Guidelines for authors

The WIIS-NL blog provides articles on gendered international security issues taking a multi-disciplinary approach which includes but is not limited to WIIS focus areas. This blog aims to reach a broad audience of academics, practitioners, students, and interested members of the general public.

What is needed for a blog?

In order to post a blog, the editorial team will need more than just a text. Here is a list of what is needed to post on the WIIS Blog: 

• Title: choose a relevant and short headline, but keep in mind that titles are one of the most important factors for Google. Using key words is a must in every title and subtitle.  
• Lead/ abstract: the lead is a short phrase or sub-heading that captures the essence of the article. The maximum number of characters it may contain is 300 (including spaces and punctuation).  
• Main text: this is the main body of the blog. See further down the guidelines for requirements for the text. 
• Picture: the editor the author will choose a relevant picture to appear next to the article, preferably a .jpg-extension. If possible, match the picture file’s name with the topic to help Google indexing, for example: terrorism.jpg. The picture should not be subject to copyright. It is the editors responsibility to ensure there is no copyright infringement. If any credit is required for use of the image, e.g. a Creative Commons attribution, the editor must provide it. 
• Tweet: whenever a new blog is posted, an announcement will be made via WIIS social media accounts. The blog editor and/or the digital officer will provide the taglines/hashtags needed to draw attention to the blog article.  

Guidelines

The main text of the blog has to meet several requirements to be posted on WIIS Blog: 

• The article should be between 500-800 words long; 
• It is best (but not mandatory) to use a standard structure of texts: an introduction stating a problem or question, main body of relevant information and a conclusion circling back to the subject posed in the introduction; 
• Where necessary, use headers for different paragraphs; 
• Footnotes are not possible in the blog format; 
• All WIIS-NL blog content must make an original contribution to our knowledge of gender and security;
• All sources must be referenced: when referencing sources and facts, use hyperlinks. These may refer to texts, audio and video. 

Procedure

The editorial team aims to post at least one blog a month. 

• By the scheduled date, the authors send blog contributions to wiisnlblog@gmail.com, after which the editors will send a confirmation email; 
• The editors will review the blog and aim to provide feedback within a week after receiving a blog entry. At this stage the blog can be provisionally accepted, or rejected;
• After reviewing the blog, the editors will send it to the author who can process the feedback and resubmit their blog;
• The editors will post the blog and notify the author when the blog is online; 
• Once it is live, anyone is free to advertise and distribute the link via Twitter, LinkedIn or elsewhere.  

Contributor page

When you write your first blog, a contributor page will be made so readers will know a little bit more about the author. Needed for the contributor page are: 

• Bio: a short description of yourself (100 words);
• Picture;
• Your personal website (linkedin/twitter/facebook).