Transcription is the process of converting audio into text.

Academic transcription refers to transcription related to the field of education.

Who needs academic transcription services? Students, faculty, researchers, and administrative staff of academic institutions form the clientele requiring academic transcription services. Each of these groups has different information to be documented in different formats. The one common factor between the groups however is the need for transcription services to document their information. Therefore, the requirement for transcription services in academic institutions is pretty large and growing every day.

What is the necessity for academic transcription? Academic institutions are in the business of imparting knowledge and like any other business have the need to document information. This documentation process often involves recording of meetings, lectures and other functions associated with an academic institution. These recordings are later converted into text form via transcription.

One major arena in the life of students where transcription plays an important role is when it comes time to doing a project, report, thesis, dissertation, etc. Students at all levels of education are required to produce one or more of the above during the course of their study, more definitely so in the case of graduate or research students. The students would record their interviews and observations and later have them transcribed.

One more place where transcription could ease the life of a student would be in the classrooms themselves. With the advent of high-tech, low cost handy recording devices, students are now able to record the classroom lectures allowing them to concentrate on the lecture itself rather than be distracted with the task of taking down notes simultaneously hoping not to miss anything important. This allows them to replay the recordings later on as well as allowing them to understand the finer nuances of a subject which they might have missed during the initial lecture. Once these recordings are transcribed, then the transcripts themselves form part of the study material and an easily searchable one at that.

Faculties at academic institutions also have the need for transcription services. They may record their lectures for classrooms as well as online courses and need to have it transcribed. These also form a part of the study material.

Just like any other business, academic institutions have a lot of meetings for various purposes. These meetings may be conducted by the management, administrative staff, faculty, may be intradepartmental or interdepartmental meetings which can be recorded and transcribed later. The greatest underlying advantage of recording a meeting is that it leaves the people free to concentrate on what is happening rather than worry about taking notes and hoping not to miss anything important.

This, the importance or value of academic transcription to students, faculty and administrative staff cannot be quantified. It is so vast.

Why use an academic transcription service provider? - Anyone who has attempted transcription knows how time consuming it can be. Academic transcription service providers take on this onerous task freeing up the student, researcher, faculty or administrative staff to work on other things. Specialized transcriptionists working for academic transcription service providers have the technical know how to produce quality transcripts in a faster turn around time.

Choosing an academic transcription service provider - Internet based academic transcription service providers are numerous. Choosing an academic transcription service provider is an important decision.

Obviously, the subject matter of academic transcriptions is going to be widely, widely, widely varied. Needless to say, academic transcription service providers who have had experience in transcribing recordings of interviews/classroom lectures as well as meetings and other educational institutional type of audio and exposure to the varying topics that would naturally form a part of this process or at least the knowledge of where to search for the relevant information to ensure maximum possible accuracy of a transcript are definitely invaluable.

Budget constraints are a reality for both students as well as academic staff. Hence, there is always a need to find affordable transcription service providers. This however does not mean at the sacrifice of quality or turn around.

Hence, the choice would have to be an academic transcription service provider who can provide excellent quality transcripts in a timely manner at affordable rates to suit the budgets of academia.