Writers' Guide
The WiN UK blog is a collection of articles and insights from neuroscientists and anyone connected to neuroscience. We have resident writers on our Blog Team who write regularly, but we also welcome articles from members of our community as guest writers.
The blog is published here on our website and many articles are shared with our community through social media.
If you are interested in writing for us, you can send us your pitch through the web form at the bottom of the Blog home page).
Even if you are not ready to pitch an article, you can join our Writers' Workspace on Slack to see what's going on. Through our Writers' Workspace you will see regular article prompts from the editors (these are articles that we think would be a good fit on the blog and are looking to assign a writer to); pitch your own article idea to the relevant editor; and chat with our team.
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If you would like to join our Writers' Workspace, register by emailing your first name, last name, position (e.g. PhD student, Communications Assistant, Research Technician) and institution/company to blog.womeninneuroscience.uk@gmail.com with Slack Join Request in the subject line.
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Below is a more detailed guide about the writing process at WiN UK, and you can get in touch anytime at blog.womeninneuroscience.uk@gmail.com.
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Why write for us?
Writing for a blog is not like academic writing - it is much more flexible and creative, and something we hope you can have fun with. The editorial team is here to help you shape and polish your writing, never to reject it, so don’t be shy - we would love to hear your ideas!
You absolutely do not need to be a highly experienced writer or sci-commer to write for our blog, or at a certain stage of your career - everyone is welcome to share with our community.
The WiN blog exists to provide a platform for neuroscientists at all stages of their careers to hone their communication skills, and to be a source of insight and advice for anyone in search of it. We hope that everyone can both gain from and contribute to our network!
If you aren’t sure yet what you would like to do, you can join the writers’ community channel on our Slack workspace to hear about upcoming writing opportunities, or just to chat with our editors!
What type of articles can I write?
Blogs are one of the most flexible writing mediums and so we are open to all your ideas but below you can find some general guidance.
Bear in mind that writing for a blog audience is very different to writing a scientific report. It should be enjoyable and easy to read, and you are telling a story rather than writing about a topic.
Below are more detailed explanations of standard article types but they do not cover all the possibilities so feel free to pitch something else! Word counts are for guidance and should be used loosely. There is no problem with writing a longer article as long as it is engaging and relevant throughout and no problem with shorter articles as long as it covers the necessary information.
We have three loose threads on our blog:
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Reality
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A large part of the content and focus of the article should be the thoughts and experiences of the writer or interviewee. This can be supplemented with the writer’s own research on the subject to provide background and connectors to help structure the experiences/interview into a story.
Articles in this section may be written in a more relaxed and personal style: feel free to discuss your own opinions or those of the interviewee rather than remaining objective about facts. Articles may be, for example, ‘a day in the life’ style blog; interview with an expert/experienced person; opinion pieces; advice columns;
The article can be built around either an experience (e.g. the process of a major breakthrough they were involved in; what is was like to set up a new lab from scratch) or a topic/debate (e.g. where are we at with organoids?; how can we approach studies of consciousness ethically?). If a topic is under debate, you may consider having two or more interviewees to provide a balanced coverage.
An article of this type would be typically ~750-1250 words.
Research
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Explaining the key facts, caveats, and context of either a recent piece of neuroscientific news (‘news report’) or a wider scale dissemination of a neuroscientific topic (‘feature’).
A news report is shorter and snappier (~500-750 words), typically focussing on just one specific recent discovery with a small amount of background to provide some context. It is not a scientific report/paper. Avoid listing hard facts and unnecessarily technical language. The article should be engaging to non-experts, so inject some animation, anecdotes and analogies into your story-telling.
A feature is longer and broader (~1000-1500 words), bringing together many sources to summarise debates or social implications (e.g. lessons learned, ethics, history). It is not an academic review paper - choose your angle early on and stick to it.
Reviews
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Give a critique of a book, podcast, event etc (~500 words) with anecdotes or quotes, and a personal twist. Whereas reports on science should be objective, a review should be subjective and can be more informal in order to form connection with the reader - they should have a sense of there being a real person behind the words.
How do I
choose a topic?
The editorial team release prompts every month to spark article ideas. You can take a prompt as is; tweak it, take a different angle on the topic; or pitch something entirely of your own!
