Course description
This course aims to give an introduction to the specialism of medical editing. A general base of editing skills is presumed – those without this knowledge should look at the CIEP’s proofreading and copyediting programmes before beginning this course. Overall, this course is suitable for people who are already competent editors and who wish to expand their skillset into this particular field.
Please note that people without some sort of qualification or experience in medicine, biology or a related field may struggle to find work in this area. If you do not have such a background then you should carefully consider whether this is the right path for you before investing in this training.
This course will help you to:
- become familiar with the resources and study guides that medical editors use on a daily basis
- find out about common style issues in medical editing
- edit medical figures, tables and references
- discover how the editor fits into the medical journal and book publishing process
- learn about editing for medical communication (‘medcomms’) agencies.
The course provides exercises for you to put into practice the lessons learnt through the study notes, including editing a typical journal article. There are model answers, commentary on all the exercises and a final section on useful resources to help you in this field.
After working through this course, you should understand what is involved in editing a typical medical journal or book, and what may be expected of you as a medcomms editor. You should be aware of particular style issues and what to look out for when editing figures, tables and references. You should also know where to look for further information where a particular issue you may face in medical editing is not explicitly covered by this course.