Interested in contributing to Today's Clinical Lab?

Today's Clinical Lab’s editors welcome high-quality article, blog, and webinar contributions to share with our audience. Before pitching us an idea, please see our contributor guidelines below: 

Contributing feature articles

Written contributed articles must fall within one of Today's Clinical Lab’s main topic categories and be relevant for our readers, i.e., clinical research and lab professionals. The Today's Clinical Lab readership is diverse and represents a wide variety of professionals from various organizations. 

When writing an article that falls under the category of Applications or Technologies, we encourage writers to use credible and varied sources, including but not limited to primary research papers, information sourced from government institutions, such as Health Canada, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and credible scientists and subject matter experts. We encourage writers to reach out to two to three independent sources per article to include original quotations.

When writing an article that falls under the category of Management & Careers, we encourage writers to include action items, tips, strategies, or insightful “food for thought” for readers to implement in their labs. We also encourage readers to take a storytelling approach to sharing their own professional experiences. 

Contributing Thought Leadership Blogs

The Today's Clinical Lab Thought Leadership Blog is all about original ideas, unique perspectives, and expert insights into all areas of clinical research, laboratory medicine, and leadership and careers. We're looking for posts that will make our readers think and help them be better professionals and leaders. We also encourage blogs to be written by someone who may not usually have this type of platform/opportunity to share their perspective.

All non-promotional contributions to the Today's Clinical Lab Thought Leadership Blog must adhere to the following guidelines:

• Content must be unbiased and cannot promote a particular product or company.
• Posts should be short and concise—500–700 words is sufficient.
• In-text links to sources are sufficient.
• The blog post will appear on our website, in our newsletters, on our social media channels, and sometimes in our print publication.
• Blogs are published online when ready—there is no hard deadline for submission.

When contributing a Thought Leadership Blog, please include a brief author bio and headshot with submission, and if possible, a hyperlink to your LinkedIn profile. If you like, please submit original images to accompany the blog post with captions and attribution.

Pitching an article idea to Today's Clinical Lab’s editors:

Please send detailed article pitches or outlines to Miriam Bergeret, MSc, managing editor, including references you plan to cite/draw from, a brief author bio that includes why you are the best person to write this article, and links to writing samples.

*If an article pitch is accepted for review, it does not guarantee that the article draft will be published. All contributed content must meet  Today's Clinical Lab’s editorial House Style and editorial standards and policies. Expect that an article may need to go through multiple rounds of editing/revisions to meet our standards.

To be considered for publication, an article needs to meet the following guidelines:

• For online publication, word count can range from 800–1000 words, unless otherwise stated and agreed upon.
• US English should be used (Merriam-Webster dictionary)
• High-resolution images can also be submitted (optional). Please provide captions and credit for any submitted images.
• Articles must be non-commercial/promotional. Any specific company and/or product promotion will not be accepted.
• Articles must be original and exclusive to Today's Clinical Lab, meaning they aren’t published elsewhere. Plagiarism of any kind will not be tolerated.
• No backlinks to external pages (other than important references) will be included. Please reference authentic and reliable sources when necessary. Examples include peer-reviewed journals or impartial news outlets. References must be hyperlinked for online articles, or placed at the end of the article in a numbered list for print articles. Please use AMA format for reference lists.
• Authors should include a brief bio to be included on our website and in print, including their credentials, title, hyperlink to their LinkedIn profile, and a headshot image. 

Writing tips for articles submitted to Today's Clinical Lab:

• Include a suggested head/title that is < 60 characters and in Chicago Manual of Style title case.
• Include a suggested dek/summary that is < 120 characters.
• Include subheads throughout the article to help readers easily find information.
• Use active voice. Aim for 90% active voice, 10% passive voice.
• Stick to the assigned word count. Drafts that are more than 20% over the assigned word count will be returned to writers and will not be accepted until the word count is reduced.
• Ensure all claims, data, statistics, direct quotations, etc. have clear references/sources and for study results, information about how that data was collected.
• If a study is a preprint, always indicate in the copy which preprint server it was posted to with a note that the results are not peer-reviewed.
• Use serial commas.
• Use “said” (quotation pulled from another source) or “says” (when a source spoke directly to a writer for Today's Clinical Lab) for direct quotations, or “wrote” or “concluded” for quotations taken from primary research papers.