Submissions

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We welcome submissions from our readers and members. If you are interested in contributing, please read the following guidelines carefully.

Throughout the year, the Network in Canadian History & Environment publishes news, articles, exhibits and information about resources related to the study of Canada’s past and our relationship with our physical environment. We accept work in English or French. Our readers are primarily members of the academic community in Canada and abroad who are interested in environmental history or historical geography. Many are faculty members or graduate students at Canadian universities. We also attract readers from outside academe who work in government, museums, archives and the general public. All submissions should be written for an intelligent, general audience and unless absolutely necessary should be jargon-free and contain no footnotes. All submissions are subject to editing for length, clarity and style.

Authors retain copyright of submitted material, but grant NiCHE digital publishing rights of all content.

News

If you have news of an upcoming event, past event, or topic that you would like to share with the community, our website has been configured to let you do so. To maximize your message’s effectiveness, follow these guidelines:

  • News stories should be clear and engaging. Always explicitly answer the question So What?
  • Include specific information: When is it? When is the deadline to apply? Where is it? How long will it take? What does it cost? Who is invited? Maps are always helpful for people who are not familiar with your campus or city.
  • Include contact information – at least a name and email address.
  • Photos or graphics are always good – provided they are good photos. A bad photo is worse than no photo at all.

It is always a good idea to ask a friend or colleague unfamiliar with the event or topic to read over your news item before you submit it. They will be able to tell you if you have been detailed enough. Ultimately, your goal should be to write something that resembles a press release. If you have never written a press release, or are not sure what one is, you can significantly improve the impact of your news item by reading “How to Write a Press Release” and following the suggestions.

Once you have written the release, you can then sign in to the website (or create an account) and click the “Submit News” button under the “Contribute” menu.

If your news pertains to an event that will occupy some place in time or space, please use the “Event News” form. If your news is of a more general nature, eg, a comment on a newspaper article or information about a project you’re working on, please use the “News” form.

This message will then be sent to our webmaster who will review it before it is sent out to our subscribers and possibly promoted on our front page. If you have questions about this system, please contact Adam Crymble at acrymbl@uwo.ca.

Feature Articles / Opinion Pieces

If you’d like to submit an opinion piece or featured article for us to publish, we prefer to receive a short written summary of your idea, rather than a completed manuscript. Make sure to explain to us what the idea is, why our readers would be interested in the article, and why you are qualified to write it.Feature articles should introduce readers to a topic about Canadian environmental history or historical geography in an engaging way. Features should be written for a general audience and contain no footnotes (but may contain links). Topics might include, but are not limited to, a profile of how a researcher has engaged the public with his or her work, interesting new research findings, an account of field-research or new technologies that have made new types of research possible. Generally, these pieces can range from 500 to 1500 words, and in some extraordinary cases can run to 2500 words.

Opinion pieces should present a strong point of view belonging to the author and should not be promotions of a particular company, institution or department. Generally, these pieces should be between 750 and 850 words when finished.

Send your summary or questions to Josh MacFadyen using our Contact Form.

An Exhibit or Larger Project

We welcome submissions throughout the year for exhibits, e-books, podcasts or just about anything else that is conducive to an internet platform. For all larger projects please first read our Project Support guidelines. Contact us prior to doing any web design or hiring a web designer to ensure the project is compatible with our website. You do NOT need to know anything about web design to submit an idea.Though NiCHE cannot pay authors, some projects may be eligible for funding from NiCHE to complete the project and bring it to fruition.

Submissions from students and members outside the academic community are welcome.

Shortly after your project has been received you will be contacted by NiCHE and informed whether or not the project fits our mandate. Before submitting a finished project, please see the technical submission guidelines.

For examples of past projects, check out some of our past projects in the Research section of the site – but don’t let this list stifle your imagination.

Technical Standards Guidelines

The following are a list of submission guidelines for those sending materials to NiCHE for posting on the web. They are designed to ease any transition between you submitting your content and us publishing it. NiCHE seeks to maintain high standards in web design and accessibility.
Images

  • Noticeably poor quality images or very low resolution images should not be used (min. 200dpi)
  • Photos and images should have a short file name that reflects the content or associated project. (no Camera auto-naming: ie, “DSC_0089.jpg”)
  • File names should never include blank spaces; use hyphen instead
  • File names should never include upper case letters; this includes file extensions (ie, no “.JPG” – rename to “.jpg” instead)
  • If emailing photos, please resize to no larger than 1024×768 pixels unless original size is necessary for the project. (ie, for a large format poster)
  • Preferred image format is .jpg unless otherwise required by the project.
  • Remove camera date stamp from photos, unless otherwise required by the project. This is generally unsightly.
  • Release forms from parents must be included in any photographs of children.

Audio

  • Audio files should be either .mp3 or .mp4
  • File names should reflect the content and the project it is associated with, (ie, eced001.mp3)
  • File names should never include blank spaces; use hyphen instead
  • File names should never include upper case letters; this includes file extensions (ie, no “.MP3” – rename to “.mp3” instead)
  • Files should be split into their desired lengths and edited prior to submission. NiCHE does not have editing or converting software.
  • Extremely poor quality audio will be included at NiCHE’s discretion.
  • Release forms for all participants must be included with the file.
  • Include a short (max 150 word) abstract of what is on the audio file
  • Include a short (max 100 word) bio of the presenter(s). This can be as simple as their title and affiliation.

Websites

  • Prior to creating a website you want us to host, contact NiCHE to ensure your plan is compatible with our system
  • All pages should conform to the W3C web design standards: http://validator.w3.org/
  • CSS should be used over inline styles whenever possible.
  • Please note that your website will be placed in the following directory: /member-projects/your-project-name. Please ensure any links reflect this.
  • All files in your website should be saved in a single folder that reflects your project name: ie, weather-data
  • File names should never include blank spaces; use hyphen instead
  • File names should never include upper case letters; this includes file extensions (ie, no “.JPG” – rename to “.jpg” instead)
  • Use hypens rather than underscores in file naming. Limit length whenever possible: ie, weather-data.html rather than Weather_Data_Project_2009.html
  • We encourage website designs to be fixed-width, 960px.
  • If any plugins are required to view specific content on your site, please ensure a link is provided for users who may not have the necessary system requirements.
  • We welcome submissions in many file types; however, please do not submit Dreamweaver files. Save them as .html files instead.

Why Didn’t my Material Get Published?

Large project proposals are subject to the review of our executive and may be rejected for a variety of reasons, including budgetary limits or similar initiatives by other members.If you have sent us material to post to the website and it did not appear, the most common answer to this is because you didn’t send us all of the material, or you sent it in so many different emails that some of it got misplaced. Sometimes someone will send us an audio file with a note that “I’ll send you the rest shortly” then they forget or get too busy. Unless you are dealing with an incredibly complex project, it is always best to send all material at the same time. If you are sure you sent everything and several weeks have elapsed, contact Adam Crymble at acrymbl@uwo.ca .

Another reason is that your idea or announcement may not fit our mandate. We seek to disseminate information about Canadian environmental history or historical geography and the associated community. Messages or ideas on unrelated topics will be rejected or removed from the website.

NiCHE encourages comments and constructive discussion of our articles. We reserve the right to delete comments that fail to meet our guidelines including comments under aliases, or that contain spam, harassment, or attacks on an individual.