Harvard Health Publishing, the consumer health division of Harvard Medical School, is looking for an experienced medical copyeditor to join our team. It’s an exciting opportunity to be one of the first stops for our consumer-facing content.

Job basics:

You’ll copyedit articles on medical conditions and treatments, research findings, and good health practices. You’ll also work on other copyediting projects as needed.

What you bring to the table:

• A bachelor’s degree and 5 to 10 years of experience in consumer medical copyediting, substantive editing, or preferably both (before-and-after examples of your work will help demonstrate this).
• A solid understanding of health and medicine, enough to spot misconceptions and omissions before they get to our physician experts.
• Impeccable spelling, grammar, and punctuation skills.
• Commitment to applying and maintaining house style.
• The ability to make sure authors have accurately translated information from doctors, researchers, and other specialists into lay language, without misstating findings, overstating significance, or oversimplifying.
• The ability to recognize when substantive changes or reorganization are necessary, and to explain to an author what needs to be done and why.
• The ability to keep track of multiple interactions with multiple authors over repeated steps of revision.
• Familiarity with MS Word styling and formatting.
• Experience editing copy for SEO optimization; you understand its importance and can enhance the effort.

Copyediting for us will require that you:

• learn our editorial voice and our stylebook (based on NYT style but with many exceptions) and apply it consistently
• fix all styling, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and similar errors
• simplify medical jargon and convoluted sentences
• propose alternative wording or terminology when it will help readability
• fact-check basic information such as drug names and study dates
• flag anything that seems to be a factual or medical error or misrepresentation 
• query authors for missing information, reorganization, or other substantive changes when necessary
• use our online editorial platform (Monday.com) to track the status of articles, download drafts ready for copyediting, and upload copyedited versions.

We’ll also expect you to

• communicate with collaborators throughout the editorial process
• respond quickly to occasional questions from collaborators 
• respond to the occasional technical or styling query on a completed article at a later stage of layout and proofreading
• stay in contact with our managing director (as needed) throughout the editorial process.

The fine print:

Compensation for this full-time freelance (contract) position is $65,000 per year.

Contact us:

Please email your resume and links to your latest work to health_letter@hms.harvard.edu (subject line “medical copyeditor position”).