Very, very late addition to say: I PASSED!!! I heard today. Unbelievable relief. So it IS possible, after all, to get R&R and still get a PhD at the end of it. Thanks to everyone for the kind words and support :-)

Hi all!

Can anyone recommend a copyeditor who isn't going to cost a fortune? My thesis is with a publisher at the moment and they want a professionally edited version sent to them by 1st June (it's in the preliminary contract), but I really, really can't afford the £300-500 price tag attached to all of the copyeditors I've found on the internet. Do I have any options? Am I going to have to sell a kidney here? :-)

Thanks in advance for any and all advice!

Well, the production companies are not generally up for the idea of letting me use their images, so it's looking like it's going to have to be published without (but on the plus side, no need to worry about paying a massive licensing fee!) I'm now trying to find a copyeditor that's not going to cost me the absolute earth... any tips on that would also be appreciated, although I'm getting the impression they're all pretty expensive for a non-fiction manuscript!

Thanks again!

I just realised I never replied to say thank you for your help! Apologies - I really appreciate the advice; it was really very helpful and got me pointed in the right direction. Thank you!

Hi everyone

No idea who to ask about this, but I reckon if anywhere can answer this question for me, it's got to be the Postgrad Forum! I'm about to sign one of those pre-contract contracts with a publisher to publish my thesis (the one that says send it to us by such-and-such a date and we'll publish it if we like it). I'm pretty excited about this, as it's a major academic publisher and I cannot WAIT to see my lil baby in print! However... It's a Film Studies thesis, so images are a big deal, I can publish without, but I'd like to include them if I can. The publisher wants me to secure copyright permissions before submission. I have no idea how to do this and am suspecting it's going to involve the exchange of Big Money. If that's the case, then I'll be publishing without images! But does anyone have any experience of this / know how to begin to approach copyright owners / know where to start looking / etc? Any advice gratefully received!

Ooooh dear. Well. My original first supervisor has okayed everything. So has my current first (again, but, like I say: trust issues. I know she hasn't read the full thing, because she said so, and she also said she doesn't intend to). EVERYONE says it's time to submit. But then my original first started pointing out how unfair she thought some of the examiners' comments were (I concur, and have been trying to get someone else to listen to me on this for a year now), and now I'm back to panicking that this is an exercise in futility and NOTHING I do will please the examiners.

I know, I know. I'm irritating MYSELF at this point. Imagine how much fun I am to live with... :-)

Oh Lordy, deep breaths aren't even in it anymore! :-) I'm being hideously high maintenance about the whole thing...

I've asked my former first supervisor to have a glance at it and I hope she'll be able to (she is the absolute BEST supervisor in history and I was gutted when she had to leave halfway through my PhD) but truthfully? I don't know that anyone can convince me that it's okay right now. I swear this whole R&R has destroyed my sense of perspective! :-)

So... Just about this time last year, I got Revise and Resubmit. I've completed all my revisions and I have just under a month left until my resubmission deadline and was feeling pretty YAY about finally getting the work done. Then I was annotating my examiners' notes, to indicate where in the thesis I'd addressed their concerns, and I suddenly started to completely freak out that I actually HAVEN'T addressed their concerns (sometimes I feel like I haven't addressed them at all, sometimes I feel like I haven't addressed them enough. The level of self-torture varies). Now, there's a tiny little rational spark in me that says, "This feeling is almost certainly perfectly normal. Surely everyone feels like this prior to resubmission?" However, it's TINY tiny. Mostly my brain is a big screaming panic of "OMG OMG OMG OMG I AM ABSOLUTELY GOING TO FAIL AT THIS AND NOW I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME LEFT TO REWRITE EVERYTHING AND I WON'T GET A SECOND CHANCE IT'S JUST GOING TO FAIL AND THAT WILL BE FOUR WASTED YEARS AND I'M A COMPLETE FAILURE." It's not fun in my head at the moment. Anyone fancy sharing a success story or even just telling me this anxiety is normal? Surely the nerves are to be expected and aren't some kind of ominous sign that all is lost?

Seriously, I HATE revise and resubmit... :-)

PS - my supervisor has okayed all the corrections and thinks it's time to resubmit. But I have a couple of trust issues with her, which doesn't help my peace of mind.

