INCITE
Guidelines for contributors to INCITE
INCITE is a magazine intended to keep members of the Australian Library and Information Association informed about news, events and matters of professional interest in the library and information sector.
We welcome submissions from personal members and staff belonging to institutional member organisations. We also accept material from non-members as appropriate and on a case by case basis, and we will on occasion seek content from invited authors and organisations. (If you are not a member but wish to submit, please email the editor.
When you write for INCITE, you are writing for your professional colleagues - people with a working knowledge of, and a passion for, the library and information world. If published, your article will be read by an audience of around 26,000 people like you, located across Australia and overseas. Our style is informative but light. We have some guidelines below about issues such as reference and language style but in essence, the best advice we can give is to write something you would be interested to read.
We like really high quality images of busy library and information spaces (especially if they are also full of people enjoying using those facilities) too. There are technical guidelines for images and illustrations below.
New trends and innovations make great stories and if you thnk there's a story we should be chasing up, please email the editor and let us know. We hope you will consider writing for INCITE - it's your magazine and its content is driven by you, the members.
- When you submit an article
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- Your article should be submitted as a Word file, with a file name that includes your surname, an identifying description of the article and, if you are writing about a nominated theme, the issue of INCITE for which your article is being submitted.
- Your name, position and email address should be included at the end of your article.
- Any images must be sent as separate files (see instructions below for format) and these files should be named with your name and the article they are to accompany.
- If you include images or illustrations, please include a caption at the end of the article. This should include the names of anyone identifiable in a photo, where it was taken and what it is. It is recommended that you also embed a caption in the image file if you are able to do so.
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- Word length
If you are writing to the month's feature, your article should be between 300 and 500 words. Longer articles may be accepted with prior approval from the editor. Articles not written to a specific theme should be no more than 250 words. Please note that all articles are subject to editing, even if they are within the specified word limit.
- Photographs and Illustrations
Please note all images must be supplied in jpg format and must be a minimum of 100Kb or 300dpi in size.
Photographs
High-resolution, clear, and topical photographs are welcome as accompaniment to an article. They should be in focus and uncluttered, with a clear subject. Please provide photographs separately from the text, as images embedded in documents are unsuitable. Please include a caption for your photo, including names of anyone who can be identified, in your article document.
Illustrations
Illustrations which help to highlight an important aspect of your article (graphs or diagrams, for example) are also welcome. They should be provided as high resolution pdfs or jpgs (100Kb or 300 dpi minimum size) separate from the text.
Permissions
Responsibility for permission lies with the article's author, and must be obtained prior to submission to INCITE. This is especially true if the photograph contains people under the age of 18. Subjects of photographs must understand, and agree to, the use of the image in print in a magazine that is distributed internationally, and may reproduced on the internet, and that their names may be included.
- Style
INCITE is a news and information magazine for the LIS industry. We have a wide range of readers at all levels of the profession and our objective is to report on the sector and Association-related news. Our house style is light, with a view to inform and entertain. This means an 'academic' writing style is inappropriate for INCITE readers. We don't include bibliographies in articles, for example, and the language of the article should be more conversational than formal. Formal reporting (eg background followed by methodology, results, and conclusion) is not suitable and we cannot accept abstracts for publication.
Our readers like to see the most important message of the story in the first paragraph, just as you would in a newspaper or magazine article. Our readers are interested in the 'who', 'what', 'how', 'where', and then the 'why'.
Examples of our house style:
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- Whenever possible, choose the active voice. Sentences like "comfortable chairs were purchased" are much more dynamic when worded "we purchased comfortable chairs".
- INCITE uses the Oxford, or serial, comma for lists: she bought apples, oranges, and pears.
- Proper names of programs or publications should be capitalised and italicised but not placed between single or double quotation marks, eg The Da Vinci Code or Disaster Preparedness Planning Workshop.
- Direct quotations from a publication or person should be placed between double quotation marks, eg "The last thing we need is censorship," said Mr Smith or the dictionary defines the word library as a "collection of books or place in which it is kept".
- Please insert only one space between a full stop and the first letter of the next sentence.
- INCITE avoids the archaic -st ending on words like while and among.
- INCITE uses modern endings for the past tense in words like learned, loaned, and dreamed.
- INCITE uses Australian spellings: realise, globalise, etc. See The Style Manual for authors, editors and printers for more information.
- INCITE does not capitalise net, web, or internet.
- INCITE does not capitalise or hyphenate words such as ebook, elist, emeeting etc
- INCITE prefers 'use' over 'utilise'.
- We can't reproduce long bullet-point lists as we don't have the space. These will more than likely be taken out. If it's important, put it in as text.
- Our preferred description to encompass all workers in the library and information sector is "library professionals" unless the content is intended to refer specifically to a particular group within the sector such as library technicians, new graduates etc.
- Please note: the word 'library' is only capitalised when referring to the name of the library, as with The National Library of Australia. In sentence form, library is almost always lower-case. Examples:
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- The library has extended open hours.
- Students can now access the library's programs 24 hours a day.
- It is easy to log on to the library's website.
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This is also true for words like program, catalogue, university, and school. |
- Referencing
Because INCITE is a news and information magazine, rigorous referencing is not necessary or desirable for articles. We do not publish bibliographies with articles. References in the text should include the capitalised title in italics and year of publication or the URL in brackets. Very occasionally, key references may be included if appropriate. For these, ALIA uses the Chicago Manual of Style referencing system and references should be listed below the name of the contributor.
- Advertising and advertorial content
INCITE accepts display advertising under the terms and conditions as indicated in our booking contracts and on our website. While we love to celebrate good news stories from around the country and the world, we do not offer advertising in our editorial content. Please feel free to tell us about a new product, service, or idea that you're developing, but please note overt marketing content will be deleted and an over-abundance of marketing text may lead to your article being rejected. This includes text from suppliers, service-providers, universities, and others. Our advertising terms and conditions specify that advertorial will be identified in the magazine by the inclusion of the words 'advertising material' above or below the content.
- Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor chosen for print will be included in the Your Voice section of INCITE. Letters should be no more than 250 words in length, and should be of relevance to the library and information sector. Anonymous letters will not be published, so please include your name and postal or email address. Any named or implied persons in the letter may be given right of reply in the same issue of INCITE in which the original letter appears, or a later issue, at the discretion of the Editor. Your Voice contributions will be considered at the discretion of the Editor.
- Obituaries
Please note that obituaries are not routinely published in INCITE. The Australian Library Journal occasionally accepts obituaries; the editor can be reached here alj@alia.org.au.
Publishing Manager
INCITE
INCITE@alia.org.au
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