Contributor info

Welcome

This is a guide to contributing and editing Science Shorts. If you are taking on either role, please read this first!

Becoming a contributor

We welcome contributions from students and staff in the Faculty of Life Sciences. To become a contributor you need to get a blogging user account then to join our blog as a contributor.

To get a user account:

  1. Go to http://blogs.bristol.ac.uk/wp-login.php
  2. Click on ‘University of Bristol login’
  3. Log in with your UoB username and password (if you are already signed in to your UoB account on another browser tab, eg signed in to Outlook, it may sign you in automatically)
  4. This auto-creates your user account.

To join as a contributor:

Click this link

You should now be able to submit posts, which will be edited by one of our team of editors before it goes live. Please read the ‘Submitting and editing a post’ section below first for important information.

Submitting and editing a post

Please put the following block of text at the start of any new post. It will be used to manage the editing process:

 

======EDIT CONTROL – REMOVE BEFORE GOING LIVE=====

Author name:

Author email:

Editor name: 

Editor email:

======EDIT CONTROL – REMOVE BEFORE GOING LIVE=====

 

The process:

Authors: Please copy the Edit Control block in at the top of the post and fill in your details. When you are ready for your post to be edited, please put [EDITOR] at the end of the Title so the editor knows you are ready. When you think it’s ready for publishing, please put [PUBLISH] at the end of the Title.

Editors: If a post is marked [EDITOR] and there is no editor detail in the Edit Control block, add in your details and remove [EDITOR] from the Title. Edit the post – put your comments in red to make the stand out. When it’s ready for the author, put [AUTHOR] at the end of the Title. Then email the author so that they know it’s ready for their attention.

Safe images

Please only use images which you know are legal. Best of all is to create your own. Failing that, make sure that the source is Public Domain or Creative Commons (it’s not enough that it says ‘Royalty Free’). Some handy sources include:

If it’s from an academic source, obtain permission from the author first.

 

Categories and Tags

Please make sure each post you put up is in one of the main categories: Feature, Review or Interview.

Each post should also have relevant tags – keywords identifying its main subject and topics.

 

Reviews format

For reviews, please use the title format Review: Book (etc.) name – Author [Star rating]

Please give the book/TV programme/etc. a star rating based on this:

* – Just doesn’t work for us
** – Has some interesting points, but not for everyone
*** – Good solid book (etc), well worth reading if interested in the topic
**** – Excellent book (etc) that any science fan would want to read
***** – One of the best popular science books (etc) of the year
Put an information box at the bottom of the review by putting
Book title – Author – Publisher Date
and selecting Preformatted from the format options (drop down labelled Paragraph) e.g.
How to Speak Science - Bruce Benamran - Virgin Books 2018