Blog content guidelines

The Energy Blog @ ETH Zurich is open for contributions from any member of the ETH Zurich community. If you have an idea for a blog post that you think is relevant and interesting for a wide audience, consider submitting your proposal.The Energy Blog @ ETH Zurich publishes content explicitly related to the field of energy that may come in two main formats:

• Research highlights – as a member of the academic community in ETH Zurich, you share the insights of recent research that have a high societal and political relevance to a wide audience. Occasionally, the Blog could reflect upon major events relevant to the energy community that happens within ETH Zurich.
• Debate room – where researchers voice their personal takes on current public debates.

The target audience is citizens interested in energy topics, who like to discuss and interact with scientific research without reading technical papers. The Energy Blog @ ETH Zurich is a unique opportunity for researchers to engage with readers from industry and policy-making. The Energy Blog language is English in order to reach out to a global audience. However, translation into German is considered in those cases that are particularly relevant for the German speaking public. If you do not feel comfortable writing in English, please contact us.

If you would like to submit an article, please study the article submission process (see below) and send your post proposal to energyblog@ethz.ch or directly to one of the core editors.

Article submission process

First step: From idea to the first draft

If you want to write a post for the Energy Blog @ ETH Zurich, contact energyblog@ethz.ch or one of our core editors and send us a blog post proposal (no longer than 150 words, bullet points are recommended). We will inform you within a week after submitting your proposal, if your proposal was accepted, if it needs some changes or – what we don’t expect will happen 🙂 – if your proposal was rejected.

Second step: From the first draft to publication

If the proposal is admitted for publication, we will ask you to submit a full draft to the responsible editor for your post. The first draft should be ready within 3 weeks after your proposal was accepted, the publication of your post will normally happen within 4-8 weeks. Blog entries will range between 700 to 1,000 words but never exceed 1,200 words.

You can make use of charts, graphs, and pictures to illustrate your publication (use as few as possible). Please, send the files separately in high resolution. We remind you that we cannot provide editorial services to improve your figures and that you are the sole responsible for the accuracy, rigor, and use of the figures in your post, including all conditions pertaining to the right of use and reproduction of the figures. Creativity is highly encouraged to make figures and pictures appealing! Please try to avoid the use of footnotes, endnotes or references, and, instead, please do supply or introduce directly in the text (working, and ideally stable) hyperlinks for any references where you think this helps.

Last remarks …

Before the final publication, you will have to provide us with a brief biography, your Twitter username (if you have one) or any other social media channel, and high-resolution pictures of yourself and potential co-authors.

We only consider articles that have not been published before, unless a substantial new contribution is added to the text. We will allow syndication of our content to other websites with a recommended citation format. Furthermore, we also reserve the right to make editorial changes (such as news headlines, or highlighted sentences) before publication. Please, be also aware that if your article is accepted for publication it will be shared under a creative commons license BY-NC (attribution, non-commercial use).

As the editorial team is a group of committed but busy volunteers, we ask for your understanding that the response to your submission may take a few days. We would like to also encourage younger researchers from diverse backgrounds to submit articles. We are oriented towards nurturing an inclusive community through empowering people of various perspectives that could bring a diverse set of views into our publications.

Comment policy

Articles published in the Energy Blog @ ETH Zurich are open for comment. Comments are moderated by the editorial team, which reserves the right to edit or not publish comments. No correspondence will be entered into about such decisions. Please note that comments are stored in the website’s archive and can be found and recalled at any time by a search engine.

The following will not be published:

• Comments from people who do not provide their full, correct names or a valid email address. Email addresses will be saved, but not published.
• Threats, disrespectful comments or comments of a racist, sexist or violent nature.
• Comments of a commercial nature.
• Comments that do not address the subject or put forward irrelevant arguments.
• The editorial team reserves the right to refuse comments if a discussion threatens to become repetitive or one-sided, wanders too far from the original topic or moves off-topic.

The editors accept no responsibility for the factual accuracy of comments.

Legal disclaimer

By submitting content to the Energy Blog @ ETH Zurich you state that the submitted material (1) is your original work, (2) is submitted to the Energy Blog @ ETH Zurich prior to its publication elsewhere, (3) does not infringe or violate any law, rule or regulation or the rights or intellectual property rights (including but not limited to copyright, trademarks, design rights, database rights, whether registered or unregistered, or any similar rights recognised anywhere in the world) of any person (or encourage anyone else to do so), (4) is not objectionable, inaccurate or inflammatory, (5) is not obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, pornographic, harassing, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, (6) is not an advertisement or solicitation of business or contributions, (7) complies with all applicable law and policy in the territory of publication.