If you think the journals have a lot of errors, that tells me you have not been a regular reader recently and you're just going on an old reputation, that like most reputations, unfortunately dies hard, no matter the current facts.
There has been a great deal of time and attention going into proofreading since I have been at Eastmans', and this is my fourth year. I was actually hired to do the proofreading back then because I wrote in and complained about too many typos in what was otherwise my favorite magazine. Before you know it, I was the new proofreader.
Since then, I have taken on additional duties but I still proofread every single word of EHJ and another person does EBJ. I read each story and article two or three times with breaks in-between so I can catch things better. The articles I write I have others proofread after me. After that, several other people proofread the journals once they are in their final format.
In addition to that, we have worked to standardize things, to change processes that are more likely to produce errors and made other improvements I won't go into now.
We take proofreading so seriously that on this issue we just sent to the printers, in addition to all the story and article proofeading, I spent probably 25 hours just going through the MRS tables in depth, going back to the original reports and doing spot checks on just about every column, asking for change when I ran across an error, asking for rewording or clarifications and good footnotes.
You say hire a JUCO proofreader? I'm a writer and editor with two advanced degrees and two professional certifications. I think that exceeds your request.
Occasionally, you will still find a random error. Hey, I read the Wall St. Journal, one of the world's great newspapers, every day, and occasionally find errors there too. Then I read what people post online (your own first post has a typo) and articles on the internet and I find frequent errors. There's a reason many magazines and newspapers have a small corrections section somewhere.
It is almost impossible to put out a journal with 20-30,000 words per issue and have a 0% error rate, but we come very, very close,and it ticks me off to hear people say the journals are full of errors and typos. It is simply not true anymore.
You may also find an error sometimes in the huge tables we put together that often run well over 2,000 bits of information in each table. We (myself in particular) always welcome someone pointing out an error and we fix those in the digital version and for the MRS Annual. But, we much prefer an email instead of someone getting on the forum with the kind of comment you posted. It's inflammatory and unnecessary. You found a two-letter typo. Congratulations. If that ruined the magazine for you, I just don't know what to say other than some people really get off on finding faults and like to shout criticisms as loud as they can. That, I just don't get.
I don't know of any all-around higher quality hunting magazines than the Eastmans' journals. We have heard many times from companies that they want to advertise in the journals expressly because of the quality they see there. And, if you've noticed, more advertisers have been coming on board the last few years.
Bottom line - we have very few errors anymore and we work very hard to make it that way. The satisfaction I get from knowing that they are high quality and the emails we get from the occasional reader that writes in to say thanks are enough for me to not get rattled when someone for some reason wants to crow about an error they found somewhere.
