How to get your article published in academic blogs

I began writing regularly for newspapers back in 2020. Since then, I have wanted to get my articles published in various renowned academic blogs in the world. As I started communicating with the editors of some leading academic blogs, I almost immediately realised that the journey ahead would be much more challenging than I had anticipated. Even more so because of the lack of detailed guidance available on the internet.

Four years later, some of the articles I have authored or co-authored have been published on well-respected academic blogs around the world, including Border Criminologies (University of Oxford), South Asia (LSE), 360info (Monash University), and the RLI Blog on Refugee Law and Forced Migration (University of London).

As academic blogs gain more popularity as a medium for promoting thought-provoking articles on contemporary issues, the need to fill the gap in the availability of proper guidance for aspiring writers becomes increasingly important.

In this article, I'll walk you through the steps of getting an article published on an academic blog. In doing so, I will also provide a few tips learnt from my personal experiences that will help you create an article in a more academic blog-friendly manner.

First, you need to pick a blog that is suitable for the topic you want to explore in your article and go through the blog to see what they have already published on it.

Try to write on relevant topics that they haven't published yet. If they have already published an article on your topic of interest, try to present it in your article from a different perspective. It's highly unlikely that a blog will publish an article that offers nothing different from what they have published in the past.

Also, you will see a section containing guidelines for authors in most blogs. These guidelines may vary significantly from one blog to another. So, make sure to read the section thoroughly.

Second, if permitted, send a pitch to the email mentioned in the blog, providing a brief discussion on what you want to write about, how you are going to write it, and what makes you the right person to write the article.

Start writing the article only after your pitch gets approved. It will save time and effort for you and you also give yourself the chance to get crucial suggestions from the editors before you start writing the article.

Once the pitch has been approved and you have done your research, compile and arrange your key points in the same order as you wish to discuss in your article. This will help you in maintaining coherence and cohesion - two extremely important elements for a compelling article that many authors struggle to achieve.

Third, when you start writing you have to keep in mind that for academic blog articles, you have to strive to find the middle ground between informal and formal writing. Neither can your language be as informal as a newspaper article, nor as formal as a journal article.

You should write short paragraphs consisting of short sentences as it will make it easier for the reader to understand what you are trying to say.

You should also check to see whether there is a word limit, as most blogs specify a minimum and maximum number of words that can be written, but the limits vary from blog to blog. For example, while the word limit for Border Criminologies is from 750 to 1000 words, for RLI Blog on Refugee Law and Forced Migration it is from 500 to 3000 words.

Fourth, equally important as the tone of the writing is you making your article as interesting as possible through the inclusion of relevant anecdotes, statistics, quotes, and so on.

It's important to keep in mind here that the introduction will decide to a large extent whether a reader will read your article. Thus, you should aim to include the most interesting point in your possession in the introduction.

Then, you should dedicate a paragraph to highlighting what the article is about and how you will approach the topic.

Only after doing so can you proceed to the main body of your article, where you'll build your arguments with the help of ideas, opinions, facts, evidence, theories, models, and quotes from books, journal articles, experts, and so on. It's worth noting that many blog editors appreciate when you talk to relevant experts and incorporate their observations into your article.

Furthermore, citing the source is crucial when you are stating facts or mentioning other scholars. Use appropriate citation formats, such as hyperlinks, OSCOLA, APA, or as per the guidelines of the blog you have chosen. If you don't cite properly, your article will be rejected due to plagiarism no matter how well written it may be. In serious cases, you risk being blacklisted by the blog, which might mean that your article will never be accepted by them again.

Last but not least, once you've finished writing the article, read it again to see if you missed any important information or if there are any grammatical or factual errors that need to be corrected.

You can also have it reviewed by an expert (for example, your teacher) before submitting it to the blog of your choice. If you lack the confidence to start writing an article, you can approach an expert you know to be your co-author.

This is an approach that has helped me and many of my friends to overcome the same inertia.

Author: Arafat Reza is a journalist and a researcher based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He can be reached via arafat.reza@bracu.ac.bd.