First Draft Matchmaker

What is First Draft Matchmaker?

At one of our presentations, we heard that finding a friendly, knowledgeable colleague to review one's work before sending it off to a potential publisher can be difficult. This can be especially true if you're a solo librarian wanting to make your first foray into writing for publication. 

To help our colleagues, regardless of experience, we have developed this program to connect authors with reviewers for some initial feedback.

What types of work might be reviewed?

• Op-ed pieces

• Essays

• Articles

• Case studies

• Research papers

• Book chapters

• Conference proposals

Reviewers can volunteer for the types of documents they’d be willing to review, and can indicate approximately how many they would be able to review while respecting their time and energy.

Reviewers can read through the document to look for:

• Unclear phrasing

• Continuity issues

• Terminology that may need to be clarified further

The reviewers will not be able to:

• Review lengthy manuscripts such as entire books, or multiple works due to the potential impacts on their workloads

• Review materials outside the scope of library literature

• Provide detailed feedback on one’s research methodology (unless this a particular area of their expertise and they volunteer to)

• Ensure that the work is in its final, publishable state

To volunteer as a reviewer, head to our Reviewer page. 

To be matched with a colleague to review your work, head to our page to request a review.