1
Your work is yours.
The manuscript you send us, and every idea, finding, and word in it, remains your intellectual property at all times. We do not acquire any ownership or license over your work beyond what is strictly needed to edit and return it to you. Editing it does not give us any claim to it, and we make no claim to authorship of any kind.
2
Confidentiality.
We treat every manuscript as strictly confidential, whether or not it contains a formal confidentiality notice. In practice, that means:
- Only your editor reads your manuscript — never a pool of freelancers, never a subcontractor.
- Your manuscript is never uploaded to an AI system, at any stage, for any reason — not to edit it, and never to train one.
- We do not discuss, describe, or share the content of your work with anyone outside this agreement, including its existence, unless you tell us we may.
- Files move only through the secure transfer and storage methods described on our data privacy page, never as email attachments.
Full technical detail on how your files are transferred, stored, and deleted is on the data privacy page; this section is the promise, that page is the mechanism.
3
What editing includes — and doesn’t.
Every manuscript receives what we call a high-intervention edit — a substantive edit covering language, clarity, structure, and consistency, plus our editor flagging anything in the logic or content that a journal editor is likely to challenge.
Editing does not include writing new results or analysis on your behalf, verifying or re-running your data or statistics, checking citations against source material, or vouching for the scientific validity of your findings. Those remain your responsibility as the author.
4
Pricing, revisions, and the language guarantee.
Pricing is fixed and confirmed before work begins, based on our published rates. In addition:
- Minor revisions — up to 1,000 words of new or changed text in a manuscript we’ve already edited, measured by a Microsoft Word comparison — are edited at no charge.
- New text and reviewer responses beyond that threshold are edited at 50% of our standard rate.
- Cover letters are edited free alongside your manuscript if you’ve already drafted one; writing one from scratch is a flat fee, confirmed up front.
- Language guarantee — if your manuscript is rejected by a journal specifically for the quality of its English, we refund your edit in full. We ask only for the editor’s or reviewer’s comments citing language as the reason for rejection.
5
What we can’t promise.
We cannot and do not guarantee that any manuscript will be accepted for publication. Acceptance depends on the underlying science, the journal’s editorial judgment, and factors entirely outside an editor’s control. What we do guarantee is the quality of the English and presentation — which is the specific promise behind our language guarantee above.
6
If something goes wrong, here’s the most we owe.
Editing is a craft, not a guarantee of outcome, and even careful work can occasionally miss something. If a claim ever arises from an edit we performed, our total liability for that claim is limited to the amount you paid for that specific edit. This cap doesn’t apply to our language guarantee above — that guarantee already provides a full refund for the specific situation it covers, and it stands on its own.
Beyond that cap, we’re not liable for indirect or consequential losses — things like lost grant funding, a delayed graduation or tenure timeline, a missed conference deadline, or reputational harm. This kind of limit is standard for editorial and creative services, and we’re stating it plainly so both sides know exactly what’s at stake before any work begins.
7
Payment & turnaround.
We confirm scope, price, and a delivery date with you before any work begins and before any charge is made. Payment terms and accepted methods are confirmed at that time. If a deadline changes on either side, we’ll tell you as soon as we know.
8
Questions before you send anything.
You’re welcome to ask about any of this before committing to a single page. If any part of this agreement isn’t clear, or doesn’t match what we told you elsewhere on the site, tell us — we’d rather fix a discrepancy than have you find it out the hard way.
In short
Your work stays yours. One human reads it, under confidentiality, never through AI. Pricing is agreed before we start. If a paper is rejected for language, you get your money back. Beyond that, our liability for any claim is capped at what you paid us.
Small print
About this page.
This is a plain-language summary intended to be genuinely readable, not a substitute for a lawyer-drafted contract. Before this is used as a binding agreement with clients — particularly for clients in the EU/UK or other regulated jurisdictions — have it reviewed by a lawyer, alongside the data privacy page.