Writing guidelines

For new writers

Welcome. Climate Change Writers is a community of people who write about the climate crisis and what is being done about it, and you are now part of it. Most of our writers are not journalists. They are researchers, students, farmers, teachers, engineers and campaigners who know something specific and are willing to explain it. That is the whole basis of the network, and it is why a first piece from someone who has never published anywhere is as welcome here as a tenth piece from someone who has.

These guidelines exist so you know what to expect from us and what we expect from you. They take about five minutes to read and will save you considerably more than that.

This is unpaid

We want to be direct about this before you invest your time. Writing for Climate Change Writers is not paid work. It is a voluntary commitment to help people understand climate change and the case for sustainability, made by people who care enough to write about it without being paid to.

What you get instead is a readership, an editor who reads your work properly and tells you what they think, a permanent byline in a public archive, and the right to republish your own work anywhere else at any time. Several of our writers have used pieces published here as the clips that got them commissioned elsewhere. That is a real outcome, and it is the honest description of what this offers.

There is no time commitment

You are not obliged to write to any schedule. Write when you have something to say. Some members file most weeks, most file occasionally, and many have published once. All three are a legitimate way to be part of this.

Before you start

Please read the Terms of use and the Privacy policy. They are short, and they cover who owns what you write, what we do with your information, and what you can ask us to do about it. The short answers: you keep your copyright, we collect very little, and you can change or remove almost all of it yourself.

Theme areas

At the start of each week we publish two theme areas. They appear at the top of this page and are emailed to every member who has not turned theme notices off. They exist to give the community a shared focus, so that in any given week we are collectively examining something from many different countries at once, which is the thing this network can do that a single publication cannot.

You are not confined to them. You may write on a previous theme area, or on an issue pressing in your own community that no theme has covered. Those submissions are vetted more closely, because the case for publishing them rests entirely on the piece rather than on a theme we have already agreed matters.

Proposing a theme

Members can propose theme areas from their account. Proposals are reviewed and two are selected for each week. If yours is chosen you will be told. This is the main way the agenda of this network is set by the people writing for it rather than by a desk in Abuja, so please use it.

What makes a publishable article

Editors assess every submission against five criteria. They are not a scoring rubric to be gamed; they are what a reader needs in order to get something out of your piece.

1. Is the problem clearly identified

What exactly is wrong, where, and for whom? A piece about "the effects of climate change" is about nothing in particular. A piece about a borehole in Kano that has dropped eleven metres in a decade is about something, and the general point arrives through the specific one.

2. Is the evidence convincing

Name your sources. Link to the study rather than to the press release about the study. If a number matters, say where it came from and when it was measured. An interview with one farmer, properly attributed, is stronger evidence than an unsourced claim about a continent.

3. Is it written economically

This is about whether the piece uses its length well: whether terms are explained where a reader would need them, whether the structure carries the argument, and whether every paragraph is doing work. Long is not thorough. Short is not shallow.

4. Are solutions offered

We are a publication about what is being done as much as about what is going wrong. Where you identify a problem, say what could address it, who would have to act, and what is stopping them. "Someone should do something" is not a solution; "the procurement schedule has no line item for a wetland" is the beginning of one.

5. How urgent is it

Some pieces are worth publishing this week rather than next month. If yours is tied to a decision being taken, a deadline approaching or an event happening, tell us in your submission so the editor can prioritise it accordingly.

How the process works

1. Theme areas are proposed. Members submit areas they would like the community to write about.
2. Two are selected. Proposals are assessed and two theme areas are chosen for the coming week.
3. They are published on a Monday. The pair appears at the top of this page and goes out by email.
4. Writers prepare articles. You choose one of the two, or write on something else and tell us why.
5. An editor reviews it. Every submission is read by a person and assessed against the five criteria above.
6. It is published. Accepted pieces go onto the website and are shared through our social accounts.

Preparing your article

Length

Between 1,000 and 2,000 words. That is enough room to identify a problem, show the evidence for it, and say what could be done about it, which is what the selection criteria below ask of you. A piece much shorter than that usually turns out to be a summary of a problem rather than an examination of one.

If your subject genuinely needs more, say so when you submit and an editor will discuss it with you before you write it rather than after.

Title

Give the piece a clear title. A title that says what the article found is better than one that says what it is about. We may suggest changes; we will not change it without telling you.

Image

Supply one image with your article. It must be relevant to the piece, not decorative, and you must have the right to use it. That means one of three things: you took it, you have the photographer's permission, or it comes from a source that licenses images for reuse.

Reliable free sources include Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay. An image found through an image search is not licensed for reuse simply because it was findable.

Tell us who took it. Every published photograph carries a credit, and supplying alt text describing what the image shows makes your piece readable by people using a screen reader.

Upload the largest version you have. The site produces the sizes it needs and strips all embedded metadata in the process, including GPS coordinates. That matters if you photograph somewhere that being placed would put you at risk.

Submitting

Sign in and submit through your own account. You will see the stage of every piece you have filed on your account page: draft, submitted, in review, and then published or returned.

What happens after you submit

An editor reads it. If it meets the guidelines it is published, and you may not hear from anyone before it appears. If it does not, you will be contacted and told what needs to change.

Returned is not rejected. Most returned pieces come back improved and are published. An editor asking for a named source or a clearer opening is doing the thing that makes the piece worth reading, and it is not a judgement on you.

Rights

You keep the copyright in what you write. Submitting grants us the right to publish it here and keep it in the archive. You may republish your own work anywhere, at any time, without asking us.

Anyone else may republish it provided they credit you by name and link back to the piece on this site, and provided they do not edit it in a way that changes its meaning.

Recognition

We recognise writers whose work stands out through quarterly digital certificates, acknowledgement across our platforms, and recognition of outstanding contributors at the end of each year.

After you are published

Share it. Send it to the people it concerns, not only to the people who already agree with you. A piece about a municipal drainage decision is worth sending to the municipality.

Read other members' work, and keep learning. The discussion board carries grants, fellowships, jobs and calls for pitches posted by members who found them, and several of our writers have been commissioned elsewhere through opportunities that appeared there first.

Questions

Write to reach@climatechangewriters.com. Someone will answer.

Happy writing.