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Why Publish on The Doctor Weighs In?

The Doctor Weighs In (TDWI) has developed a reputation for being THE website for doctors, clinicians, and respected health journalists to publish articles on health care topics they’re most passionate about. 

Founded in 2005, TDWI garners millions of page views a year with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. Our readers, a general public consumer audience, have come to expect well-researched and trustworthy information from our site. 

With an actively-engaged audience, who have built their own community within the site, our readers turn to us to inspire and motivate them to take action to reach their goals. 

If you’re a doctor, nurse, and other professional looking to expand your reach and credibility, our global platform is the perfect forum for you. Between our on-site traffic and social media followers, we effectively amplify your digital footprint. 

Every published piece features the following elements that expand your personal branding reach and credibility:

  • Author photo
  • Author bio (may include personal links of your choosing)
  • Author credentials
  • Links to your chosen social media profiles

Our team is a digitally oriented group of writers, editors, curators, and social media mavens, all focused on making science, medicine, and health care accessible to all who want to learn more about these important topics.

Because we are sticklers for stories supported by credible medical evidence, your content will be among widely respected voices that are leaders in fields such as medical research and health policy. Once your story passes our first review, we’ll work with you to strengthen it so that it not only meets our exacting standards, but is something you will be extremely proud to share with colleagues and your online network.

Publication on TDWI enhances your reputation as a writer and authority, broadening the reach of your stories via our social media channels, including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Medium. You also have the opportunity to be featured in our newsletters that reach many thousands of our readers. If we choose to make an accompanying video of your story, you will also be featured on our YouTube channel as well as our Facebook page. Many of our stories become “evergreen” and continue to attract readers many years after they are initially published.

We make it easy to submit your work. Follow our Contributor Guidelines found on this page, then click on the Submit Your Content button below to review our submission checklist and upload your content.

Submit your content

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What We Publish

We handpick our content from the best writers, the most compelling topics, and credible sources that meet our high standards of publishing.

We are constantly looking for outstanding writers—doctors, nurses, clinicians, and experienced healthcare journalists with established reputations for high-quality work. We give preference to people with a clinical background or with experience strongly relevant to the topic they are writing about.

If you can parlay your passion for healthcare and combine it with a talent for translating evidence-based medicine into readable stories that engage readers, please review our guidelines for contributing.

Content we NEVER publish

Copied content. Content is checked for plagiarism and will be immediately rejected if flagged by our scanning systems.
We no longer accept articles previously published on other sites.
We absolutely will not accept content based on pseudoscience or biased and unfounded health or medical claims that do not reflect the use of reputable and reliable sources (e.g. “Drop 20 pounds in 10 days with this new miracle weight loss supplement”).
No hateful, bigoted, or mean-spirited posts.
No use of content that infringes third-party trademarked, copyrighted, or patented material without permission.
No sales-focused soliciting or product promotional content.

Pitching Topics

Healthcare Professionals & Freelance Writers

Please do not send us generic pitches (e.g., I would love to write for you. What topic do you want me to write about? I can write about anything, tell me what to do.) Due to the overwhelming number of generic pitches we receive, we are unable to respond to these on an individual basis.

  • Spend some time on our site to see what we are currently writing about and what has been popular in the past. Please note: WE DO NOT HELP AUTHORS CHOOSE THEIR TOPICS. 
  • Choose a topic you have expertise in and then do your homework. Be sure your statements of fact are up-to-date and based on credible sources.
  • Keep in mind the importance of high-quality content. Articles must be written in a professional, native English proficiency that caters to our audience of healthcare professionals, early adopters, and knowledge seekers.

Public Relations Agencies 

PR companies representing healthcare professionals who wish to have us consider a story, interview or book review related to your client’s area of expertise, please send a specific pitch to [email protected].

