Guidelines for Authors

Activehistory.ca is continuously looking for short and thoughtful blog posts that bring historical perspectives to pressing issues. In order to ensure high quality writing and a diversity of voices, we welcome .doc file posts to activehistoryinfo@gmail.com. Anyone who is actively engaged in historical research is encouraged to submit a post. We also regularly solicit submissions from historians working in different fields at a variety of institutions, both within and beyond the academy.

We welcome submissions addressing any period or place as long as they are historical and anchored in research, engage critical issues facing Canadian society, and are written for a general audience. We also welcome posts dealing with issues related to historical teaching, research, and practice. Posts should focus on the ways historians or aspects of the past connect with the general public, the media, and policymakers.

All posts should meet the profession’s ethical standards and best practices including, where applicable, research ethics protocols such as the Tri-Council Ethics guidelines, research agreements, and opportunities for comment from living individuals or institutions named in a post.

Submissions should be clean, polished drafts that are written in an accessible style for a general audience, use hyperlinks over footnotes, and be between 700 to 1500 words. When submitting a post, be sure to include:

  • a short list of accessible resources
  • five key words that will help website users access your article
  • at least one image that you have permission to use, with appropriate caption and credit information
  • any pertinent ethical considerations
  • your name, email address, Twitter handle, and institutional affiliation
  • a short biography of one to two sentences

We usually only show the first couple of paragraphs of each new blog post on the website’s homepage with a “continue reading” link. Keep this in mind when you submit your draft, as the first paragraphs need to stand on their own and captivate the audience. So, too, should the post title convey a general sense of the topic and capture the attention of a general reader.

It generally takes a few weeks for a submitted post to appear on the website. During that time, you will work with an editor on the ActiveHistory.ca team to ensure that the post meets the website’s criteria.

Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Blog posts published before October  28, 2018 are licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada License.

Please note: ActiveHistory.ca encourages comment and constructive discussion of our articles. We reserve the right to delete comments submitted under aliases, or that contain spam, harassment, or attacks on an individual.