My paper was accepted. What should I watch for when checking the proofs?

I-Chen Tsai, MD, PhDTranslated from InnovaRad's public Q&A (Taiwan)Original published Dec 8, 2022Read the original

The question. My paper has been accepted, and next comes the proof reading. What should I watch for? Should I check word by word, or only the key points?

Congratulations!

I check proofs word by word, from start to finish. The most important parts are of course the affiliations and the authors, but the other parts also often contain errors. In recent years, to reduce costs, publishers have outsourced typesetting, often to the cheapest vendors, and the people laying out the PDF may have no medical knowledge and may not understand the structure of a scientific paper. It is quite alarming.

I once found 103 errors in the first round of proofs; even the references were wrong. In that paper there were many layout errors and words dropped in copying and pasting, and the references had errors that made me wonder how they could possibly have happened.

In the end, the paper took five rounds of corrections: 103, 60, 23, 12 and 0 errors. In the fifth round I finally found none.

So when I have a PDF to proofread, I make it the main task of an evening: finish my work, leave the office, enjoy a favorite dinner without overeating, take a shower, and do it when I am at my most alert. It is the last chance to make corrections, so you cannot casually say OK. You must look carefully at every word.

這些回答是經驗與建議，不是規定。你的稿件以目標期刊的規定為準，你的研究以所屬機構的倫理審查為準。