Ziva Voices - HerStory in the Making Guest Articles Guidelines
Ziva Voices – HerStory in the Making guest articles deliver practical knowledge and stories in the author’s own voice, based on science and best practices. Our goal is to widen our reader’s world by offering new perspectives and a wide range of ideas while allowing the writer to showcase their achievements, knowledge, and expert insight about newsworthy events.
We welcome ideas for all mediums, including photography, audio, illustration, statistical visualization, and more.
Article format needs to be aligned with the AP Stylebook.
If you’d like to submit a video guest essay, please contact [email protected] for more information on the submission process.
Guest articles can take many forms, such as:
- Personal life stories: Everyday people describe turning points in their life that have created a significant change. It must be compelling, connect to people’s feelings, and encourage readers to see a different viewpoint.
- A hub for industry experts: Experts present their uniquely developed tools, techniques, and findings and share their ‘how to’. Business strategists, social scientists, economists, engineers, authors, and many others can share their expertise. Ziva Voices – HerStory in the Making focuses on wealth, entrepreneurship, leadership, Web3, relationships, equality, self-knowledge, and social issues.
- A platform for collecting women’s history: HerStory is about Women’s history, a significant part of the Ziva project, ensuring that women will not be left out in documenting history. We are looking for stories about women who have significantly contributed to social, cultural, economic, and scientific change. Our timeline project is currently being developed, and the more data we have, the more significant the impact will be. If you have a piece of HerStory for us, contact us direct at [email protected] with the subject “History is HerStory.”
There is no standard answer to this question. We are generally looking for stories written by women for women, but will also consider articles written by men for women. The best articles have a few things in common:
- They tell a powerful story about a woman who has created tremendous social impact.
- They inspire other women to speak up, step up, and/or start their own business.
- They showcase innovative business ideas and female startups.
- They challenge the status-quo.
- They show an opinion from different, even opposing, perspectives.
- They spark interests in audiences that don’t necessarily share the same view.
- They provide insight into complicated issues or explore big ideas in the making.
- They start conversations, motivate, and create a movement.
- They have an impact beyond Ziva Voices – HerStory in the Making.
- They are typically 800 to 1,600 words, although we sometimes publish articles, poems, or interviews that are shorter or longer.
- They include at least 2 keywords.
- They include a few bullet points to break up the text and make it more readable.
- They use inspirational quotes.
Originality: Essays must be original and exclusive to Ziva Voices – HerStory in the Making, meaning they cannot have appeared elsewhere, in any form, in print or online.
Ethics and conflicts: Guest writers are expected to avoid any conflict of interest or the appearance of such conflict.
Fact-checking: Before we publish your article, it must be fact-checked. When an article is accepted for publication, the guest writer will be asked to submit an annotated copy of the article, listing the relevant sources for each factual assertion.
- We focus our checking on verifiable facts. For example, the number of Americans without health insurance, the median household income or the date a law was enacted.
- We also investigate broader factual assertions (“No one named to the court in the postwar period was as conservative as Justice Scalia or as liberal as Justice Brennan,” “Laos is one of the world’s most corrupt nations”) that may need to be qualified, explained or stated with greater precision or nuance.
- We look at the factual evidence cited to verify that the methodology is sound and that the data is presented with precision and balance.
- We prefer primary sources (an N.I.H. research paper) to secondary ones (a news article about the paper’s findings).
- If we determine that a particular fact cannot be verified, we will not publish it.
We will work to verify the facts in your article through our peer review process, but as the writer, you hold the responsibility for the accuracy of your work. We cannot fix anything after publication without appending a correction — and corrections are permanently archived. Past errors are a factor when we consider whether to accept future work from a writer.
If you do not have access to a professional editor, we will assign you one. The costs of the edit must be covered by you and you will be directly invoiced by one of the verified editors. Ziva Voices – HerStory in the Making 501c3 doesn’t hold responsibility over the invoices sent by the editors, but we do negotiate a price for all contributors. The price starts at $25 and won’t exceed $45*. Ziva Voices – HerStory in the Making certified editors are aware of and have agreed to the price strategy.
It is in our discretion to decline an article that requires editing if the contributor refuses to cover the cost of editing.
To submit your article, please complete this form.
When submitting your essay:
- Explain the professional or personal background that connects you to the argument or idea in your essay. All of our guest essays are rigorously edited and fact-checked.
- Include sources (in hyperlinks in the text or in parentheses) for key arguments made in your article.
* A volunteer, council member, or staff member will read and review every submission, but because of the large number of messages we receive, we may not be able to respond to everyone individually. We are doing our best not to reject anyone. However, we might suggest that you to work closely with one of the editors to create more suitable content. If we request a new article from you that needs one of our editors to work closely with you, the editor fee might go up to $65. That is up to the discretion of the editor and the time needed to create an article that will amplify your voice, inspire, and motivate other women.
