How can the Spokes magazine inspire and support you, dear science engagement professionals? What topics or questions would you want us to cover in the next few months? What inspiring author would you like to read in your favourite professional magazine? Or perhaps you are sitting on a body of knowledge or experience you would feel ready to write up?

Next January the Spokes Editorial Committee will be meeting up to put together our yearly editorial schedule - have your say! Hungry readers and potential authors, submit article ideas through this simple form by 19 December 2018. We commit to reading them all and sending feedback about each one.

What makes a good Spokes article?

Extracts from our guide for contributors:

Great Spokes articles include one or more of these ingredients

• Edgy topic, recent trend in science engagement
• Idea or practice from neighbouring field that will inspire the science engagement community to see issues from a different angle or try new ways of working
• Case studies drawn from a diversity of organisations and countries
• Little-written about topics related to the daily business of running a science engagement organisation
• Academic papers re-worked by their authors into a more informal format

What won’t work

• Articles based drawn from a single organisation or project, unless absolutely outstanding
• Sales pitches
• Topics we’ve already published articles about recently (check issues here)

What types of articles do you find in Spokes?

Spokes combines in-depth articles and interviews with news from the Ecsite office and events, the latest from EU science policy, announcement from members, good reads and opportunities… Targeted at busy professionals, its ambition is to be both informative and entertaining. Spokes doesn’t use peer review, but an Editorial Committee selects article proposals and works with authors to ensure that articles present high quality information in an engaging way.

Each Spokes issue’s main page gets an average of 1,200+ unique page views, a figure that has been regularly rising since Spokes went digital in April 2015.

Usual Spokes structure:

• One ‘IN DEPTH’ article – see example here
• One ‘LOOKOUTS’ article (3-5 interviews) – see example here
• A ‘COLUMN’, written by Ecsite representatives or guests – see example here
• Half a dozen news sections, presenting summaries of hyperlinked items published on the Ecsite website (news, good reads, opportunities etc)