Guest Blog Guidelines: General Advice and Thoughts

This blog has always sought to highlight a wide range of subjects of interest within the remit of archaeology and osteology (and often outside of these boundaries).  Having had the luck to have continued to bring a variety of guest blog entries to the readers of this blog, I’d thought I’d share a few guidelines that I’ve often sent to potential guest bloggers for their information and digestion.  This is, in effect, an open invitation to those who are willing to participate.  I also thought I’d be open about the advice I offer in the vague and somewhat distorted hope that someone out there may well be inspired to host guest blogs of their own!

The downside of offering guest blogs! Both Digital Sherpa and Spin Sucks have some good advice for blogs offering guest posts, as well as highlighting the spam bots of SEO (Search Engine Optimization, normally spam advertising a company or products). If you have evidence of the health benefits of a chocolate only diet, please contact me! Image credit: Spin Sucks.

A Slice of Advice

First of all, thank you for helping to contribute to the blog site – without you the blog would not be what it has become.  Please use the guest blog entry as a chance to highlight and advertise your archaeological project and research, as well as a chance to promote and educate readers on the value and importance of archaeology and osteoarchaeology, from wherever you are from or have experience of.  The blog is a mixture of informal and formal approaches to a variety of topics in the above subjects – aim to inform and engage the audience and not to alienate them.  Please see the below tips as general points, as you will approach the guest blog in your own way (which is great!).  Once again thank you for taking an interest in These Bones of Mine.  I personally always welcome updates on your ongoing projects, as do the wider readers of the blog.

Basic Bones

• Please send the guest blog in a Word .doc format and attach any images as Jpeg file formats (this can include photographs, diagrams, and/or graphs).  If images used are not your own, please ensure that copy right or permission to use the image has been attained beforehand.  This will be edited in Word and sent back for your edits/comments.  Once both myself and yourself are happy with the entry it will be posted onto the blog with appropriate categories and tags.

• Word limit is generally kept at around 1000 words to 2500 words for the guest post entries.  Remember though that sometimes less is more, but complex topics may need to be introduced and discussed in-depth.  Please also note that interview style posts are often longer than this as they cover more topics in a back and forth active conversation, albeit sometimes in briefer detail.  Dependent on the guest blog, or interview, I am open for posts of up to 4000 words.

Meat of the Matter: The Content

•  The content is up to the individual person and depends on the project or topic of the guest post.  This blog primarily focuses on the topics of archaeology, human osteology, heritage and human evolution.  As such these are the subjects that guest posts are particularly welcome in.  However, I am also interested in the wider aspects of the above topics and related disciplines.  These include, but are not limited to, forensic anthropology, zooarchaeology, anthropology and ethnography, amongst others.  I am also particularly interested in public outreach and multidisciplinary projects.  For a full list of subjects that I am interested in please see the Guest Posts page.

• As the guest blogger introduce the topic, state the overall general aims of either the project or the research, indicate the timescale and your personal involvement.  The last point is important as this can help engage the reader on a fundamental level: what are your experiences of archaeology, how could I get involved?

• Write for an interested and informed audience, but be wary that an academic approach to writing on a blog can potentially bore or isolate the intended or general audience.  I will hyperlink to any specialist terms used in the post (such as to either Wikipedia for general terms and background knowledge, or to a dedicated archaeological site for specific information).  Remember the people who read These Bones of Mine are already interested in archaeology and osteology, so don’t worry about how specialized your topic is (though this can be a tricky wire to navigate).

• Remember that as the guest blogger you yourself will be representing what you are writing about. If in doubt please contact either a project or academic supervisor if you are not sure that the information you are writing about is meant for public consumption (or is under commercial constraints, for example).  If you have conducted original research and are looking to publish your results, please remember that a blog post probably isn’t the ideal way to break a new methodology to the world, lest another researcher claim credit on your behalf.  Remember this is a fully public blog!  But please also see this as an opportunity to communicate on a big scale to an international audience (typically a ‘front page’ entry will get hits from people just looking at the site, and hopefully you may get an email or two if someone is interested in your research!).

• At the conclusion of the post I will add a Further Information section, a set of links with a short introduction on where to go next to learn more about what the guest post content was on.  The post ends with a bibliography in the Harvard style that will be compiled by the guest blogger themselves, although I will edit this if necessary and add relevant hyperlinks.  Remember that Open Access articles are appreciated by the general audience as many who read the entries will not have access to specialist journal articles.

