Allegra welcomes your contributions – we are thrilled to spread the word on new & exciting discussions in the world of anthropology and beyond! Below are our submission guidelines including instructions on how to share the news via the social media.
LENGTH
Contributions should be max 2,000 words. We also welcome shorter papers – circa 500 words to accompany an AVMoFA (Allegra’s Virtual Museum of Obscure Fieldwork Artefacts) or a fieldwork playlist. Please keep references to a sensible minimum and include a full list at the end. We are not that fuzzy on the style that you use as long as you are consistent.
Pay particular attention to the TITLE of your post: our aim is to catch the readers’ attention and get titles into broad circulation. Aim for titles of 5 words maximum. Think of distinguishing your title from one in an academic journal; we can assist here.
BLURB & IMAGES
With your contribution submit a 200-250 character (NOT word) summary including relevant key words. This forms the basis for our social media ‘blurb’, which is essential for attracting readers. If you want to provide images, please do so – but we are also happy to select images for your post. Submit all texts as simple text files, we’ll do the layout. If you have links that you want to include, it’s helpful to insert the hyperlinks directly in the word doc (Ctrl-K).
EDITING
When you curate a thematic week, ideally all content would be (close) to print-ready. We do have language editors, but since our editors work on a volunteer basis, too, we try to keep their work load sensible. We are happy to work with you on substantive editing – but it helps us if you do reviewing yourself. When we invite you to act as a guest editor, that means you’ll really have the final say on content. Our role is to facilitate the flow of content, not to act as ‘bottlenecks’ or ultimate ‘seals of approval’ for what goes online, in contrast to academic journals. This contributes significantly to the genuine diversity of voices within Allegra.
AUTHOR BIOS
Please ask all your authors for short bios & photos – these will be included in our authors’ gallery. Also, include max 5 keywords on areas of expertise and languages you might be happy utilise with the press, as we actively reach out to journalists to make use of Allegra’s roster of authors. We will also be revising our section of regular contributors to include all of our guest editors. And do remember to provide us with your own bio & photo.
HOW TO GET THE MESSAGE OF YOUR THEMATIC WEEK OUT?
We do what we can! Yet nothing tops collaboration!
We will share the threads and individual posts via our FB & Twitter streams. This gets nice visibility. However, we also depend on contributors and guest editors to take an active role in spreading the word to create a buzz around your posts: please ‘like’ the shared content on our FB and ask your contributors to do the same. SHARE the content both in FB & Twitter – this boosts the algorithm like nothing else & makes the posts much more visible in the feeds of others. Share via Twitter yourself too & like our shares and retweet them. Think of a couple of different ways to share the same content at later times — as reaction to specific events, or in response to posts both on Allegra and other platforms. All this will make an enormous difference in how much visibility we can gain.
TIMETABLE
Finally, if you envision delays in the date of submission, please let us know! We can manage delays, but the earlier we know, the better. Do submit everything LATEST on the WEDNESDAY preceding the week of publication. Our Manager of Things and Stuff, Andrea (andreak@allegralaboratory.net) will then distribute the work to our editorial team and ensure that everything runs smoothly.
Do you want to pencil in a date for submission & thematic week yet? We look forward to hearing from you!
