Contribute

Dear Colleagues,

We invite you to write for us. We publish articles on matters of interest to the writing studies community, especially topics related to

  1. Citation
  2. Collaboration 
  3. Design 
  4. Discourse  
  5. Drafting
  6. Editing
  7. Genre
  8. Grammar
  9. Information Literacy
  10. Invention
  11. Literacy
  12. Mindset
  13. Organization
  14. Planning
  15. Prewriting
  16. Rereading
  17. Research
  18. Revision
  19. Rhetoric
  20. Sharing
  21. Style
  22. The Writing Process
  23. Writing Studies

Writing Commons helps students avoid needing to buy expensive textbooks for their classes that require writing assignments. It also provides a forum for teachers to share their best practices.

Audience

By publishing with us, your ideas and practices can reach a broad audience. Some of our authors’ works have become exceedingly popular. For example, Professor Christine Photinos‘ article on “Paragraph Transitions” and Professor Jenna Pack Sheffield’s essay “Using First Person in an Academic Essay: When is It Okay?” have both been read by over 100,000 users.

Our audience tends to be primarily U.S.-based teachers and students.

Title U S traffic in realtime 83023

Beyond the U.S., Writing Commons is used in the Philippines, India, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

We think of our audience as a global community of students, writers, and teachers who are interested in the writerly life and ways they can be more credible, effective writers and speakers.

Submission Guidelines

Submissions should be sent in .doc or .docx files. You may include videos or images to supplement the text; please submit video links or .mp4s, and all images as .jpeg or .png. Also, feel free to include hyperlinks to other sources that might be useful for students.

For citation, we use Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th Edition.

Your submission

  • should be saved as a .doc or .docx file with any images saved as .jpeg or .png format. Please name files according to the following conventions: “Title of webtext.”
  • should be 750-1000 words in length
  • should be free of internal references to the author’s identity.
  • should include a brief cover letter introducing your webtext and its title; you might use this letter to voice any concerns/questions you have about the text.

If you are submitting podcasts, videos, or composing a multi-page hyperlinked text (which we strongly encourage), please e-mail Cassandra Branham (branhac1@erau.edu) directly for specific directions.

Suggestions for Colleagues

New Articles

Prior to pitching an article idea, we encourage you to take a moment to learn about Writing Commons. Visit the Site Map or use Search to check out whether we already have an article on your proposed topic.

Revisions or Edits to Existing Articles

At Writing Commons, we are aware of a good many pages that need major rewrites. We are open to handling these rewrites as entirely new articles. Some pages that are particularly urgent to revise include

Ancillary Materials for New Articles

We are open to publishing materials that amplify existing pages. For instance, we would love to see some videos on keywords defined @ Writing Commons.

Peer Review

Evidence based policy after peer review by John Englart Takver is licensed under CC BY SA 20

Once we receive your article and confirm it matches our needs, we will begin the peer-review process. Articles will be reviewed by at least two members of the staff, review editors, or editorial board. You will then receive our decision to publish as is, publish with revisions, or reject.

We try to have a quick turnaround time with our peer-review process. From initial submission to notification of the submission status, please allow approximately four weeks. If you don’t hear from us by then, please do shoot us a reminder. Thanks!

Publishing Agreement

Prior to publication, following peer review and acceptance, authors are required to complete our

  1. Submission Form
  2. Publishing Agreement Form.

Suggestion

Before beginning your project, we encourage you to submit a brief proposal to our Co-Editors-in-Chief:

Cassandra Branham
Associate Professor
Director, Center for Communication and Digital Media
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Cassandra.Branham@erau.edu

Megan McIntyre
Assistant Professor
Director, Program in Rhetoric and Composition
University of Arkansas
mm250@uark.edu