Submitting Pieces to The Chronicle and Letters to the Editor

The Chronicle is happy to consider manuscripts and proposals for articles. Please send submissions or queries for The Chronicle Review, Point of View, or Commentary section to opinion@chronicle.com. Submissions for the Careers section should go to denise.magner@chronicle.com. (News tips and press releases should go to newseditor@chronicle.com.)

Click here for current terms and conditions.

Guidelines for submissions to The Chronicle Review

As a magazine of ideas, we are looking for first-rate essays and opinion pieces on intellectual issues of broad interest to an academic audience and beyond. These essays can range from 500 words to 2,500 words. We also are interested in personal essays of no more than 1,200 words for our Observer page.

If we accept your article, we will pay for it.

Please do not send us manuscripts submitted elsewhere. We do not use any articles submitted to, accepted by, or published by another publication.

Articles should be written in a clear, informal style free of jargon.

The Chronicle Review follows journalistic style, so please don't use footnotes or citations.

We acknowledge submissions quickly, usually within a few days or at most a week. The decision to accept or reject a manuscript rarely takes more than a month, and will occur much more quickly if the subject is timely.

We edit all opinion pieces before they are published so that they conform to our editorial style and standards of readability. Each author has an opportunity to review and approve the edited version of the manuscript before it appears in print. The editors of The Review decide where and when the piece will be published. In some cases, articles may appear only on our Web site.

Although we welcome unsolicited manuscripts, we do not accept opinion pieces that respond to pieces we have already published. Responses to material in our pages or on our Web site should be in the form of letters to the editor.

Letters may be shortened for print publication, and some letters may appear only online. Please submit letters to opinion@chronicle.com.

Guidelines for submissions to Point of View and Commentary

We are happy to review articles or proposals for articles about higher-education policy. Opinion pieces should be written about issues of interest to a broad range of readers. Readers of The Chronicle include academic administrators, faculty members, students, foundation personnel, officials in federal and state governments, legislators concerned with higher education, and others.

Submissions to the Point of View page should be no more than 1,500 words; for Commentary, 500 words to 2000 words. Articles should be written in clear, conversational language.

We acknowledge submissions quickly, usually within a few days or at most a week. The decision to accept or reject a manuscript rarely takes more than a month, and will occur much more quickly if the subject is timely.

If we accept your article, we will pay for it.

Commentary follows journalistic style, so please don't use footnotes or citations. Articles should be written in a clear, informal style free of jargon.

Opinion pieces for Commentary and the Point of View page should adopt a clear point of view, not simply review both sides of a debate. In most cases, they benefit from the inclusion of specific recommendations for ways to solve the problems they outline.

Please do not send us manuscripts submitted elsewhere. We do not use any articles submitted to, accepted by, or published by another publication.

We edit all opinion pieces before they are published so that they conform to our editorial style and standards of readability. Each author has an opportunity to review and approve the edited version of the manuscript before it appears in print. The editors of Commentary decide where and when the piece will be published. In some cases, articles may appear only on our Web site.

Although we welcome unsolicited manuscripts, we do not accept opinion pieces that respond to pieces we have already published. Responses to material in our pages or on our Web site should be in the form of letters to the editor.

Letters may be shortened for print publication, and some letters may appear only online. Please submit letters to opinion@chronicle.com.

Guidelines for submissions to Careers

First Person and advice columns for the Careers section should be between 1,000 and 1,600 words.

They should be written in a conversational, journalistic (i.e., jargon-free) style.

The column should touch on your personal experiences but also relate to broader issues affecting academe. In other words, if you've got something to say about the job market, the tenure track, the interview process, teaching, publishing and research, committee work, work/life conflicts, or some other aspect of your life as an academic or an administrator, and you'd like to use your personal experience to make the point, that's what we're looking for.

Unlike The Chronicle Review, the Careers section does consider essays for publication that are written in response to previous Careers columns. In addition, if you have an idea for a series of articles or a new monthly column, we welcome those proposals as well.

If you are interested in writing a job diary, each summer the Careers section hires between six and 10 academics and administrators to write a diary of their job searches that year (typically three to five columns). The best time to send in those submissions is from mid-July to mid-August.

We prefer that writers publish under their own names. However, we realize that in writing about the job market, tenure, departmental politics, and other sensitive topics, some writers may wish to use a pseudonym in order to protect their careers and relationships. You may request to use a pseudonym when you submit the column. While you can make up a name for yourself, that's the only fact that we allow writers to change in their columns. You may not fictionalize your experiences, or distort the facts.

If we accept your piece for publication, we will pay you for it. Columns are edited for grammar, style, taste, and length.

Please e-mail your submission — pasted in to the message text or attached in a Word document — to denise.magner@chronicle.com.