Over the last few months, a large Open Access publisher has piloted Writefull. Authors were invited to use Writefull free of charge before submitting, to improve the language of their manuscript. The first pilot results are very positive. Over two-thirds of the authors accepted the invitation to use Writefull, and over half of them accepted at least 87% of the language suggestions. The publisher also observed initial, positive effects on their acceptance and rejection rates.
The publisher's Director of Marketing says: “We are interested in facilitating as seamless and worthwhile an experience as possible for our authors and so we are excited about the prospect of a tool like Writefull. We hope it helps to level the playing field for researchers from non-English speaking countries by ensuring valid research doesn’t fall at the language hurdle. The initial insights from this pilot seem to show that researchers are finding Writefull useful in checking and correcting the language used in their manuscripts.”
Over the next weeks, the publisher will keep monitoring the journey of the manuscripts that have been revised with Writefull, to explore Writefull's impact in the longer term.
