Technical Review for CIIS Students

Since many students seem to be uninformed about technical review, here is a general introduction.

The rate for technical editing is set by CIIS at $45/hour, and CIIS guarantees payment (which means that you cannot graduate until your technical reviewer is paid). Together Editing & Design offers three possible paths, as follows.

1. Technical Editing Option 1 (TE1) is what we call "pure technical editing." With this option, we send the student a list of corrections to make, and the student makes the actual changes on their own. Students have the option of sending the dissertation back to us for final proofreading, or not, according to their preference. If your dissertation has tables, we will format all of them to meet publishing standards.
2. Technical Editing Option 2 (TE2) is "hybrid technical editing" (technical editing + reference list). This option is the same as Option 1, with full reference list formatting included: We make all the necessary, nitty-gritty alterations to your reference list entries. This option allows students to focus their efforts on making needed changes to citations and the text.
3. Technical Editing Option 3 (TE3) is "technical editing plus." We make any necessary changes in the document using Word's track changes feature, and the student reviews and approves them. This option also only considers citations, reference list, and formatting (including tables).
4. Technical Editing Plus Copyediting (TE4) services include everything described under Option 3, plus copyediting of the text itself: Since we will be reading the document anyway, we find it hard not to also make recommendations about grammar, flow, and reader confusion even though this type of recommendation falls outside the scope of technical editing per se. We get very attached to our clients and want to help your work shine in every way. So, we are happy to provide this kind of feedback if you are interested.
   
   The only drawback to TE4 is that it adds to the work hours for the project. For copyediting recommendations, we use Word's track changes feature, comments, and highlighting. Our 2020 rate for copyediting is $65/hour, and CIIS sets the rate for TE at $45/hour.

The amount of time required depends on which option the student chooses and how many tables the dissertation has, since tables and illustrations both take some time to format correctly. Review hours are also dependent on the shape the paper is in when it's delivered to us; the more time and attention to detail that the student applies to formatting, citations, and the reference list before submission, the shorter the review hours, generally speaking. We don't give estimates, but we do have a downloadable list of completed projects to illustrate some of the variation.

Regarding turnaround time, Options 1, 2, and 3 above can usually be done in 2 weeks (other commitments permitting). Option 4 scheduling will be determined in conversation between the student's schedule and our availability.

We schedule ourselves carefully and take our commitment to you very seriously. Although each student does their individual best to meet their agreed-upon schedule for us, delays are a part of the process. Chairs and/or committee members can take longer than anticipated to reply with feedback, and of course life can cause its own unanticipated delays. We have never missed a graduation deadline, but be aware that ripple effects from other clients' schedule changes have the potential to affect our agreed-upon delivery date.