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Template for BSHS Website Material

Thank you for sending news for, or agreeing to, contribute to the BSHS website! Website contributors are asked to provide the following elements as part of their submission, preferably as a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx). Please note all contributions will be both copy-edited and web-edited by BSHS Communications Officer Jessica van Horssen. If you have any questions about this process at all, please contact her at news@bshs.org.uk.

Once your piece is posted to the website, authors are free (& indeed encouraged) to re-post it to their own website, Twitter page, Facebook page, organisation’s page and other similar sites! When doing so, please make sure to link to the original post.

Title (max. 150 characters)

The title should reflect the content of the post and draw the reader in, but it should not be too long. If you wish it can include a person’s name, a place, or a particular organisation you are focusing on in your piece. It could also be the event title or a question that your piece addresses!

Author

Your name and institutional affiliation, if any, as you want it to appear on the post, as well as any Twitter or Facebook handle you would like to include.

Blog Pieces (700-1400 words)

Unless already discussed and agreed otherwise, your written pieces should introduce and describe the topic you have chosen. They can, but do not have to be analytical pieces. Furthermore, they should read more like a newspaper or magazine article, aimed at people who know a little—but not a lot—about the History of Science. Keep Some background information will be helpful to provide, but don’t get too focused on this. Hyperlinks to organisations or other websites that explain a term or issue succinctly, should be included so if someone wants to know more, they can click away.

Remember that blogs are aimed at a general audience, so please write in an engaging journalistic style that is accessible to a non-specialist audience. In an attempt to promote discussion, we will be encouraging comments, feedback, and questions on each post, so we encourage you to pose open questions to the readers in your post.

For more information (maximum 5)

If you would like, you can provide a “further reading” list at the end of your piece to direct readers to key books or websites where they can go to learn more about your topic. Website links should provide the full URL and short description (~50 characters). If you would like your institutional affiliation mentioned or linked to at the end of your piece, just let Jessica know and she will put it in.

Keywords (maximum 5)

Please suggest up to 5 keywords to be tagged to your post. This will help bring new readers to your post, as well as link your work with that of other contributors. Examples of tags we use on the BSHS website already are “Darwin,” “policy,” “outreach,” and “History of xyz,” and the blog is linked together this way.

Text rights

Website articles will be new “born digital” hosted on the BSHS website and archived as the site continues to grow. A Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license applies to all submitted posts. This means that blog posts will be authorised to be reused under the following conditions:

  • Attribution: You must give attribution to the author and the BSHS website and keep all attribution information intact (but not in any way that suggests that those attributed endorse you or your use of the blog or its content).
  • Non Commercial: You may not share or transform any part of the BSHS website or its content for commercial purposes.
  • Share Alike: Any sharing, or transformation, of the BSHS website or its content must be distributed under the same or compatible licensing conditions applicable to that facet.

BSHS authors need to indicate if they want to use another license for their respective blog submission. Please note that this licence only refers to the new “born digital” text and does not cover any supplementary material such as images or multimedia items. (See image rights below)

Image elements

For news, event, or blog items on the BSHS website, please provide at least one relevant image to accompany the text, which best illustrates the content of their post. More images are definitely welcome! Images may be a photograph, historic map, new digitally created map, cartogram, sketch, table, cartoon, etc. Images must be in public domain, freely available for public use, or have been created by the author. If contributors wish to use other images, they must obtain permission from the rights holder.

For repositories of images that are public domain and/or under Creative Commons sharing licenses contact a relevant library as many provide such collections (several online), and also see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. If you wish to use a video or sound file rather than a picture, please let Jessica know.

Another option that you can use is the simple Google Search. On the top of the results page, you click “Images,” then “Search Tools.” From there, you click “Usage Rights,” which allows you to filter your image search results to items that have been labelled for reuse, labelled for reuse with modification, labelled for non-commercial reuse, and labelled for non-commercial reuse with modification. Please make sure these images are labelled for reuse, and that they are of a high resolution.

These guidelines can also be used for public presentations and lectures.

PLEASE NOTE that if you do not provide an image, we will attach an image we deem relevant to your post.

With your images, please provide:

Image title (max 50 characters)
Name of image

Image caption (max 200 characters)
Description of image (to appear underneath/alongside the image)

Image creator
Who the image should be attributed to

Publisher/license
Who is making the image available for use? And under what license/conditions?

Date
If applicable- when was the image taken/created?

For further information, please contact: Jessica van Horssen, BSHS Communications Officer, news@bshs.org.uk.