Academic admitting nothing comes before studying and checking text (12)

I believe the answer is:

proofreading

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'studying and checking text' is the definition.
I can't judge whether this defines the answer.

'academic admitting nothing comes before' is the wordplay.
'academic' becomes 'prof' (short for professor).
'admitting' indicates putting letters inside (admit can mean to welcome in or accept).
'nothing' becomes 'O' (looks like zero - 0).
'comes before' becomes 'reading' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'prof' enclosing 'o' is 'proof'.
'proof'+'reading'='PROOFREADING'

Can you help me to learn more?

(Another definition for proofreading that I've seen is " Checking printed text for errors".)

I've seen this clue in The Times.

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