How to Write a Covering Letter to the Journal Editor

How to Write a Covering Letter to the Journal Editor

Oct 01, 2024Rene Tetzner

Writing Your First Covering Letter to an Acquisitions Editor

It is reasonable to suppose that the grand majority of academic and scientific authors believe the work they submit to scholarly journals and presses for potential publication is eminently publishable. If a manuscript is well written and presents sound scholarship of the kind normally published by the journal or press, it does indeed have a good chance of attracting interest, receiving a fair assessment and perhaps even earning successful publication. However, there is a great deal of scholarly material sent to publishers each day, and it is wise to give your manuscript every chance of standing out as exceptional. A covering letter that introduces the manuscript to the publisher can achieve this, and it can also focus the eyes of acquisitions proofreaders and possibly peer reviewers in ways that enable full appreciation of your work.

With online submission being the norm among many publishers these days, covering letters are often no longer necessary, but in some cases they still are and in most cases a covering letter can be included even if one is not requested or strictly necessary. The potential for producing an extremely positive effect via a covering letter easily outbalances the ease offered by neglecting to include one, and if you take the time and effort to compose your letter with great care in terms of both content and writing style, it is highly unlikely that it will produce a negative effect.

In fact, a beautifully written covering letter serves as an excellent introduction to your work as a scholar, and this is most important when you have not yet had your academic or scientific writing published (though this fact should certainly not serve as discouragement for those who have already successfully published their writing). A covering letter is a bite-size sample of your writing. If it is clear and correct and eloquent, it suggests that your manuscript will be as well and thus encourages readers to begin their textual journey through your research with an optimistic outlook. Do be sure that your manuscript lives up to the promise!

A covering letter is also a sample of your research and scholarly thinking. By informing the acquisitions editor about what is interesting, innovative, surprising, exciting, beneficial and otherwise valuable about your research, you have the opportunity not only to connect your work with the priorities of the publisher you are targeting, but also to paint a brief picture of your concerns, approaches and perspectives. Your status as a unique academic or scientist with a great deal to contribute is an important part of being a successful scholarly author. A good covering letter offers both you and your work a brief moment on stage, and, like a Shakespearean prologue, it should give your audience a great deal to think about.

It is obvious, then, that you need to blow your own horn and flaunt your own skills a little as you draft your covering letter and this can be challenging territory. You must sound confident in the validity and value of your work as well as its appropriateness for the publisher you have chosen. Avoid generalisations that can come across as arrogance without solid evidence to back them up, and focus instead on specifics that provide the reasons for your confidence. In other words, do not simply tell the editor how wonderful your paper is; instead write something like ‘My approach is innovative because...’ or ‘My findings are especially valuable because...’ and follow with the specific reason.

Finally, be selective. There may be a long list of things you would like to say about your work, but an ideal covering letter is concise and should not glut the reader with information. Choose one or two aspects of your work that you think most innovative or groundbreaking and perhaps one or two reasons why your work is perfect for the publisher you are approaching, and then make the most of them. These will serve as effective appetisers for the main meal – the manuscript you are hoping to publish – and inspire that acquisitions editor to continue reading.

 

Why Our Editing and Proofreading Services?
At Proof-Reading-Service.com we offer the highest quality journal article editing, dissertation proofreading and online proofreading services via our large and extremely dedicated team of academic and scientific professionals. All of our proofreaders are native speakers of English who have earned their own postgraduate degrees, and their areas of specialisation cover such a wide range of disciplines that we are able to help our international clientele with research editing to improve and perfect all kinds of academic manuscripts for successful publication. Many of the carefully trained members of our manuscript editing and proofreading team work predominantly on articles intended for publication in scholarly journals, applying painstaking journal editing standards to ensure that the references and formatting used in each paper are in conformity with the journal’s instructions for authors and to correct any grammar, spelling, punctuation or simple typing errors. In this way, we enable our clients to report their research in the clear and accurate ways required to impress acquisitions proofreaders and achieve publication.

Our scientific proofreading services for the authors of a wide variety of scientific journal papers are especially popular, but we also offer manuscript proofreading services and have the experience and expertise to proofread and edit manuscripts in all scholarly disciplines, as well as beyond them. We have team members who specialise in medical proofreading services, and some of our experts dedicate their time exclusively to dissertation proofreading and manuscript proofreading, offering academics the opportunity to improve their use of formatting and language through the most exacting PhD thesis editing and journal article proofreading practices. Whether you are preparing a conference paper for presentation, polishing a progress report to share with colleagues, or facing the daunting task of editing and perfecting any kind of scholarly document for publication, a qualified member of our professional team can provide invaluable assistance and give you greater confidence in your written work.

If you are in the process of preparing an article for an academic or scientific journal, or planning one for the near future, you may well be interested in a new book, Guide to Journal Publication, which is available on our Tips and Advice on Publishing Research in Journals website.



更多文章