Notes for Contributors

eLucidate welcomes articles or ideas for articles in the areas covered by the magazine. We are always on the lookout for feature writers, reviewers both for books and for meetings, as well as respondents to articles. Sadly, we don’t pay contributors, but contributors retain copyright of their articles and can republish their articles elsewhere.

Brief for Feature Articles

If you are writing for eLucidate, please follow these simple guidelines.
 

About the group

The membership comprises information professionals involved in the dissemination and/or delivery of digital content and services. Our membership base is two-thirds academic, one-third commercial, as well as some public libraries. A key benefit of the group is that meetings and forums provide “crossover” insight from one area to another: members see it as a way of keeping up to date in areas outside their core. Few other organisations provide this kind of cross-sectoral awareness. The focus of the group is the UK, in the sense that authentication concerns tend to be around JISC tools such as Athens and Shibboleth. But the issues of digital provision are of course global. The most popular training courses we run are on search tools – Google and others; e-books and how to deal with them. Other popular strands include intranets, content management, bibliographic software, and e-books.
 

Technical level

Although members rated themselves highly for technical awareness, they are typically users rather than creators of technology. Articles should not assume understanding of technical terms without explanation.
 

Length of article

Feature articles should be in the region of 1500-2500 words. Each article should be prefaced by a short summary (around 50 words) that can be used when displaying on public search engines an outline of the article, and to display on the non-member section of the website.
 

What to write

A key aspect of UKeiG is that it provides insight from one area to another – members see it as a way of keeping up to date in areas outside their core expertise. Because the membership is quite disparate, ranging from pharmaceutical information professionals to public librarians, you should not assume the readers are as familiar as you in the subject area you are writing about.

The most valuable viewpoint you can give is that of an end user. UKeiG is not a place for theoretical debate, but a forum where peers can share their experiences and understanding. So, if it worked for you, tell others. If it didn’t, tell others why not.

How to submit

Please e-mail your article to michael@consultmu.co.uk. Articles should be delivered in Word or in an ASCII format. Images are welcome – they may be in gif or jpeg formats.

Rights

By submitting an article to eLucidate, authors grant UKeiG the non-exclusive right to publish the material in any format in perpetuity. However, authors retain full rights in their content and remain the copyright owner.

About you

Please provide a 10-20-word biographical summary about yourself to appear at the end of the article.

Editorial process

Your article will be copy-edited for spelling and for sense. If there are major changes to the article we may return it to you for your comments and approval, but most articles require only light corrections before appearing in eLucidate, and do not need a further review by the author.
 

Brief for Book Reviews

Book reviews are typically 500-750 words. Because UKeiG is independent of any book sales operation, it is not obliged to have favourable reviews. If you think a book is poor, then please tell us why.