Institutional mandate:

The International Institute for Primary Health Care – Ethiopia (IIfPHC-E) is an organization affiliated with the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) and supported by the Gates foundation. We provide technical assistance to countries building strong Primary Health Care systems, through capacity building training, program design and implementation. We also support the FMOH through evidence-based policy recommendations; training of PHC leaders, implementation of innovation labs, and engagement on PHC related policy and strategy designs. We engage in global advocacy to bring PHC as a primary driver to achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC).

Overview

In addition to building the capacity of Primary Health Care systems across the globe, the Institute focuses heavily on projects which aim to ensure that evidence generated in the field of PHC are shared through publications and used locally and internationally to improve community health systems worldwide. The Institute aims to identify a disconnection between who is engaged in evidence generation and who translates this evidence into policy and practice. To address this gap in the knowledge-to-action cycle, the Institute plans to provide access to research documents generated through IIfPHC-E to the public through either PHC digests, peer review journals or book publications.

Thus, the International Institute for Primary Health Care – Ethiopia is looking to recruit an academic copyeditor who would review and correct the Institute’s research documentations to improve accuracy, readability and fitness for publication. 

Scope of work:

The academic copyeditor will be responsible for conducting technical, style, correlation and substantive editing to seven research documentations produced by the Institute. These documentations include:  five research reports, one systematic review and one historical manuscript on the Health Extension Program. Accordingly, the academic copyeditor is responsible for adapting the five research reports and the systematic review into articles fit for publication in PHC digest journals and peer- review journals respectively. He or she is also responsible in adapting the historical manuscript into an academic book for publication. Precisely the copy editor is expected to:

• Correct misspellings, problems with subject-verb agreement, incorrect verb tense, unnecessary or missing commas, unmarked em-dashes and en-dashes, dangling or misplaced modifiers, problems with pronoun-antecedent agreement, misused words (e.g., effect for affect), split or fused sentences, sentence fragments, faulty attempts at parallel construction, figures that don’t total in charts and tables, incorrect dates, and omitted or repeated words
• Standardize text format to a particular style (Chicago Manual of style, Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, the Modern Language Association Style Manual and the Associated Press Stylebook) based on the guidelines and recommendations of the intended publication platforms (peer-reviewed journal, PHC digest and hardcopy book publication)
• Check cross-references to pages, tables or charts, maps, captions, endnotes, subheads, as well as checking all citations in the text with those in the references, and all titles and authors with those in the table of contents.
• Improve logic and clarity and addressing larger problems of structure and organization. 

• This may include replacing passive voice with active voice, varying unintentionally repeated verbs, adding dashes or parentheses to clarify subordinate material, reducing strings of adjectives or doublings, replacing indefinite pronouns with clear noun subjects, reducing the use of an author’s pet word or phrase, changing words with racist and sexist connotations, defining special terms on first appearance, cutting wordy sentences, making parallel ideas appear in parallel forms, straightening out logic and connections, noting awkward phrasing that could be improved, adding transitions to improve the flow of argument, deleting irrelevant material or putting it in the footnotes, moving incorrectly placed paragraphs, deleting repeated paragraphs, providing subheads, cutting excessively long footnotes, lengthening or shortening titles for clarity, suggesting areas for additional citation or research, suggesting additional illustrations, as well as noting the absence of a real introduction or conclusion, where a title does not match content, where the argument is tangled or absent, where the argument could be made stronger with additional proofs, and where citations appear without sources.

Furthermore, the academic copyeditor, as a subject matter expert in Ethiopian health system and the Health Extension Program in particular, is expected to eliminate conceptual inconsistencies or errors and facts related misrepresentations by  

• Assessing whether the reports draws from relevant, updated and credible scholarship
• Checking whether report authors have interpreted texts correctly and whether reports contain unsubstantiated – or even unsubstantial- claims. 

Required number: 1 (one)

Terms of employment: Temporary contract

Place of work: Remotely  

Required qualifications, experiences and skills:

• Masters or PhD’s in scientific discipline.
• Experience in publishing and/or editing preferred.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• A thorough knowledge of the English language and punctuation marks 
• Highly organized and detail oriented.
• Leadership and time management skills.
• Proficient in desktop publishing software and Microsoft Office.