Preparing an article for submission
Essentials to help you get your article ready for submission:
-
Approach: The article should aim to benefit Outdoor Learning
practitioners, for example by sharing ideas, knowledge or reflecting
on practice. Some articles may issue a respectful, well- balanced
challenge to the status quo. Articles should not sound like an advert
for authors or their organisations, nor should articles read as a
rant.
-
Finding a voice: Horizons follows a magazine style approach and
we do not publish overly academic articles. Articles should be easily
accessible to read, including brief explanations (where necessary) for
lesser known technical or academic terms.
-
Article length: Articles are usually between 500 and 2000
words, this allows us to publish a variety of topics per issue. Don’t
limit chances of getting published by sending an article which is too
long.
-
References: Although Horizons follows a magazine approach,
articles often include references to support discussion, or to share
useful resources with readers. References should be numbered at the
end of the relevant sentence (1)- with full details of author, date,
title, publisher/ url, page number or image reference (etc) listed at
the end of the article.
-
Article exclusivity: It is expected that articles submitted to
Horizons have not been published elsewhere. If you wish to submit an
article that has been, or expected to be published elsewhere, for
example if it is important safety information, or the article featured
in a publication not viewed by the mainstream Horizons readership,
please get in touch. Once published in Horizons, an article should not
be published elsewhere in the same format without consent from the IOL
Horizons editorial team.
-
Extra requests: To help with signposting to your article in the
magazine we may ask you for a resource recommendation. More
information will be supplied when the request is made.
References
Although Horizons follows a magazine approach, articles often include
references to support discussion, or to share useful resources with
readers. References should be numbered at the end of the relevant
sentence (1) with full details of author, date, title, publisher/ url,
page number or image reference (etc) listed at the end of the article.
Some examples of how we reference:
(1) Payne, G (2006). Social divisions. China: Palgrave Macmillan.
(2)
Burton, L (2015). Under-representation of women in sport leadership: A
review of research. Sport Management Review, 18(2), 155-165.
Please do not use footnotes for your references as we need to be able
to easily edit and transfer your work between different files.
Author profile and image requirements
Each author should send a high resolution JPEG profile image and up to
100 words profiling yourself, your work and your organisation. Profiles
can be as serious, amusing or ironic as you feel best fits the article,
though remember your profile will be preserved with your article in the
Horizons archive.
Ideally high resolution JPEG images should be supplied with your
article. More technical ‘how to…’ articles might have between 8-10
images to help guide the reader through. Other articles may have between
2-8 images- some of which may be tables, charts or drawings as well as
photographs. Let us know when you submit your article if you haven’t got
any images; not having images may delay the review and publication
process. We need to know who has copyright for the images you send us
and if people have given their permission for images to be taken and
used in publications (not specifically for Horizons).
IOL reserves the right to use photographs submitted for Horizons in
other IOL communications, such as website, social media, newsletters,
promotional literature and other publications. Where possible we will
attribute the image copyright owner.
Submitting your article
Send your article (with references) and author profile in an unformatted
word document to the Horizons editor
Catherine Dunn. Please proof check your article and also make sure your text has two
spaces after full stops and one space after commas.
Title your email subject with Horizons submission/ Author name/ article
title. If you have images, send a PDF to show their position against the
text. This will help with the editing process.
Send high resolution images (photographs, diagrams etc.) and your author
profile image to
Catherine Dunn
at IOL including the title of your article.
Publication process and operational information
Horizons is not-for-profit and operates with a minimal staff resource.
We do not pay for content, and the magazine is edited and designed
in-house on a cost covering basis.
The magazine is published quarterly: Winter (January), Spring (April),
Summer (July), Autumn (October). Though you can submit an article at
anytime, issue submission deadlines are late-October, early February,
early May, early August. Articles are selected, edited and published
over a yearly cycle so we can ensure a variety of content per issue.
The editorship is a part time role, and so, although you will receive an
acknowledgement when we receive your email, it may be a number of weeks
before it is reviewed.
Sometimes the editor will reply with questions or guidance to support
the development of your article, and sometimes the editor will introduce
an author to a Horizons Panel member. This is when, for example, we
consider the article to be a really strong good practice story, which
only needs a little bit of development to really bring it to life. For
more information about the Horizons Panel go to the
Panel page.
Not all articles will be printed, and the editor cannot provide
individual feedback on why an article is not printed. Articles which
don’t meet the guidelines will not be printed.
Authors will receive a complementary printed copy of the Horizons issue
their article has been published in. IOL are also happy to announce that
Horizons is distributed using a fully compostable film packaging and
where possible environmentally friendly printing processes are used.
If you feel your article has been unfairly treated, email your comments
to the
IOL Office.