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Topics Of Interest

  • General Health & Wellness Topics
  • Fitness
  • Food & Nutrition
  • Healthy Aging
  • Innovative Therapies & Treatments
  • Primary Care
  • Sports Medicine
  • Mental Health
  • Alternative Medicine
  • Cognitive Health
  • Health Care Industry
  • Pain Therapy
  • Chronic Conditions
  • Prevention & Cures
  • Parenting
  • Women’s Health
  • Public Health Policy 
  • End-of-Life Care
  • Technology in Health Care
  • Medical Devices

Tips for An Amazing Article

Here are some of the most important ingredients that go into a successful article on our site:

Trust

Medical information on our site is based on the best scientific evidence so that readers know they can trust our content. You must provide high-quality links/references to the evidence. . All factual statements should be supported by links to credible sources (e.g., a link to a peer-reviewed article or reputable medical sites) or endnotes.

Creativity

 Make your article stand out from others. Offer the reader a fresh perspective even if you are writing about a topic that’s been covered extensively. Think like a reader and create titles and content that are interesting and enticing. However, avoid click-bait or other deceptive practices that trick the reader into opening your article—this will lead to rejection of your article.

Details

It’s essential that your content offer high-quality, educational information that our readers can learn from. Our audience is sophisticated so do not shy away from diving into scientific details or complex concepts – just make certain your explanation is readable, engaging, and accurate.

Precision

Be concise in the information provided in the article. Do not use filler to make an article appear longer.

Takeaways

Ensure that readers leave the article with a definite take away once they have finished reading your article.

Be intriguing

The key to keeping a reader continuously engaged is to be as intriguing as possible. Introduce your personality into the content and make it fun and educational at the same time.

How to Format your Article

 

We strive to have every article on our site reach the broadest possible audience over the long-term. To accomplish this goal, we are committed to ensuring each post is optimized so that search engines rank it as high as possible. There are a number of strategies that we ask our authors to incorporate into their content. We believe these steps will help ensure your article is seen by the largest audience.

Keywords

Keywords or phrases help search engines understand what the story is about (for example, “new treatments for gout” or the “risks of knee surgery.” ) 

In general, keywords should appear in:

  • Titles 
  • Headings
  • Subheadings 
  • Within the first 100 words of content
  • Throughout your content 

Use keywords or phrases naturally. That means they have to make sense, fit into the story and be grammatically correct. Avoid “stuffing” your story with keywords.

There are many resources that can help you understand how to determine and use keywords for your topics, such as SEMRush, Also Asked, and Google Trends.

Please try to follow this organization of content:

1. Title 

  • Begin with the Main Keyword
  • Avoid catchy titles that don’t help a reader understand what the topic is about. Example: WRONG: “You Can Beat the Odds” RIGHT: “How a Plant-Based Diet Can Help You Lose Weight
  • Use an online headline analyzer to provide an SEO-friendly title (We reserve the right to change the title, however, to be sure that it is optimized for search).

  1. Subtitle 

  • This will appear just below the title and can be used to highlight the key point of the story

3. Introductory paragraph

  • A 3-4 sentence introduction to the topic. Please use the target keyword within the first 100 words.

  1. Subheadings 

  • Please use keywords, keyword phrases and their synonyms in subheadings. 
  • Limit your content under each subheading to less than 300 words.

  1. Bullet points 

Present important points as bullet points instead of long lists of items in a single sentence

  1. Summary or Concluding Statement

Add an appropriate call to action if it’s relevant to your story. Example: “Leave a comment to let us know how you feel.”

  1. Featured Image & Other Media

The featured image is what appears at the top of your story and encourages readers to engage with your article. Please refer to our Submission Guidelines for more details on the Featured Photo. You may include other images, video, or other media within the body of the content. It’s required that you either own or have permission to use whatever media you submit with your story.

And make sure not to forget…

Internal Links

Internal links are links to other pages on our site. We encourage you to become familiar with what we have already published on your topic. If you find an article on our site that relates to your article, please link to it. 

  • Make sure the linking word or phrase for internal links is relevant to your story’s keywords or phrases.
  • If we have a story that is related to your topic, but it doesn’t work to link to it in the body of the story, please type in caps where you think we could include it as a related story link. 
  • We may also add additional related links to your article.
  • These types of links help enhance TDWI’s Domain Authority and the Authority of your story. All of this helps with SEO.
  • Here is an example of what a related story link looks like: Here are other stories about sleep on TDWI

Author Bio

You may include a brief author bio, credentials, headshot, and links to your website and social media. For more author bio instructions, please refer to our Submission Guidelines.

