Evaluating the NIH Library Editing Service: Pilot Study Used to Analyze Service Impact.

Evidence-based librarianship drives initiatives and priorities in today’s research centers. To evaluate the effectiveness of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Library’s Editing Service, librarians conducted a pilot study comparing edited manuscripts with the published versions. Using a random number generator, five published journal articles were chosen for evaluation from a pool of NIH manuscripts (n = 147) edited between January 2008 and February 2012. A rubric delineating categories of frequently checked writing elements was used to facilitate quantitative analysis. Findings showed that 84 percent of editors’ suggestions were accepted for three of the published papers that were submitted to the originally intended journal.