The Fantastic Format

• As already mentioned above book and article references are welcomed (especially Open Access sources) and the referencing system used on this blog is the Harvard method, as is generally typical for archaeology as a discipline in the UK.  I will hyperlink the reference to an online source if there is an open access publication – otherwise I’ll link to the publisher’s website, google books, etc.  (Heck, even Amazon sometimes lets you read a few pages for free!).

• There will be an introductory paragraph about the author of the guest post, citing their background in commercial, voluntary and/or academic archaeology and related experience.  Further to this general interests that the writer of the guest post has can also be included, if necessary.  I will likely write the introductory paragraph, so please do feel free to add any information on non-archaeological interests or links to personal and academic websites with the body of your guest blog entry.

• I will do the final edit of any guest entry submitted for this site, but I will show you this before it goes on the blog to enable you to edit the guest blog entry again if necessary.  I will also highlight when the guest blog is published on the blog itself (but please be aware it will look different on the blog than on Word!).  Editing is available anytime and I am very happy to update old guest blogs to reflect new projects, publications or positions, etc.  (As much as I enjoy writing posts for this site I do find writing to be a slow process and editing myself a necessary, but painful, evil.  In contrast to this, however, I quite enjoy editing other guest blog entries and interviews).

• Diagrams, pictures, and photographs are highly recommended as they help break up the blocks of text and are very useful to engage the audience; they are also great at communicating complex ideas simply.  Please be aware of copyright with any image and I will credit the image appropriately to either the author of the guest blog or to the recognised copyright holder.

Style: Keeping it Simple

• Remember that there should be no pressure for writing the guest blog entry as there are no deadlines.  Please see this as an opportunity to highlight and promote the value of archaeology to an international audience, specifically breaking down the barriers between access and availability – of both the archaeological information and of access to that information.

• As such, please feel free to stylise the post as to how you see fit to see how effective you think it may be.  Think about the audience you are wanting to reach and why –  it is the public, the academic, or the commercial spheres of the archaeology sector, or is it a mix of these audiences?

Who Can Contribute to These Bones of Mine via a Guest Blog?

Anyone!  I’ve had feedback from a few non-archaeological or non-osteological minded friends now about this blog and they say that sometimes it can be a bit too academic, a bit too dense and special interest in scope.  This has always been the risk in trying to combine both my personal and professional interests, alongside my experience of academia itself.  However, I do also try to vary both the tone and approach depending on the topic of the blog post.  I realize I am reaching out to an audience that can be tiny – osteoarchaeology is not of primary concern to many people, nor is it a vital subject that is widely taught (as much as it pains me to say that).  I’d argue though that it is diverse, that it is interesting and, finally, that it is relevant to the world at large for the very understanding of our species (hence this blog).

As such I am interested in hearing from potential guest bloggers from all walks of life, not just those from academia.  If you are a volunteer, a commercial archaeologist, an undergraduate or a early career academic, perhaps a member of the public with an interest in heritage and archaeology – if you have something to say then I will consider it.  I may not always accept, but I will be interested.  I am particularly interested in hearing from people who are on the margins of society (this includes those marginalized in the world of archaeology, be it in the commercial, academic and/or voluntary sectors).  I am particularly interested in hearing from early career archaeologists or osteoarchaeologists.  If you are struggling to get an archaeological PhD position, struggling to get onto a Masters course due to funding, struggling to get a position post-PhD and you have something to say about your research, your experience, your knowledge, then yes, I am interested in hearing from you.

Do not be afraid to contact me.  The archaeological record does not belong to one person, one nation or one ideology.  It belongs to humanity, as a gift from humanity.

Final notes….

A final point is to note that I cannot, nor will not, offer any monetary incentive for a guest blog.  Furthermore, a guest post entry will not be hosted here to advertise a commercial venture where profit is the only aim, nor will anonymous ghost authors be accepted (i.e. SEO spam).  This blog is pretty much free via the wonderful people of WordPress and I, for one, very much appreciate their hard work.  One final remark: in archaeology, especially in UK archaeology, your name is your currency and reputation.  Always be careful!

For previous guest blog entries and interviews please do take a minute and have a look at the growing collection here.  As always I owe a debt of gratitude to the people who have already contributed, many thanks!

P.S. I also do interview style blog entries where a conversation between myself and the interviewees is conducted via email.  If this interests you please feel free to contact me via a comment below or this blog’s email address on the About page.

P.P.S. It has been a while but I should (honestly!) have a few posts up soon.  Time seems to be passing quite regularly – a belated happy new year to the readers of this site!