For writers—whether for academic, commercial, business, or personal needs—it’s often difficult to find a good resource for editing and proofreading. That’s one of the reasons, Dr. Dave Maslach created r3ciprocity.com. His goal is to encourage and incentivize writers, students, academics, and others to help out other academics and writers. R3ciprocity is a community of writers and editors from various backgrounds that were once searching for a way to get their content edited beyond just an online spell check. While it is geared towards academic writers, it is definitely helpful for anyone who is in the writing game. R3ciprocity-based editing is free. You will become a better writer through the power of this community.
This post was written by Jessica Russell (freelance writer) and Stephanie A. Bosco-Ruggiero (PhD candidate in Social Work at Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service) on behalf of Dave Maslach for the R3ciprocity project (Check out the YouTube Channel or the writing feedback software). R3ciprocity helps students, faculty, and research folk by providing a real and authentic look into doing research. It provides solutions and hope to researchers around the world.
What is r3ciprocity.com?
This online proofreading and content editing platform enables writers to submit their work for review and to review others’ work. The main focus, as Dave originally intended it, was to help academic writers, such as graduate students, but the system is quite useful for other writers as well. In fact, it is now used by writers and researchers across many disciplines.
Most of us have a lot of anxiety about knowing if our written work is good or not. Also, nobody is perfect, right?! When we read, our brains form words from letters and word fragments. When you are writing you become overly familiar with what you are trying to say and typos are often overlooked. And, if all you need is a spelling and grammar check, you can find a free grammar and punctuation checker and corrector online. But, R3ciprocity.com is so much more. It is made of a community of writers who are stressing and want feedback, and they care about the quality of their work.
How does r3ciprocity.com work?
Basically, it encourages the paying forward of peer proofreading. That is why it is called it r3ciprocity.com — because you help other writers before receiving proofreading and editing help yourself. People can submit their academic writing, manuscripts, essays, college papers, blog posts, really any kind of writing project you can think of, for review. R3ciprocity.com is modeled after other sharing economy applications, so the focus will be on making the algorithm work better for you.
And, it’s easy to use. The reciprocity editing and proofreading platform feels like a game. Each time that you help others by proofreading their writing, you gain credits to have your own work edited. It is an online peer proofreading exchange. To help facilitate and encourage quality proofreading, you can also purchase credits, and those that are good enough at proofreading can convert credits into money. Signing up is free. Here are some steps for getting started on r3ciprocity.com:
- Upload your document, manuscript, or report. Use R3ciprocity credits to submit it for review.
- The document is placed in a queue to be reviewed by one of your peers on the website.
- You can also request a job from the queue. Once you receive a document, you download it, make corrections, write a few comments, and then you send it back.
- The owner receives the edited document and sees the corrections that were made.
- They rate your reviewing ability and provide feedback on your editing.
- You then earn R3ciprocity credits to use for getting your own work reviewed by a member of the site.
Want to know more? Check out this list of FAQs on the r3ciprocity.com blog site to get answers to your questions about how to use this online editing platform.
What are the benefits of R3ciprocity editing and proofreading?
The main benefit of joining an editing and proofreading community for writers and academics is to improve their writing and receive feedback. Those who are more interested in editing can gain experience with editing and reviewing, earn the satisfaction of helping peers, and they can even earn some extra money.
You get more than a punctuation checker or a writing checker with r3ciprocity.com. There is also artificial intelligence (AI)-based plagiarism checker, and soon-to-be tone-checker for your writing. Having another set of eyes (or multiple sets) help you eliminate spelling errors and typos, gaps in information, and you will receive feedback on your work that may help you think in other ways. Editors will remove errors and improve the flow of your writing.
Then as an editor, when you provide feedback to others on their writing, your own writing will begin to improve. Stephanie has learned, through her work as a tutor and editor, that one of the best ways to improve your own writing is to review, edit, and provide feedback on others’ writing. The more you edit and learn about common writing mistakes, the better your writing becomes.
Furthermore, the platform is truly reciprocal (that’s the whole point of the name — don’t forget spelled with a 3!) The great thing is you earn credits by providing feedback to others, and these credits can later be used to get more writing help when you need it. As you spend more time on the platform you receive an increasing number of assessments from writers you help. The best editors will be given the option of earning money for the editing work.
You can also use r3ciprocity.com to help scientists improve the validity of science. How? You are providing valuable feedback to social and behavioral scientists, and other academics, who are very focused on their research day to day but may need a bit of help with their final products. You can review their proposals and likewise receive feedback on your own proposals. Eventually, Dave would like to create an advisory board of scientists on the platform.
There are multiple benefits of working with R3ciprocity.com editors as well. They have to do several test reviews so you know there aren’t unqualified editors or spammers. The editors are also writers and are excited about writing and providing you feedback. They also provide confidential feedback. Reviews are comprehensive because everyone is paying it forward; they expect the same level of scrutiny of their own work that goes beyond what a spelling checker or grammar checker can do. You can receive automated stats on your work such as readability, and edits will change color as your writing improves. The quality of editing work is continuously reviewed as well.
Finally, r3ciprocity.com is accompanied by an informative YouTube page and blog site. The platform and sites were developed by Dave who is a Professor of Innovation and is naturally interested in continuously improving the service. The r3ciprocity.com blog site, updated weekly, features blogs written by academics, freelance writers, and others who offer advice about life in academia, writing, career development, and many other topics relevant to students, academics and writers.
To learn more about the latest updates and improvements to the r3ciprocity.com online editing and proofreading platform watch this video:
Why is feedback so important? Can’t I just use a grammar checker?
An online grammar checker is used to verify your writing is following the rules. Also known as a sentence checker, its main use is for checking language and spelling rules. But peer feedback is more than a check on your typos or a spelling checker. It’s a community of peers that often are academics and understand the topic you’re submitting. They can offer insight, constructive criticism and feedback that helps to improve your writing and content. It’s not just the letters on the page you want proofed, it is the information you are compiling and the flow of your thoughts. Having a real person reading your writing and sending you notes and comments will provide you invaluable insights that will help you reach your goals.
How do I get started?
You can get started by simply signing up on the home page. Once you are signed into the system, you can either upload a document or edit another user’s work to earn credits. You will be asked to review a few test documents, but after that, you are off to the races. Check out this blog post on how to get started on r3ciprocity.com. If you are in a rush and do not yet have time to review others’ work, you can purchase credits then upload your document for review. Here is Dave with a few more details about how to get started:
When you’re ready to edit others work r3ciprocity will verify your skills before you can begin editing and proofing. You can learn more about the platform by watching these introductory videos.
For more on r3ciprocity.com and creating a community of peers check out these other blog posts!