Please read our CONTRIBUTOR GUIDELINES before submitting your story here. Any content that does not comply with our guidelines will not be accepted.
Follow these steps to create your submission document:
Title
Create a title that clearly describes the topic you are addressing in the article.
- The topic Keywords or Key Phrase should appear at the beginning of the title and in the first paragraph, if possible.
- The title should grab people’s attention without being spammy or clickbait.
- We suggest you use a headline analyzer like Sharethrough or CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer to see how well it will engage readers.
- We reserve the right to edit the title to meet best practice for title creation.
Body
The story narrative should be at least 1000 to 2500 words (longer is fine).
- It should be divided into short (2-3 sentence) paragraphs.
- Please don’t have run-on sentences in your story.  They should only be about 20 words long.
- Limit passive voice.
- Use transition words like “most importantly,” “because,” “therefore,” or “besides” to provide guidance to the reader.
- Insert subheadings about every 300 words. These should contain your topic’s Keywords or Key Phrase or their synonyms.
- All factual statements should be supported by links to high-quality links sources or references. DO NOT insert links that promote products or sites that are selling services. They will be removed or, in some cases, will lead to your article being rejected. Promotional links are only allowed in the author’s bio.
These suggestions increase the readability of your article on the internet, particularly for the vast majority of our readers who access via their smartphones.
If you don’t make these changes, we will – if the story is accepted. That slows down the pre-publication process.
Please note that we edit all of our articles so that they are readable, evidence-based, and have current link/references. If we make substantial changes, we will send it to back for approval or additional changes.
Author’s bio and headshot
Put the author’s brief bio at the bottom of the story in the same document.
- Provide the author’s name in the way it should appear in the byline
- Include the author’s professional degrees, e.g., M.D., Ph.D., R.N., etc.
- It should also include the following detailed information:
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- Undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate education (area of focus and name of institution)
- Current employment including some information about how it is relevant to the topic of the submission
- Relevant past employment and experiences
- Significant volunteer work
- 2-5 relevant publications (can be peer-reviewed, industry-related press, or online publications
- The body of the bio should make clear to readers why the author is qualified to write about the topic and why the information can be trusted.
- Also include something personal (e.g., hobbies, travel) so readers feel they know more about the author.
- You may include links to the author’s website or company, highlighted products, etc. Commercial links are not allowed in the body of the article.
- Embed a high-quality 250 x 250 px headshot below the bio. This will appear together with the bio below all of your published articles. It must be included in the submission form.
- Regular contributors need not submit a new bio – simply write that you approve the use of the existing bio and headshot.
- Include the full URL for any social media links that you would like to appear below the bio. It should look like this: https://twitter.com/docweighsin not like this: @docweighsin.
- Regular contributors should direct us if they want to add new social links or remove old ones.
- The author’s email must be included – we will not publish it unless you give us permission to do so. We need it in order to notify the author when comments that need a response are posted. We also need it to contact the author in the event an agency submitting the story is no longer representing the author. This is a required element.
Featured photo
We appreciate submissions of featured photos that help tell the story you are trying to convey. It will appear at the top of the story and serves to encourage people to read your story.
- Featured photos should be at least 2500 x 1500. Larger is ok. We will size it correctly on our end.
- You must own the rights to the photo or have explicit permission to use it.
- Here is an article where you can obtain free photos: https://blog.snappa.com/free-stock-photos/
- Please include information about where you purchased it or provide the details of what free site you obtained it from (e.g., Pixabay, Pexels, Unsplash, Flicker, Wikipedia, etc) in the appropriate place on the submission form. If the site provides the name of the photographer, please include that as well. This information will appear below the photo with the label “photo source.”
- DO NOT EMBED THE PHOTO in the submission form. Instead, provide us with the URL of the photo at the bottom of the submission document.
- We reserve the right to use a different featured photo if we feel it will better support the story.
- Cut and paste this language below the photo URL:
I agree that the images I upload here are license-free and within legal boundaries of copyright laws
Media for the body of the content
If you want to include images, infographics, or graphs in your content, be sure that they meet the following requirements before submitting them.
If you want to include images, infographics, or graphs into your content, be sure that they meet the following requirements before submitting them.
- Size:Â Images should be between 2500-2000 x 900-1700
- Format:Â Image should be either JPG or PNG.
- Original: Images must be your own or original and not images you have downloaded without permission. If you want to use an image you downloaded from the Internet, you must attain the rights to use the images and provide the needed proof or approval issued to use the said images.
- Personal images:Â These are encouraged only if the content gives descriptions, specific exercise routines, or techniques not known to others. Personal images must be of high quality in order to be included in your story.
- Make sure all of the images included in your submission application are captioned with where you got the image and the type of license from which it was obtained, e.g., Creative Commons, Rights Managed, Royalty-Free, Public Domain, etc.).
- We reserve the right to not include your submitted images in the story.
If the files are large, please put them on Google Docs and share the files with us or email them to [email protected]. Be sure to note that in your submission document.
Financial disclosure
Please provide a sentence that makes clear any financial interests that could potentially be viewed as biasing the content you have submitted.
- We are fine with stories that describe products or companies, but we want to make clear any potential biases.
- Please note if you do not provide this statement, we will craft one to include at the end of the story.
Contributor agreement
Acknowledge that you have read and agree to accept the terms and agreements as outlined in our Contributor Agreement.
Submit Your Content
We will acknowledge receipt of the submission by return email.
It can take up to two weeks for us to make a decision about whether to accept your article for publication. If you haven’t heard from us by that time, please send us an email at [email protected].
Thanks for submitting your work to TDWI. We look forward to reading your stories.
The TDWI team