How We Help: Our Services

A critical part of the scientific process is being able to communicate your work.

But you’re busy. You don’t have time to ruminate over things like word choice, punctuation, grammar, and word flow.

Contrast Communications can help you edit your draft and ensure your scientific communications are polished, clear, and effective.

We Edit:

Grants
Manuscripts
Dissertations
Cover letters
Promotion letters/packets
Curriculum vitae/resumes
Books/book chapters
Professional reports
Other scientific/professional documents

The style of editing we offer is called substantive editing, which can also be referred to as developmental editing.

This type of editing is comprehensive, meaning that not only do we perform standard editing such as proofreading, copyediting, and line editing, but we also examine the overall picture and broader context of the writing to ensure that it is logical and makes sense scientifically.

We strive for concise and consistent text and polish language, grammar, flow, and word choice, but we also act as peer reviewers whenever possible to analyze content logic and clarity.

We can help you at any point in the process.

If you’re close to submission we work with your draft to make sure it’s polished and ready for review.

We can help if you’re trying to incorporate contributions from multiple authors to ensure a consistent voice, or if you’re too close to the content that you can no longer identify what critical information is missing.

If you’re earlier in the writing process, we can help then, too—we also assist with draft development to ensure you’re on the right track, providing feedback to help guide your writing.

Collectively the team of editors at Contrast Communications has helped secure more than $300 million in grant funding for investigators, spanning fellowships to large collaborative programs and centers.

Collectively the team of editors at Contrast Communications has helped secure more than $in grant funding for investigators, spanning fellowships to large collaborative programs and centers.

We welcome projects across scientific disciplines. Our science backgrounds provide us with the tools to understand proposals from a wide variety of disciplines, because we have the skills necessary to identify the required information and communicate that information clearly.

Contact us today to learn more

“Contrast Communications provides very high-quality editing work. They are fast, incredibly reliable, and always deliver great products. These services are extremely valuable for my trainees, as they now worry less about the quality of the first draft and more about the content in their thesis and manuscripts. Working with them increased output from our team."

Frequently Asked Questions:

Pricing for grant proposals is hourly; manuscripts are charged on a tiered scale depending on word count (excluding references). Please see our price sheet here. To provide a rough estimate, a standard R01 (12 pages single-spaced with 0.5-inch margins) takes on average about 6 hours to edit (6 hours x $170/hour = $1020).

In addition, we are always happy to provide an estimate and/or a sample edit for a particular project before beginning any work. Just reach out!

Standard turnaround time is within 5 business days for a standard-sized project (NIH R01 or equivalent). For larger projects such as program projects (e.g., NIH P01), this timeline may be extended based on the magnitude of the project. We are always happy to provide a more nuanced timeline for your specific project, and we also are willing to work with you to develop an appropriate timeline if needed. For quicker turnaround of 1–4 business days, we also offer project rush rates.

Yes, we check against formatting requirements for funding agencies or journals to ensure your document aligns with those requirements. This reduces the chances that your manuscript will be rejected or your grant proposal will not be funded based on non-content-related factors such as margins, font sizes, citation style, etc. In terms of grant proposals, the guidelines also are often helpful to guide how your application will be reviewed in terms of content as well.

Yes! In fact, we strongly encourage all clients to contact us ahead of time to get your project on our editing calendar. Just email us, ideally at least 2 weeks before you intend to submit your draft to us for editing. If we confirm availability, your project will then have “priority” status on our calendar. Getting your project on our calendar is not a commitment (no deposit or payment required) but rather a guarantee to you that we will be able to perform the work in the desired timeline. And we’re always happy to help you develop an appropriate timeline as well if needed—just contact us.

No—we can certainly help with trimming your content to fit within the word count/page limit. We are masters of slashing unnecessary words and strive for concision in all edited documents. Of course, this is within reason—please do not send us an 18-page draft for a 12-page-limit proposal! However, we often can easily cut 1–2 pages to help you meet your project’s word count/page limit, while enhancing clarity and communication along the way.

The style of editing we offer is called substantive editing, which can also be referred to as developmental editing. This type of editing is comprehensive, meaning that not only do we perform standard editing such as proofreading, copyediting, and line editing, but we also examine the overall picture and broader context of the writing to ensure that it is logical and makes sense. We strive for concise and consistent text and polish language, grammar, flow, and word choice, but we also act as peer reviewers whenever possible to analyze content logic and clarity.

A well-written, well-edited, and strongly presented document empowers you to communicate your research more clearly and effectively. Communication is a critical aspect of the scientific process—if you do great work, but no one knows about your work or understands it, how can it contribute to science more broadly? In terms of a manuscript, having a strong draft to submit to journals increases your chances of getting published—because reviewers can better understand your work and why it is important. In terms of a grant application, having a strong draft to submit to the funding agency increases your chances of getting funded—because reviewers can better understand your work and why it is important. Strong and effective scientific communication directly contributes to scientific success.

