writing. Our knowledge of your native language means that we can mentally translate back into Italian any phrases that initially seem awkward or difficult to understand Any changes that we make that we are not sure about we highlight in blue - this alerts you to the fact that we are not entirely sure of the change we have made or that we think you need to rephrase the sentence to make it clearer.

Why should I choose you rather than one of your competitors?

You have the security of knowing that we have corrected several thousand papers for Italian researchers. We are thus familiar with all the problems that you have in terms of English and also in terms of dealing with referees. Our costs also compare very favourably with our competitors. We are the only company in Italy who offers this service. We speak Italian - this also helps us to understand your English. e4acs has its head office in Pisa, therefore all bureaucratic procedures regarding contracts and payments are much easier to manage: we are resident in Italy, we have a partita iva, we are enrolled in the camera di commercio, we are familiar with how the administration departments work in universities and research centres. Our prices are in euros, which means that you do not have to worry about the exchange rate, nor do you have to pay an extra commission to your bank for currency conversion.

Do you have experience with referees?

Yes, we do. We have read hundreds of referees' reports and know exactly what they are looking for in terms: language introduction and description of the problem explanation and highlighting of the innovative aspects of the work style structure clarity in examples, in conclusions etc

I am part of a team of French and Spanish researchers. Can you help us?

Since 2009 we have expanded our market outside Italy and have accepted manuscripts written by researchers whose native language is either French or Spanish. We believe that understanding the native language of our clients is essential as many mistakes in the English of research papers are due to interference from the native language of the author. This means that we can spot errors that editors with no such language knowledge would be unable to identify.

I am Chinese. Can you help me?

English for Academics is currently undergoing expansion. We hope soon to have a service specifically for Chinese academics. For the moment we strongly suggest you use the services of an editor with a good knowledge of Chinese.

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