Croakey is particularly interested in hearing from people and groups who are under-represented in the mainstream media, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people with disabilities, people with lived experience (for example, of health conditions or social determinants of health such as racism, the climate crisis, incarceration and housing insecurity), healthcare consumers, young people, individual healthcare providers (as opposed to peak bodies), people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and people from rural and remote communities.
If you would like to submit an article for consideration by the Croakey editors, we ask that you do the following:
Before submitting:
- Please contact us first to check if your topic and article are of interest, or if we have any suggestions. If you read Croakey regularly, you will have an idea of the topics that we cover and our general style. Contact:Â info@croakey.org
- Croakey articles are typically about 800-1,000 words. We occasionally publish #LongReads – but only when this is merited.
- We encourage contributors to think of how their article may provide service to our readers – for example, through links to useful references and resources. However, please do not use an academic referencing style. We prefer to hyperlink to references and resources.
- Croakey has a wide audience, including people outside of Australia, so please minimise the use of technical language and spell out any acronyms.
- We generally require articles to be attributed to the author but understand that sometimes people may want to write an article anonymously. Please email info@croakey.org to discuss this if you are interested in submitting an article under a pseudonym.
- If you are not confident with writing or English skills, but feel you have an important issue to share via Croakey, please contact us at info@croakey.org to discuss if we can assist you in preparing an article.
- What to avoid: sending an article that has clearly been written for another publication and audience, and will take a lot of our time to re-work it for our audiences.
When submitting:
- We ask all contributors to declare relevant conflicts of interest – more information is here.
- We do not publish personal attacks, so please focus on the issues, rather than on individuals.
- The best format in which to submit an article is in an unformatted Word (or equivalent) document.
- Please spell-check your article before submission.
- Please provide contact details in case we need to get in touch with you to discuss your submission.
- It is also helpful to attach a brief (1-3 sentences) bio including your current role and any other relevant experience.
- Please let us know if you have submitted your article elsewhere.
- It helps us enormously if you are able to provide or suggest feature images to accompany your article.
- Read more about our editorial policies here.Â
- Send your submission to info@croakey.org
After submitting:
- Please bear in mind that we are a low-budget enterprise with no full-time staff. We may not be able to respond promptly.
- If you have not heard from us within a week, please do not hesitate to send us a follow-up email.
- Croakey generally receives more submissions than we can post, so will select the best articles based on their relevancy to current issues, readability and evidence-based arguments, with a preference for articles from authors not already covered in the public debate.
- Sometimes an article on a topical issue will be posted before an article submitted earlier, but which has less relevance to issues currently being debated.
- If you have submitted your article elsewhere, please let us know if it has been published, and whether you still want it considered for publication at Croakey.
- Croakey retains the right to edit submissions for clarity and style but will not change their content without first discussing this with the author.
- We may get back to you suggesting changes to the content or format of the article before it can be published.
Also read
See this excellent guide on pitching and writing opinion articles, prepared by The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre (and, yes, we are delighted to get a mention in it).
Disclaimer
Croakey operates under resource constraints. We do not have full-time staff but rely upon the goodwill of busy people to contribute articles and to assist with projects.
We do the best we can with limited resources – often posts are simply aiming to link you into useful sources/resources rather than to provide considered, comprehensive analysis or reporting.
Croakey is a place for sharing ideas and discussions – it does not intend to provide personal health advice. If any articles raise personal health issues or concerns for you, please seek expert advice.
