What We’re Looking For
We welcome authors to contribute blog posts that are thoughtful, relatively neutral, provide fresh insights, and give practical advice relevant to our audience. Posts should be engaging, informative, and aligned with the scope of this blog.
Submission Process & Timeline
To submit, please email your article as a Google Document to Christine Parisek (cws.ucd@gmail.com). All submissions are reviewed for clarity, relevance, and quality. If accepted, blogs will go through our editorial process, which typically takes 7-21 days. After this, we will notify you of an expected publishing date.
If you have a specific timing request, please reach out early so we can do our best to accommodate it. Blogs are scheduled during the week to publish on Sundays, so we ask authors to plan for final materials to be ready in advance of their publishing date.
Formatting Guidelines
- Title and byline: Include a descriptive title and a “By [Authors’ Name(s)]” under the title.
- Length: Aim for 800–1,200 words.
- Figures: Include 1–4 high-resolution photos or graphs to enhance your post and a short caption for each figure (with image credits). Figures should be inserted within the document near where you’d like them to appear in the published post. Additionally, to ensure high-quality figures in the published version of the post, we ask that you also email the original files directly to Christine Parisek (cws.ucd@gmail.com).
- About the author: Provide a short bio (1–3 sentences) introducing yourself to our readers. Include your name (linked to a professional webpage that will remain active; e.g., lab website, Google Scholar, LinkedIn), your current position, and your professional expertise.
- Further reading/viewing: Relevant citations to outside content mentioned in the blog post, in addition to any further reading or online videos that readers can explore for additional context. Please format this section consistently. Including a DOI and/or URL hyperlink here is helpful for readers. Additionally, we encourage that any citations or context in-text be hyperlinked to the piece, too.
Get Started
Have an idea but not sure if it fits? Feel free to reach out to the California WaterBlog Managing Editor, Christine Parisek (cws.ucd@gmail.com), to discuss your pitch.