Dana Driscoll (professor of writing, Department of Language, Literatures, and Writing; director of the Center for Scholarly Communication) and Islam Farag (doctoral candidate, Composition and Applied Linguistics PhD program) published about the Jones White Writing Center's Graduate Editing Service in the latest issue of The Peer Review.
In "Editing in the Writing Center: Exploring a Graduate Editing Service and the Role of Instructional Editing in Graduate Student Support," Driscoll and Farag use quantitative writing assessment practices to examine the Writing Center's Graduate Editing Service, a service for dissertation and thesis manuscript editing and iThenticate.
Abstract
This article describes one writing center’s creation and assessment of a graduate editing service, a service for advanced graduate students at the end of their thesis or dissertation writing. Through discussion of the training, features, and assessment of the graduate editing service as well as its role in our larger suite of graduate writing support, we offer a roadmap for how other writing centers can develop writer-focused graduate editing services that support a range of diverse learners and their needs. Our two-stage analysis of 20 student texts includes a robust analysis of 6,933 edits made by 10 editors and offers an overview of the common edits and the number of accepted edits in our service. This article also provides operationalized definitions of three kinds of editing practices in our service, including instructional editing, copyediting, and hybrid, and a taxonomy of common instructional practices including guidance (offering direct edits with information and instruction), question asking, responding as a reader, and shifting responsibility to the writer. With the presentation of instructional editing and its features, our article offers clear implications for training and ongoing assessment of editing services in a variety of contexts and helps provide an ethical response to the role that writing centers may play in editing student work.
Please note that as of July 2024, the Graduate Editing Service has been expanded into the Scholarly Editing and Writing Service as part of the new Center for Scholarly Communication. Learn more about the Scholarly Editing and Writing Service.
Please visit the Jones White Writing Center.
Citation
Driscoll, D. L. and Farag, I. (2024). Editing in the Writing Center: Exploring a Graduate Editing Service and the Role of Instructional Editing in Graduate Student Support. The Peer Review. Issue 8:3. https://thepeerreview-iwca.org/issues/issue-8-3/editing-in-the-writing-center/