Ethical Academic Proofreading

Established in 2012, Oxbridge Proofreading® is an approved supplier to a majority of the UK’s top universities based on their longstanding provision of ethical academic proofreading and language editing services.

Specialising in postgraduate copy editing and proofreading, Oxbridge Proofreading® helps PhD candidates to present their research with greater clarity, assists professional academics with the correction of their syntax and referencing for journal articles, and also supports Master’s students in identifying grammatical errors in their dissertations and various assignments.

Maintaining Academic Integrity

As quality service providers, Oxbridge Proofreading® is mindful of the individual responsibilities of a supervisor and an academic proofreader and so maintain an ethical approach to the proofreading and copy-editing of academic work. In essence, this means that we won’t alter or otherwise offer guidance on the research itself or the core academic content, ensuring that the academic author maintains complete control of their content at all times.

Our ethical policy has been developed in line with the guidelines of the elite Russell Group of universities and, while every university may have its own specific terms, their salient expectations are addressed as follows:

What we will check and correct:

• Spelling and punctuation.
• Formatting and proper organisation of footnotes/endnotes for consistency.
• Ensuring that all work follows the conventions of correct grammar and syntax.
• Shortening excessively long-winded sentences and redacting longer paragraphs.
• Changing passives and impersonal usages into active forms.
• Improving the position of tables and illustrations to enhance presentation.
• Refining the clarity, grammar, spelling and punctuation of tabular and illustrative content.
• Checking the consistency of page numbers, headers and footers.

What we will not do:

• Alter the text of the work so as to develop ideas and strengthen arguments.
• Check or correct facts, data calculations, formulae or equations.
• Reduce or increase the length of the work so that it reaches a specified word limit (word count will naturally vary due to the editing process & the improvement of academic expression).
• Provide help with additional referencing or researching of academic material.
• Correcting any technical or academic information contained within the work.
• Alter the substance of any ideas and arguments put forward within the work.
• Add new academic material.
• Translate any work into English.

To maintain our commitment to providing an ethical proofreading service and to ensure compliance, all work is checked by a senior editor before release.

All amendments are highlighted using the ‘track changes’ function to enable the author to see them clearly, along with any marginal comments an editor may have contributed for consideration. The academic maintains sole and complete responsibility for electing what advice or suggested changes to accept.

We have accrued a large team of academic proofreaders with a wide range of subject specialties and so are able to assist with most academic disciplines. In particular, we specialise in assisting PhD and Master’s candidates in finalising their written English expression prior to the submission of their theses.

We also provide post-viva editorial support, including proofreading and editing of any minor amendments/recommendations without further charge.

We believe that in terms of quality, confidentiality & academic integrity, Oxbridge Proofreading® remains the UK’s premier ethical academic proofreading company.

We are always happy to discuss things in greater detail – simply give us a call on 0207 183 3915 or get in touch by email.