Hi Marasp - sorry, I know this is a little late, but I just read your post and wanted to say I know exactly how you feel! Your viva sounds almost identical to mine, right up to the circumstances preceding it. I had a very poor choice of external examiner and have been told several times since that the thesis ought to have passed and probably would have with a different external. In any case, it was a horrible, horrible surprise to be given R&R and I spent the days (and weeks) afterwards in a terrible state, alternating between trying to be positive and feeling like a complete failure. What's worse is that no-one I know has had a similar result, and now all my friends - including those who started a year after me - have passed their vivas first go. While I'm delighted for them (of course), it's a little bit heartbreaking every time.

I hope you're feeling better about the whole thing by now but please feel free to send a PM if you want to rant with someone who knows exactly how necessary ranting is during R&R! Not a day goes by when I don't have a minor (or major) panic about the process but it's nearly over now and I'm hoping to resubmit in January. Kikuka - congratulations and I'm so glad to read that it CAN be done! Just what I needed to hear today! :-)

Oh my goodness, I'm glad I found this thread! 1 in 12 theses get R&R and the majority pass? I SO needed to hear that! I'm coming to the end of a surprise R&R (everyone thought I'd pass - seems that the external examiner was a disastrous choice) and have had another huge set-back today when the external informed my Head of Faculty (long, inglorious story as to why it's him and not my supervisor in contact with the external) that she wouldn't be answering any requests for clarification on the examiners' notes. In my head that equates to "I have no intention of passing this student and am covering my back for when I fail her." But it's been a bad day (a bad nine months!)

James - your viva sounds very similar to mine, in all honesty! I thought it went really well and it was a terrible shock to get the result I did. Again, I was told unofficially that part of the R&R decision was down to the fact that I was working full-time at that stage and they were worried I wouldn't have time to complete in 6 months (but it seems a bit crazy - I mean, "Pass with major corrections" is at least a pass! The result they've given me could still allow my thesis to fail). Thanks for sharing your story - I completely understand the feeling of being robbed of your moment - all of my friends in the year below me have now had their vivas and passed straight out, and, while I'm absolutely delighted for them, it's a little bit heartbreaking for me.

Pineapple29, thanks for your reply! It's such a relief to hear from someone in the same situation (I don't know anyone who's had Revise and Resubmit). Supervisors are keeping quiet for the time being, but they're probably on their Christmas break by now. In any case, they're not precisely helpful. My first advised me against getting in touch with my external at all in case she "confused me". My biggest issue is that my external is from outside my field and is asking me to do a lot of work that's specific to HER field, in which I'm not even nearly an expert (and my university doesn't even have a department in her field, so there is literally no-one in my institution who can advise me!), and now won't comment on what it is she needs me to do. Yep, she was a disastrous choice for external! This is what makes me think she's already made her mind up: it's like she's setting me up to fail...
:-(

Thanks for the good wishes - and the very same to you! If you wanted to swap horror stories via email, I'm up for that! :-)

Hi - and sorry if I've made you more anxious about the submission process! My situation is the result of a really specific catalogue of errors happening one after the other and it's not typical as far as I can tell! None of my friends have had similar issues with submission; I've just been really unlucky.

Yeah, it's already escalated to the Head of the Faculty of Arts (who's the person that actually gave me the news that the external won't answer any questions. He's been liaising with her on my behalf) so there's no-one else, really. I'm hoping my sups can give me some advice when they get back after Christmas and trying hard not to panic in the meantime.

I'd love to hear someone's opinion on this, if at all possible? Finishing up revisions as part of a Revise and Resubmit and I asked for some clarification on some really vague instructions - but the external refused to clarify further. So far, the whole process has been a nightmare from start to finish and my supervisors have been less than supportive, so I'm well aware that I have a propensity to catastrophise (I suppose it's the notion that no-one's got my back so I have to prepare for the worst) but does that seem... unusual? Or is that fairly typical? In my paranoid brain, it means that the external has already decided not to pass the thesis but, like I say, I'm well aware that I have a tendency to think the worst. Anyone have any experience with this? Thanks for any and all responses.

Thanks again! It's so helpful to have someone look at this objectively (there is a tendency to feel it all very personally, as you say).

That's really helpful, thank you. I'd already planned to send them back an annotated copy of their notes, explaining where I'd made the corrections but my major fear is that, where they are open to interpretation (and contradictory in places), my interpretation won't be the same as their interpretation and they will fail my thesis (I know everyone always says that the supervisors and examiners just want you to pass, but that really hasn't been my experience of the process at all). I really don't want to be That Student That Won't Stop Pestering but I also don't want to fail the PhD because I should have done something one way and nobody told me in advance. It's incredibly comforting to hear I'm not alone in this experience, though - thanks again. The way my supervisor has been getting on, you'd think I was the first student in history to be given a Revise and Resubmit.