Ethics and integrity in proofreading: Findings from an interview-based study

‘I Have to Hold Myself Back from Getting into All That’: Investigating Ethical Issues Associated with the Proofreading of Student Writing

“…Turning to McNally and Kooyman's pro-proofreading arguments, there was evidence proofreaders attempted to make their interventions formative, and that some informants proofread very selectively so that the writer's true level of linguistic competence was apparent to lecturers (and students). The results also confirm the importance and prevalence of the ethics theme suggested by Harwood et al (2010); but whereas Harwood et al's study was wholly interview-based, the present research presents more specific, concrete evidence in the form of textual interventions and talk aloud data of how ethical questions play out during proofreading, in addition to reported behaviour. It would however be misleading to claim that the ETHICS code was evenly distributed across all informants equally.…”

“…44 of the 50 services contacted agreed to oblige. Harwood et al (2009Harwood et al ( , 2010Harwood et al ( , 2012 interviewed 16 proofreaders of student writing at a UK university, their first article offering an overview of their findings related to the proofreaders' profiles, beliefs, practices, and experiences. The extent to which proofreaders reportedly intervened varied, with some proofreaders prepared to go further than others.…”

“…3 Yet despite the increasing regulation, ethical issues remain: Harwood et al (2009) claimed that much proofreading is done by institutional outsiders, i.e., writers' family, friends, or freelance proofreaders with no connection to the university in question, and these outsiders may have little knowledge of proofreading policies and the degree to which the institution permits them to intervene. In addition, there is increasing evidence that proofreaders have differing understandings of their role and of the extent to which they should intervene (Harwood 2018;Harwood et al 2010;Kruger and Bevan-Dye 2010;Rebuck 2014). For instance, Harwood (2018) showed how 14 proofreaders made between 113 and 472 interventions when proofreading the same text, with some choosing to focus primarily on the language and others making much more substantial interventions concerned with the writer's argumentation, structure, and ideas.…”

What Do Proofreaders of Student Writing Do to a Master’s Essay? Differing Interventions, Worrying Findings

“…Baxter’s (2010) guide to proofreading theses and dissertations published by the Society for Editors and Proofreaders is an important reference for policy makers seeking to author substantial proofreading regulations, discussing fundamental issues such as proofreaders’ remit, ethics, time scales for completing the work, maintaining contact with the writer while proofreading, and pricing structures. Yet it is striking how brief some UK universities’ guidelines appear to be; and an example of how regulation could work can be seen in the University of Essex’s much fuller proofreading policies, formulated in response to Harwood et al’s (2009, 2010, 2012) findings (University of Essex, n.d.). 6 The guidelines recommend that student writers check with their lecturer/supervisor before approaching a proofreader “to discuss whether proofreading is required or acceptable for any given item of coursework.” This addresses Lines’s (2016) contention that many lecturers are unaware that their students are utilizing proofreading services and are unaware of how poor their students’ writing really is—although of course this recommendation could be easily ignored if students decided to approach proofreaders directly.…”

“…An interview-based study of proofreaders’ profiles, beliefs, and practices at a UK university by Harwood, Austin, and Macaulay (2009, 2010, 2012) suggested that practices varied, with some interviewees happier than others not just to intervene at the level of grammar and syntax, but to make more substantial changes involving organization, argumentation, and problematic content, highlighting what they felt to be questionable facts or claims. However, since it was wholly interview-based, the study can be criticized for only investigating reported rather than actual proofreader behavior in the same way as Lines’s study; Harwood et al did not collect and analyze samples of proofreaders’ interventions from writers’ texts.…”