What makes successful mentor-mentee collaboration?

- In the last of our series of posts from AuthorAID Mentors of the Year 2016, Shiri Diskin from Israel shares her experience of mentoring with AuthorAID and reflects how important a relation between mentor and mentees is.

Shiri signed up as a mentor in 2013 and has been involved in nine AuthorAID mentoring interactions during 2016.

I am a professional editor and, as such, my contribution to the mentoring process at AuthorAID is helping mentees in thorough review and editing of existing documents. The best outcome that I can perceive for collaboration between me and my mentees is the acceptance of a paper by my mentee for publication.

I find that such success is achieved when the scientific question and the measures taken to answer it, are very clear to the authors. In such cases, the writing runs smoothly and it is easy to help the authors express their ideas coherently in appropriate English.

Another facet that is important to me is the coordination of expectations. I am happy to provide the best assistance I can, within the scope of my expertise. I always make sure to explain to any potential mentee what type of support they can expect to receive from me, and what they cannot, including writing their paper for them, conducting statistical analyses, guiding through the design of a project etc.

Coming from the industry, timelines are very important to me. I try to return comments to authors within their stated timelines, to allow them to implement and revise, when needed, and still meet their deadlines.

I wish you all the very best of luck in your writing collaborations!

Read profile of Shiri Diski here.