Introduction

A growing need for text editors worldwide has been created by the increasing importance of English as the lingua franca of academic and scientific publishing, combined with growing pressure in these communities to ‘publish or perish’ in English as a foreign or second language (Hvistendahl, 2015) and a greater number of students who lack academic writing skills. An allied problem that places an additional burden on text editors is the failure of academic supervisors of postgraduate researchers to intervene appropriately when their wards display an inability to express themselves clearly or correctly in their writing (Cadman & Cargill, 2007), or even an unwillingness to do so. A recent informal survey of eight online sites addressing the training of academic supervisors to cater better to doctoral researchers’ needs revealed that only one refers the skill of writing as being something supervisors should be trained in (European University Association, 2006). Typical of most of this batch, one states vaguely that ‘[t]hesis supervisors will have regular consultations with their doctoral students about the progress of their thesis work’ (Max Planck Institutes, n.d.) — which is more about process than product, it would seem. Another stipulates, without any mention of actual writing or editing skills, that ‘[s]upervisors should carefully review the submitted materials and identify weaknesses in the argumentation. This allows doctoral candidates to address problems as they arise’ (Freie Universitat Berlin, 2014). An exception is the Universite catholique de Louvain's Graduate School of Management Research Institute, which specifically mentions editing as ‘one of the research training activities … that support the individual research work that the thesis constitutes’ (2011). Brabazon (2013), a doctoral-student-turned-supervisor as a professor of education in Australia, asserts that not reading a candidate's writing is one of the characteristics of the worst supervisors; she herself begins 10 interactive editing cycles with a candidate when their first draft is complete (2010). Finally, a chapter on ‘encouraging early writing and giving feedback’ in a handbook for doctoral supervisors focuses entirely on process to the neglect of actual writing or editing skills (Taylor & Beasley, 2005).