An Editor Should Not Quietly Become the Author

An editor should improve a work without replacing the mind that produced it.

This sounds obvious until editing becomes excavation.

I recently handed over a substantial research manuscript for what should have been careful refinement: remove repetition, strengthen weak transitions, organize the references and prepare the preliminary pages.

What returned had been rewritten deeply enough to disturb the architecture itself. A six-layer framework became eight. Definitions shifted. Thought sequences moved. The manuscript was cleaner in places—and no longer entirely mine.

That is not editing. It is unauthorized co-authorship performed with excellent punctuation.

An editor has enormous power because the author is often too close to the work to see every flaw. That trust permits correction. It does not permit intellectual renovation without consent.

Cosmetic changes polish the building. Structural changes move the pillars.

The distinction matters even more with artificial intelligence. A machine can rewrite two hundred pages before a human editor has finished sharpening one pencil. Speed makes interference cheap. Repair remains expensive.

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors states that humans remain responsible for the accuracy, integrity and originality of AI-assisted work. It also treats final approval and accountability as central to authorship.

Responsibility without control is a trap.

If an author must answer publicly for every definition, model and conclusion, then no editor—human or synthetic—should quietly alter those foundations and leave the author carrying the consequence.

Good editing asks before it amputates.

It flags the repetition. It identifies the contradiction. It proposes the stronger sentence. When a change affects argument, architecture, evidence or meaning, it returns authority to the person whose name will remain on the cover.

This does not mean authors should worship every sentence they produce. Some paragraphs deserve burial without ceremony. But the burial order must still come from the owner of the cemetery.

The best editor is not invisible because nothing changed. The editor is invisible because the author’s thought became clearer without acquiring a stranger’s skeleton.

Editing should remove fog.

It should not move the mountain and then congratulate the traveller for reaching a different destination.

Abraham Ikongshul Ashindortiang

Sources:

ICMJE: Use of Artificial Intelligence in Publishing

ICMJE: Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors