Clearing Magazine: Ecology, Sustainability, Community

CLEARING Magazine
Writers' Guidelines

Purpose
CLEARING is intended to help teachers, parents and other educators promote environmental and global awareness among young people from kindergarten through high school. Articles range from perspective pieces (e.g. the role of environmental education or global education in the curriculum) to practical classroom-ready activities. Most articles are written by teachers or other educators working in the field of environmental/global education, but we have also published several pieces by freelance writers and we welcome such contributions.

Remuneration
As a small non-profit publication, we are unable to offer payment to writers and reviewers. Writers of feature articles receive five copies of the issue in which their article appears.

Length
As a general rule, the length of the article will be determined by its content. One page in CLEARING is approximately 750 words. With photographs or illustrations, one page comes to about 575 words. We find that most readers simply do not have time to read very long articles, and thus a good target is approximately 1500 words. Maximum length should be 2500 words. Book reviews should range from 250 to 750 words.

Format
In order of preference:

a. send your article by e-mail to editor@clearingmagazine.org. If possible, place the text of your article directly into the body of the e-mail message. If you must send the article as an attachment, please convert it to Microsoft Word format.
b. send your article by regular mail, allowing lots of time for delivery.

Acceptance of Articles
We are a small magazine with an editorial/production/circulation staff of ONE. Therefore, we usually cannot respond immediately to articles sent unsolicited. However, if we think your article is one we might publish at a future date, we will try to contact you within a month from the time we receive it. If you have an idea for an article and would like to know whether or not we would be interested, please send an outline or summary of the proposed article (keep it to about one page in length).

Our deadlines for submission of articles are as follows:
June 15 - Summer issue (publication in July)
August 15 - Fall issue (publication in October)
December 15 - Winter issue (publication in January)
March 15 - Spring issue (publication in April)

Editing
Once we accept the article for publication, we will contact you if we need clarification or elaboration. CLEARING reserves the right to edit all material for brevity, organization, clarity and grammatical precision. We will communicate with you regarding any significant changes. Although we hope that you will not insist upon being consulted about every word change, we will understand if you do. Please inform us if that's the case.

Style and Approach
Style is an individual matter which we cannot dictate, but some guidelines are in order. First, bear in mind that CLEARING is not an academic journal and, as such, does not stand on formality. Let your own voice be heard in your writing, and don't hesitate to use humor and rhetorical flair. Since our readership extends across North America, try to avoid references to a particular region, province or state if they are not important to your article.
If you are writing about a program or series of activities undertaken in your school, try to avoid the "diary" approach. Readers do not need (and likely do not want) to know every little thing that happened. For the most part, they are reading for ideas that they can use or build on in their own classrooms. While you may want or need to include an account of what happened when you tried a particular teaching unit or activity, your main purpose should be to inform readers of how they might best go about developing a similar program, unit or activity.
If you are writing on a topic related to the environment or to other global issues, such as global warming or ozone depletion, your primary purpose should not be to inform readers about these issues but rather to provide ideas for teaching about these issues. Some background information is always useful, but most teachers have many other sources for such information. They look to CLEARING to find ways of conveying the complexity of these issues to students.
Finally, please note that we try to avoid articles that promote the work of one organization

Writing tips
* Please give us your best sentence structure, grammar, punctuation and overall organization. Have an honest friend or colleague read your manuscript before you submit it.
* Avoid verbosity, as in "It was unanimously agreed by all who participated and were involved in this exciting event that the students had been empowered to really make a difference in terms of helping Mother Nature and saving the environment."
* Avoid over-used words and phrases such as "in terms of," "empowerment," "we can make a difference," "in this fast-paced modern world of ours"....
* Credits: Please add a sentence or so about yourself which we can add to the end or your article or review. Our typical closer goes something like "Mary Jones teaches grade 3 at Columbia River Elementary School in Richland, Washington."

Illustrations/photographs
Ideally, photographs and illustrations may be sent via e-mail, provided they are properly formatted. Images taken on digital cameras at 72 dpi are fine for the computer screen, but make lousy print images. We strongly recommend digital pictures taken at high resolution (300 dpi). Images should be sent as .jpegs for ease of transmission, but .tiffs are also acceptable. Color or black-and-white prints are also acceptable, and will be scanned into digital format. Slides are the least desirable but are acceptable if, like color prints, they show good light/dark contrast and avoid shadows on people's faces. Please provide a description of each photograph so that the captions printed in the magazine accurately reflect the action in the picture. Similarly, please provide the name(s) of the photographer(s) so that proper credit can be given. All slides, drawings, photos will be returned to you in good condition after the issue is published.

References
If you use references when writing your article, or if you are recommending resources or references for further reading, please include a complete bibliographic citation of these. Let us know the title, author, publisher, date and place of publication, number of pages, and ISBN number. You'll generally find all of this information on the inside overleaf of the book. If citing a journal or periodical, provide the title of the journal and article, author, date, volume, issue and page numbers. If some of this information is impossible for you to obtain, let us know and we will try to find the source.

back to main page