Article Length

  • Articles should be at least 1000 words, but we encourage longer articles when writers want to dive more deeply into a topic. 
  • 1500-3500 word in-depth articles tend to do better in Google search. However, please do not pad your article with repetitive information just to reach a certain word length.

Cite Sources Properly

We prefer that you use references that are either in peer-reviewed literature (e.g., from PubMed) or come from high quality medical sites (Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Medscape, etc.). We ask that you provide a link to the reference or use endnotes so that our readers can easily learn where the information was derived from. These types of links increase the Domain Authority of TDWI and the overall authority of your story. 

  • Make sure to always put concepts into your own words and avoid unintentionally copying sentences from research materials. Double-check your work for unintentional copying by using Plagiarism Checker.
  • Please use endnotes if you have references that you haven’t provided a direct link to within your article. Writers must us JAMA citations. You can find examples of JAMA citation style here. Use a superscript to cite the content.
  • We welcome you to include additional materials for readers. List any: books, articles, videos, social posts, tweets, or PDFs that can help strengthen your content.

Ensure Readability

All of our articles, even those about technical or complicated medical issues, need to be accessible to a wide variety of readers. Don’t “dumb down” or oversimplify your topic. Instead, use language that makes complicated topics easier to understand for the general health information consumers who are searching for answers to their health-related questions.

Use standard English conversational language. Explain or link to definitions of words or concepts that required further explanation. The goal is to make it easy for your readers to understand your content.

Proofread

Please make sure grammar, spelling, structure are error-free. We suggest running your piece through Grammarly* to help with proofreading. Double-check the validity of your sources. It is a top priority to keep our information accurate and up-to-date.

After Your Story is Posted

Social Media

We promote all of our stories via our various social media channels and encourage you to do the same. Please tag us (@docweighsin) so that we can amplify the message.

Some of our posts are shared on our Medium.com partner page, which can expand your audience even further. If you prefer not to have us share your story here, please notify us when completing the submission form. 

Keep Your Story Current

Many of our stories continue to provide useful information and perform well in search for months or years in the future. We urge you to contact us with updated versions of your story, particularly when information in your article becomes outdated or new information becomes available. We will add the new information or replace the entire story with the new version preserving its connection to the original URL. 

We always notified the readers that the story has been reviewed and updated by the author. Here is an example of story that was both updated and republished: https://thedoctorweighsin.com/killer-abs-at-80-really/. We want all of our stories to be current and useful and will update outdated stories in-house when authors choose not to. When this happens and significant changes are made, we update the by-line and remove the original author from the post.

Promoting Your Story

We do not allow stories published on our site to be published in full on any other site. Please refer to our Contributor Agreement, that must be accepted prior to our acceptance of your work.

You may publish an original description of the article or the first 100 words of the article followed by a link to the URL of your story on our site. Violations of this policy can lead to your story being no-indexed or removed from our site. It will also impact being considered for publication in the future.

FAQs

How long will it take to review my submission?

The review process can take up to 2-3 weeks depending on how much work we need to do on it and how big our queue is. Because of the high influx of submissions we receive, We do our best to reply and cater to the needs of our potential contributors, but due to the volume of messages, we cannot guarantee a response.

When will my accepted article be published on The Doctor Weighs In?

If we approve your submission, it will be published within a month. You will be issued an email notification indicating that the article has been accepted and when it will be ready for publishing. This ensures you’ll be one of the first people to see it.

Do you limit the amount of content or articles I submit at any given time?

There is no limitation as to how much content you can contribute. In fact, the more the content the better, especially if it is high-quality and relevant to us.

If we have already published at least five of your articles with us, you may be eligible to become a regular contributor. Our regular contributors set up a schedule of submissions with us (e.g., monthly, quarterly) and we work with you to get these published on a regular basis. Regular contributors are featured on our About page.

Follow our contributor guidelines found on this page. Then, click on the submission button below to review our submission checklist and upload your content.

Submit your content

Disclaimer

Content published on The Doctor Weighs In is meant to promote news and knowledge of various health news and topics and is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice from a licensed physician or other health care provider.

© 2021 The Doctor Weighs In