If you already know what you’d like to write about, skip on to How do you submit an article?, otherwise read on here for some tips on coming up with your own article pitch.
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Pick your topic
Want to write but don’t know what about? Inspiration can come from many places…
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News outlets and press releases
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Commission feed from editors
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Other science magazines/blogs/feeds
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An exciting paper from your field or coursework
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Research that you work on yourself
If you want to get into writing, to start getting ideas and style flowing in your mind, immerse yourself in good examples. Start listening to neuroscience podcasts, reading journalism and blogs, and follow other sci-commers on Twitter!
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2. Choose your angle
The internet is full of information, and we have textbooks, academic review articles, and Wikipedia at our disposal.To make a topic worthwhile to write or read about, you need to bring an interesting or unique perspective to it rather than simply rewriting an article that is already out there. The angle could be…
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Piecing together the history leading up to something
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Debating the ethics of an neuroscientific issue
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Providing your insights on a process or experience to help others who are thinking about doing something similar (e.g. PhDing as a first-gen, moving across the world for a post-doc, going into a non-academic job after PhD)
As a scientist it is easy to forget that the obscure details of your niche are not obviously or immediately exciting to others. When choosing what to report and while writing, consider what about it is interesting to the reader. For example:
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Extremes - very big or very small, very old or very futuristic
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Significant impact on society/healthcare
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Major disruption to what was previously believed, or how things were previously done
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Funny/emotional/insightful aspect to story
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Relatable or helpful
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Overturning a common misunderstanding
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Relevant for an exciting/important debate
In all cases, you must make sure to explain the context of a discovery and its impact.
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How do you
submit an article?
Writing for us is easy! You absolutely do not need to have a lot of writing experience, our editorial team is here and ready to support you as much or as little as you want.
3. Pitch your idea
When you know what you want to write about and have a rough plan, let us know! If you join our writers’ Slack workspace, you can talk directly to the editors there. Otherwise, you can fill in the submission form on our website, or get in touch with the editors at blog.womeninneuroscience.uk@gmail.com.
If you are writing about something scientific (vs a personal article), please include one or two key references in your pitch.
The editors will review your pitch (we are not a ruthless team here to reject pitches, just to make sure that your focus and ideas are well aligned before you start writing) and add you to our Slack writers workspace if you aren’t there already. Through Slack, the editors will work with you to prepare your article. You may wish to stay on our Slack channel after completing your article - you can read about what goes on there at the top of the guide.
4. Writing
Once the editors have been back in touch, it’s time to start writing. It’s a good idea to start with a list of the points that you need to include for the story to make sense to a reader who knows nothing about the topic or its background. From here, build your paragraphs around them - typically one major idea per paragraph - and make sure everything is linked. Fill it out with analogies, interesting and relevant historical or linked stories (e.g. talking about organoids? You can throw in a sentence about the basis of all this over a hundred years ago with the study of sponge cells re-aggregating). It is these ‘soft’ aspects among the ‘hard’ facts that make the story interesting.
Feel free to include images or figures, but consider copyright rules if work is not your own - anything included must have its origin referenced including if it is your own work.
5. Send us your draft
Once you have a complete story, send a copy of your work to the appropriate editor on Slack, or to blog.womeninneuroscience.uk@gmail.com with
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Author name
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Author Twitter/Instagram handles (optional – if included, we will tag you if your article is shared on our social media)
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Working title
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Byline (one or two sentence summary of the article)
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Article
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References for major scientific points if appropriate
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Cover image (please make sure it is either your own image, or has an appropriate copyright license e.g. Creative Commons, in which case please include the relevant details required by the license – if you need support with this, just ask!)
6. Editing process
An editor will review your work and add their comments and suggestions - everything from grammar to flow, style and content. You will receive this annotated copy back and from there engage with the editor via the comments section to get the article ready for publishing. Typically the first round of comments will be related to structure, content and style (‘sub-editing’) and once these are settled, you will receive edits for grammar, spelling, punctuation and word count (‘copy-editing’).
7. Publishing
Once the writer and editor are both happy, the article will be formatted by the editors for uploading to the website. You will be notified once the article is published and we encourage you to share your work on social media! Anything published on our blog may well be featured on our social media, and if you provided your social media links, we will tag you in the post.
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