A dissertation editor reads, critiques, and revises a doctoral dissertation. Doctoral dissertations are long research projects similar to long thesis essays completed by Ph.D. candidates around the world. The dissertation is usually the result of several years of research and goes through several drafts and iterations before being presented to a dissertation committee for final approval and degree conferral. Dissertation editors play an important role in assisting the author in refining the paper’s ideas and arguments for the final version, as well as assisting with formatting and presentation. A dissertation editor can be a freelancer hired to help with editing or a university adviser assigned to the student.
Whether or not a doctoral student receives a Ph.D. is usually determined by the quality of the dissertation. The student’s academic adviser usually acts as a dissertation editor on a continuous basis, guiding the student through the various stages of the writing process. Generally, advisers read and critique drafts and offer suggestions for improvement at various stages.
Most dissertation advisers also serve as dissertation reviewers, and they are frequently part of the faculty team that decides whether the dissertation is strong enough to warrant a degree. As a result, not all advisers are able to provide extensive dissertation editing to their advisees. Students who want an unbiased opinion on their dissertation can hire a third-party dissertation editor for a fee to review their work.
The dissertation editing market is thriving, with editors specializing in everything from dissertation proofreading and citation correction to content critique and, in some cases, rewriting. A dissertation editor can be almost anyone. Some of the editors are also college professors. Others work as professional editors for publications or news organizations, while others are simply subject matter experts in the fields they edit. Commercial dissertation editors who sell proofreading and formatting services will accept almost any dissertation, whereas content editors usually specialize in one field.
The types of dissertation editing services that students can use are usually limited in most doctoral programs. Style and formatting edits are generally acceptable, especially when it comes to citations. Dissertations typically run hundreds of pages and include thousands of citations. It can take a lot of time and effort for writers to make sure that all of their citations are in the correct format. Similarly, perfecting the formatting of charts and graphs — which are common in science dissertations — can be difficult.
When a dissertation editor is hired to format a dissertation, he or she does not do any thinking for the writer. He or she only does one thing: rewrite the writer’s content in the required format. In most cases, this type of editing is uncontroversial. This is where the majority of dissertation editors fall.
When outside editors make content suggestions or changes to a dissertation, it raises more eyebrows in academia. In many ways, the dissertation serves as a testament to the writer’s original ideas, and most universities insist that it should reflect the writer’s original argument. Some schools forbid students from employing outside editors to provide substantive feedback on their work. Outside substance editors are frequently chastised for not having the same intellectual relationship with a student as an adviser, and for being more concerned with the financial benefits of editing than the academic integrity of the dissertation argument.