We use track changes in Word so that all edits are visible and can be accepted/rejected by the author as needed. Where possible, we go ahead and make the edits directly in the text. In areas where the text and/or meaning is unclear, or if some additional consideration needs to be given to the text, we add comments in track changes to indicate areas for the author to review. In the case of a grant proposal, these comments are often questions for the author to consider or suggestions for how to further develop the content or perhaps rearrange how the information is presented to be most impactful.

While sometimes opening an edited document and seeing a sea of tracked changes can feel overwhelming, these suggestions are meant to improve your draft so that you are presenting your science in the most clear and effective way possible—because strong and effective scientific communication directly contributes to scientific success.

We can help with that! If you are struggling to move your draft forward, some clients find it useful to get editing feedback in more than one round. The first round can provide you with more developmental, higher-level feedback. This can include indicating where your document is missing rationale, whether the proposed experiments test the stated hypotheses, suggested directions for the discussion section, or how to connect your project to its potential broader scientific impact. These edits can help you more fully develop your draft and can be especially useful if you find yourself “stuck”. Often a second round of edits is then helpful to fully polish the text and ensure clarity in your writing.

We strongly encourage all clients to contact us ahead of time to get your project on our editing calendar. All you need to do is email us, ideally at least 2 weeks before you intend to submit your draft to us for editing. If we confirm availability, your project will then have “priority” status on our calendar. Getting your project on our calendar is not a commitment (no deposit or payment required) but rather a guarantee to you that we will be able to perform the work in the desired timeline. And we’re always happy to help you develop an appropriate timeline as well if needed—just contact us.

Of course, we certainly understand that timelines frequently shift, especially when preparing grant applications. However, shifting timelines impact not only your workflow but ours as well. During busy deadline times, we often have our work calendar stacked, so shifting your timeline also can impact our timelines for other clients as well. In an attempt to help mitigate this situation and best serve everyone, we use an editing waitlist to try to better manage shifting deadlines. If you have a priority scheduled project but submit your draft to us for editing by more than 24 hours past the agreed upon timeline, you may lose your priority status on our calendar. That doesn’t necessarily mean we will no longer perform the editing work for you, but instead that we will open up our editing waitlist and may give your scheduled time on our calendar to another client. If that is the case, especially during busy times, your editing needs will no longer be guaranteed and instead will be subject to availability.

While we can sometimes accommodate last-minute editing requests, this is not always the case. If you contact us with an editing request that you have not pre-scheduled (and thus does not have priority status), during busy times you may be placed on our editing waitlist. There is no guarantee we will be able to complete these projects in a timely manner that works with your deadline. We strive to accommodate all requests as much as possible, but during busy seasons there often simply is not enough time.

While spellcheck is an excellent place to start, it is limited to spelling and common grammar mistakes only. And even these common checks often get a little complicated when it comes to scientific language. Contrast Communications LLC goes beyond spelling and grammar to ensure that your scientific writing is presented in the most clear and effective way possible.

The style of editing we offer is called substantive editing, which can also be referred to as developmental editing. This type of editing is comprehensive, meaning that not only do we perform standard editing such as proofreading, copyediting, and line editing, but we also examine the overall picture and broader context of the writing to ensure that it is logical and makes sense. We strive for concise and consistent text and polish language, grammar, flow, and word choice, but we also act as peer reviewers whenever possible to analyze content logic and clarity.

A well-written, well-edited, and strongly presented document empowers you to communicate your research more clearly and effectively. Because effective scientific communication translates into increased chances of getting your work published and securing grant funding, strong and effective scientific communication directly contributes to scientific success.

Again, this is a great place to start! But chances are your colleague is busy, too—they may be able to give you some good feedback, but they likely can’t or won’t devote the time required to thoroughly review and critique your draft, providing you with the in-depth feedback you need to push your draft to the next level. Contrast Communications does just that—we devote the time to thoroughly review your draft and provide you with careful and thoughtful edits and comments to ensure clarity, consistency, and impact in your scientific writing.

When you submit a grant proposal, you want to minimize any excuse reviewers can think of to not fund your work. Spelling errors, inconsistent format, lack of white space, ineffective headings, poor graphics—all this and much more are excuses reviewers can find to not like your proposal and remove it from the pile of potentially funded projects. We want to eliminate as many of these potential excuses and distractions so that your science shines and so that reviewers can clearly see the value in your proposed work, increasing your chances of funding success.

We act as the reviewer whenever possible, helping you address those concerns so that you present solutions before reviewers even have a chance to think of them. Can you afford to risk reviewers not understanding the value of your work?