How to Edit Scholarly Articles

Writing scholarly articles is slightly different from other types of writing. Scholarly articles rely on a very specific format, referenced resources and verifiable statistics. If you are writing a scholarly article and are ready to edit it, you need to know what specific steps to take to ensure your article is ready for publication and peer review.

Things You'll Need

• Dictionary
• English grammar and punctuation guide
• Style guide, such as "The Chicago Manual of Style"

Instructions

1. Make sure your scholarly article is formatted properly. Most peer-reviewed journals require their articles to all have the same parts. These parts mirror the steps you take during the development and execution of your research project. For example, most scholarly articles will include the following sections: introduction, literature review, methods and materials, data, data analysis, discussion and conclusion.

2. Double-check your facts, figures and references. Make sure that you haven’t transposed numbers or misreferenced your data. Also, review all of your tables, footnotes, endnotes and in-text citations for accuracy.

3. Use your reference books and style guides to check your scholarly article for grammar, punctuation and style problems. Edit as needed.

4. Take the rubrics guide given to you by the journal your article is to be published in, and edit your article again. Make sure you have followed their guidelines exactly. For example, if they say to combine the discussion and conclusion sections, make sure you do. Also pay close attention to the word-count minimums and maximums. Keep your article within these limits.