Guidelines for Contributors
Table of Contents:
2. Get to know our editorial team
4. Honoraria
5. Register your account and set up your profile
6. Interact with the NiCHE community
1. Types of Contributions
The NiCHE website is a popular forum for communicating research and news about nature and the past in Canada and beyond.
Contributors are welcome to consider contributing to our site in seven main categories:
We welcome proposals and submissions to our blog, The Otter ~ La Loutre, related to environmental history, historical geography, environmental humanities, and related fields. We prioritize Canadian content and content created by Canadian scholars or scholars at Canadian institutions, but we are open to publishing on topics from any geographic region, and we enjoy a global readership. We publish and accept content in both English and French; we may consider publishing in other languages on a case-by-case basis. If interested in writing for NiCHE please see the Get to Know our Editorial Team and Write for NiCHE sections below.
The Otter ~ La Loutre Blog Series
If you would like to organize a series of two or more blog posts on a particular topic or project, please contact our editor-in-chiefs with a 250-word proposal.
Papers in Canadian History and Environment (PiCHE)
Papers in Canadian History and Environment is a scholar-led, open-access peer-reviewed occasional research paper series published by NiCHE. It features article-length research papers that examine the historical relationships among people and the rest of nature in Canada. PiCHE seeks long-form research papers (minimum 5000 words) that explore any aspect of the intersections of the environment and history in Canada.
Do you have an online event, lecture, workshop, or conference coming up that you would like to publicize? Is your department hiring an environmental historian? We welcome submissions of relevant news and announcements. To publish your announcement on our website, send your announcement text, any relevant links, and a feature image to nichecanadawebsite@gmail.com.
We publish Call for Papers for conferences, journal special editions, edited collections, and the like related to Canadian history, environmental history, historical geography, environmental humanities, and more. To publish your announcement on our website, send your announcement text, any relevant links, and a feature image to nichecanadawebsite@gmail.com.
Do you have a video, audio/podcast project, or photo essay you would like to share with our network? Would you like to organize an online webinar? We are happy to work with contributors individually to make their ideas reality. If interested in pitching a multimedia project, please send a 250 word description of your project and your media needs to our editor-in-chiefs at nichecanadawebsite@gmail.com and one of our editors will be in touch to discuss possibilities one-on-one.
We are lucky to be able to house independent project pages within our main website. These project pages enable researchers to build autonomous websites while taking advantage of our digital infrastructure and network. If interested in potentially building a project page, please contact our editor-in-chiefs at nichecanadawebsite@gmail.com with a 250 word description of the project and one of our editors will be in touch to discuss possibilities one-on-one.
2. Get to Know our Editorial Team
Our editors are the best people to talk to about how to contribute to NiCHE. You can find out more about our editors and their expertise in their profiles below. Click on their names to learn more about their work and contributions to NiCHE.
Then send a message to our Editor-in-Chiefs at nichecanadawebsite@gmail.com. Include a little information about your proposed contribution (100-250 words) and let them know your preferred editor. If you don’t have a preferred editor, then the editor-in-chiefs will match you with someone to work with. Once you are in contact with an editor and your proposal has been approved, it’s time to start writing!
Editor-in-Chiefs
Jessica DeWitt (English): Parks, US History, American/Canadian West, Recreation, 20th Century
Heather Green (English): Northern History, Indigenous-Settler Relations, Mining History
Caroline C.E. Abbott (English): Animal and Other-Than-Human Histories and Folklore, Gender and Sexuality, Literature and Print Culture, British Colonial Frontiers/American West, 18th and 19th Centuries
Blake Butler (English): Canadian History, Climate/Seasonal/Weather History, Animal (Marine) History, 20th Century History
Claire Campbell (English): Coastal/Maritime, Visual/Cartography, Early Americas, Urban
Isabelle Gapp (English, Swedish): Art History, Arctic and Circumpolar North, Ecocriticism
Philip Gooding (English): Climate History, World Environmental History, African History, HGIS, Digital Environmental History
Paul Hackett (English): Indigenous History, Health History, Indigenous Health, 19th Century, Western Canada
Addie Hopes (English): Poetry & Ecopoetics, Queer Ecology & Ecofeminism, Settler Colonial Studies, Vegan Studies, 21st Century
Mica Jorgenson (English): Natural Resource History, Digital Humanities, Nordic History, Disaster Studies
Sean Kheraj (English): Energy History, Animal History, Urban History, Parks
Estraven Lupino-Smith (English): Critical Political Ecologies, Practice or Arts-Based Methodologies, Queer and Trans Ecologies, Biopower/Biopolitics and Multispecies Justice
Daniel Macfarlane (English): Great Lakes – St. Lawrence, Canada-US Environmental Relations, Water History, Energy History, Climate Change
Gabrielle McLaren (French, English): Canadian History, Health and Medicine, Climate, 19th Century
Nicole Miller (English): Visual Culture, Foraging/Wild Plants, Cultural History, Artistic Research, Collections
James Murton (English): Food, Food Systems, and Agriculture, Capitalism & the Environment, The Canadian West/British Columbia, Rural Canada, Late 19th/20th Centuries
Lori Lee Oates (English): Resource Curse, Mega Dams and Hydroelectricity, Political Economy of Oil, Colonialism, Climate Change
Heather Rogers (English): Digital Humanities, Herbaria & Botanical History, GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums), Critical Plant Studies
Alex Souchen (English): Canadian Military History, History of Science and Technology, Consumption and Waste, Pollution and Toxicity, Ocean History
Sara Spike (English): Oceans and Coasts, Atlantic Canada, Water, Weather, Botany, Visual/Sensory Histories, Community-Engaged Research
Blair Stein (English): Technology, Mobility, Modernity, Nationalism, 20th Century
Peter Stevens (English): Parks and Outdoor Recreation, Sport, Canada, 20th Century
Ramya Swayamprakash (English, Hindi, Marathi): Rivers, Great Lakes, Dredging/Sedimentation, Lake Shipping, History of Technology
Andrew Watson (English): Canada, Sustainability, Energy, Agriculture, 19th and 20th Centuries
3. How to Write for NiCHE
Once your proposal has been approved (see Get to Know Our Editorial Team above), the easiest way to write a post is to create a complete draft in Word or Google Doc, and then send it to your editor. Your editor will work with you to hone the piece before it gets uploaded to the website.
