Content guidelines
We categorize blog posts in research highlights, commentaries and Special Issue contributions. Research highlights may include a summary or critical discussion of your own paper that has recently been published or is in the submission process. With commentaries, you can publish critical discussions of other people’s work or opinionated but informed perspectives on topical issues or controversies. This can include responses to previous posts. So far, we have called for contributions to two Special Issues: Utopias and Science & Ideology. Check them out!
As a general rule of thumb, contributions should contribute to conceptually understanding or practically resolving grand challenges in any significant manner. We particularly value content with a critical, reflective and emancipatory spirit that includes perspectives on or from the Global South. The definition of the broad term grand challenges is consciously left open and we invite for critical reflection and discussion thereupon.
Submission requirements
Who can submit and what can be submitted?
- Research highlights: all members the UNIL community.
- Commentaries or contributions to Special Issues: open to everyone.
Submission length, format and language?
- Blog posts should range between 500-1000 words, excluding references.
- Include maximally one or two figures or tables.
- In exceptional cases we may accept posts of up to 1500 words.
- English non-technical language.
Submissions must directly contribute to conceptually understanding or practically resolving Grand Challenges in any significant way. Authors must submit a short bio including their institutional affiliation and accept the Blog’s legal disclaimer and comment’s policy.
Referencing guidelines: Kindly follow Nature referencing style to increase readability (see guidelines here, section references) or provide your references with functional hyperlinks directly in-text. You can select this referencing style in your reference management software (e.g., Zotero).
Submission process
Submitting content is simple! There are three steps:
- Expression of interest. See submission form below.
- Submit your full manuscript. After submitting the online form, an editor will get in touch with you via email. You can then proceed to submit your full manuscript. Take care that it meets our submission requirements! Together with your full manuscript, please also submit via email to your editor:
- Suggestive high-resolution cover photo, with creative commons licence or appropriate photo credit (for example on Unsplash) *
- Short bio (max. 60 words) + high-resolution photo
- Twitter or LinkedIn handle if available
- Publication of the blog post. Accepted blog posts will be published within 2-6 weeks
Expression of interest - Submit a short proposal or abstract to us and fill in the following form:
If you have any open questions, please directly contact an editor via email.
