I know what you might be thinking:

Why would I choose to use an interdisciplinary academic editor over a specialist in my field?

This is a great (and fair) question. In this article, I explain the unique advantages of using an interdisciplinary editor to heighten the impact of your work and expand your audience.

Before I go further, let me define what I mean when I say that I am an ‘interdisciplinary’ academic editor by providing a bit of my educational and professional background.

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From my earliest school days, I excelled in all subjects, from math and science to literature and history. (I know this because my mom kept all my report cards.) Like many who end up in academia, I was an early bookworm, and I have always enjoyed exploring and synthesizing ideas and knowledge.

My love of knowledge spanning disciplines guided my studies in higher education. At Indiana University Bloomington, my varied interests led me to earn three bachelor’s degrees in Comparative Literature, Political Science, and Spanish, all with Distinction and Honors, while also excelling in courses in diverse disciplines from micro/macroeconomics to calculus.

For my postgraduate studies at King’s College London, I earned an MA in Critical Methodologies, where I studied the interdisciplinary field of critical theory, a philosophical discipline that draws from diverse fields to contemplate the linguistic, social, historical, and ideological forces and structures that produce and constrain knowledge and culture. My areas of focus were subjectivity and language, the latter especially regarding semiotics and semiology, which pertain to meaning and signification.

In my professional career, I have followed a similar what I could call ‘interdisciplinary’ trajectory: Two of my early jobs were co-authoring and statistically analyzing data for a medical study on aspirin and working as an editorial assistant for an editor in book publishing.

For most of my professional career, though, I worked in the high-powered, fast-paced environment of private legal practice, where my tasks largely included researching for, drafting, and editing legal documents in courts of every level from local courts to the U.S. Supreme Court, for which technical precision, accuracy, effective language skills, and the ability to learn new subjects quickly and thoroughly are imperative.

Although I ultimately opted out of pursuing a PhD and entering academia, I knew I still wanted to be close to the production of knowledge. So, I set off on my own to start my career as an academic editor.

Today, I have worked for multiple formal editing services, where I have edited over 600 academic projects (and counting) in any and every field, from the humanities and the social sciences to the hard sciences and medicine. In the just two years that I have worked at one major international editing service, I have been designated as the Preferred Editor for 48 users, comprising international researchers and scholars from all disciplines.

This experience has not only enriched my knowledge base but has also equipped me with a keen understanding of the rules, common practices, and high standards of journals, major editing services, and academia generally.

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So, when I say I am an ‘interdisciplinary’ academic editor, what I mean is that I have spent my whole life developing my ability to critically understand and nimbly move between multiple disciplines.

This ability, along with my highly refined language and editing skills from my humanities background and legal career, has allowed me to excel as an academic editor, enabling me to develop an extensive knowledge base, robust critical thinking skills, and a unique, comprehensive perspective of the current world of research that distinguish me from purely specialist academics.

This may be because, as my fellow knowledge lovers know, diversifying your range of experience, accumulating knowledge, and harnessing your curiosity to compare and synthesize ideas are naturally compounding processes that create powerful, agile, creative, and precise thinkers who can see the big picture and mind the details.

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But, I recognize I have yet to directly answer the question:

Why should you use an interdisciplinary academic editor over a specialist?

Here are two key advantages of using an interdisciplinary editor:

• A broader academic perspective.

As cognitive anthropologist Naomi Quinn wrote:

“[L]anguage cannot be understood, much less translated, without reference to a great deal of knowledge about the world.”

My academic and professional background notwithstanding, in my academic editing career, I have edited (and, thus, read) studies from every niche of academia, from molecular science to engineering, from archaeology to AI diagnostics in medicine, from consumer behavior to nuclear geopolitics.

This means that I maintain a sweeping and ever-updating view of the current academic landscape—what topics and methodologies are gaining attention, what kinds of papers get published, and how robust research looks and sounds.

This comprehensive perspective allows me to consider research beyond its details to its broader context. In this way, I address the need highlighted by UK scholars LJ Bracken and EA Oughton:

“A problem for the person speaking is that they need to be able to imagine their knowledge outside of their usual working context and practice in order to be able to communicate effectively.”

As an interdisciplinary editor, I have the perspective and experience to help you do just that.

• A more comprehensive academic editing skill set.

Language is alive, and it evolves and is incarnated differently in each discipline.

To borrow again from Bracken and Oughton:

“Language may determine the positionality of the researcher, the way in which the research question is framed, the translation of the ‘field’ to the academy and the development of the theoretical context."

Along with a broader knowledge base generally, my accumulated experience has equipped me with a keen understanding of how language is used in different disciplines.

That is, I know what flavor of language, vocabulary, and degree of formality are required—for example, whether more vivid phrasings and robust logical arguments are required versus technical precision and conciseness.

This awareness of how to use language such that it suits both a specific field and the broader academic context helps to not only tailor a paper to its specific audience but also broaden its reach to wider audiences to maximize its impact.

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In short, language is not transparent, and the language we use matters. This is true within and across disciplines. As an interdisciplinary editor, I understand this deeply and take seriously the responsibility of communicating your meaning clearly, precisely, and conscientiously for all your potential audiences.

Ready to perfect your project together? Check out my Services for more information on what I offer or Contact Me for any questions or an obligation-free quote for a personalized project.