Here are our submission guidelines:
- Blog-style posts should be approximately 800-1200 words.
- Longer and shorter posts will be considered on a case-by-case basis and published based on your editor’s discretion.
- For other kinds of contributions, contact your editor.
- Include 1 image to use as the header or feature image.
- Include a caption and credits, and make sure you have the correct permissions to use and publish the image online.
- This image should, preferably, have a horizontal (landscape) orientation.
- The feature image should be high resolution (minimum 1024 px wide)
- Please include alt-text for your feature image.
- Include additional images to illustrate your post! 2-3 images are ideal.
- Make sure you have captions and credits/permissions prepared for your images.
- All images should be submitted as separate files, rather than embedded in the document shared with the editors.
- Please indicate where each image should appear in the post.
- Please include alt-text for your images.
- If you need assistance, your editor can help you find open-access images or help you determine if the images you’ve found can be published on our website.
- Other media:
- Videos should be uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo, or another third party platform. Once uploaded to one of these services, we can embed the video in your post.
- Audio should be uploaded to SoundCloud, YouTube, BandCamp, Spotify, etc. Once uploaded to one of these services, we can embed the audio in your post.
- PDFs can be hyperlinked to in the article or embedded into the post. Work with your editor to decide which is best.
- Other: Embedded items, such as Google Maps or digitized archival items, can be included. Work with your editor to include these items. Please indicate where media should appear in the post.
- Citations: If using formal citations, please use Chicago Style footnotes or endnotes.
- More informal hyperlink citations can be used within the text if you are using web-based sources.
- A Works Cited or Bibliography list is not required, but we are happy to include one if you wish.
Once your draft is submitted to your editor, they will work with you on content and copy edits.
Once a final draft is ready, they will format the post on our site and provide a preview for you to review before it is published.
4. Honouraria
The Network in Canadian History and Environment has limited donor funds to provide honoraria to contributors each year in recognition of their work and contributions to the network. For details, click here.
5. Register your Account and set up your profile
Membership to NiCHE is free and we welcome new community members. If you are interested in joining in order to contribute posts, projects, or comments please get in touch via our registration form and someone will get back to you with login information as soon as possible.
Create your profile:
Once you have submitted your registration form and an account has been created for you, it’s time to set up your profile.
Given that NiCHE is a network, you’ll probably want to provide information about you and your research. We have installed a WordPress plugin that displays information about you to the NiCHE community—this sits underneath any content that you add. It looks like the image below:
Once you are logged in, hover your mouse over your name and click “edit profile.”
Required fields are marked. Otherwise, you should fill in whatever fields are relevant or useful to you. Most of our users like to share:
- Their website url (website field)
- Their twitter handle or LinkedIn account (Twitter and LinkedIn field)
- Their official title (position field)
- Their university or department (company field)
Note that your email, which is a required field, will not be shared in your public NiCHE profile and is used only for administrative purposes (such as resetting your password).
NiCHE recommends you add a picture, which will be visible on your profile page and beside your comments. The easiest way to add a profile picture is at the top of the Edit Profile Page.
You can control how your name is displayed publicly by entering a “nickname” and then selecting your nickname in the dropdown menu next to “Display name publicly as:”
This feature can be useful for co-authors who share an account, or for people who have a preferred name that is different from their given name.
Please also enter a short (3-5 sentence) biography describing your research interests under “biographical info.” This research blurb will be visible at the bottom of all of your posts—it is essentially a ‘byline’.
When you have added this information, don’t forget to click ‘Update Profile.’
You can edit your profile at any time in the future.
What to do if you’ve lost your password:
WordPress is very forgiving when a user forgets their password. If you find yourself in this situation do not despair. Just navigate to the NiCHE landing page and:
- Scroll to the bottom of the right hand sidebar and locate the login block in the lower right corner of the site.
- Click on ‘Lost Password.’
- Enter your username or the email address of your account and click on ‘Get a new password’.
- You will get an email with a link. Click on it and then select a new password.
- Log in with your new credentials.
If your email address is not found, try your username instead. If you don’t know what this is, contact the NiCHE administration at nichecanadawebsite@gmail.com.
6. Interacting with NiCHE
NiCHE is a network, and the best part of being a member is interacting with others.
Talk to us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
You can also leave a comment directly on the site! Authors can read your comments and respond right on NiCHE. Just scroll down to the bottom of a post and enter your comment in the comment box on the bottom of every page. Note that you must be logged in to wordpress (recommended), log in through a social media account, or register a contact name and email.
NiCHE editors review all comments before they are posted to the site, and we reserve the right to delete posts that fail to meet our guidelines.
Our community of readers who participate in commenting agree to:
- Be respectful to everyone.
- Engage in constructive conversation that is relevant and on-topic.
- Refrain from posting content that is harmful, offensive or abusive.
- Refrain from posting content that is illegal.
- Refrain from posting content that contains spam or content intended for the purposes of commercial promotion.