Peer-to-peer prescriptions in medical sciences: Iranian field specialists' attitudes toward convenience editing

Abstract

For many non-native speakers, publishing in English is a demanding task requiring a high standard of academic English proficiency to meet the stringent criteria of accredited journals. In many cases, the meticulous editing of manuscripts is delegated to fellow academics in the same disciplines, who act as peer convenience editors. In an attempt to understand these editors' perceptions of their scaffolding services for their less proficient peers, this qualitative study explores Iranian medical specialist convenience editors' attitudes toward editing for colleagues in the medical sciences. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 peer convenience editors, whose experience ranged from 3 to 17 years, to identify their beliefs, experiences, challenges, and suggestions regarding convenience editing. We drew upon emergent methodology to group the interviewees' value-laden comments into five major attitudinal categories: language, the editing task, occupational and technological issues, publication in English, and co-convenience editing. This study revealed that there is a low level of communication between English as a Foreign Language teachers and medical field specialists, two key groups of pre-publication text shapers in Iran. However, their collaboration, according to the findings, could be instrumental for the timely dissemination of research conducted by Iranian scholars in international journals.