Freelance writing
Cristian Bodo
Thursday, 13 November 2008 11:05 UTC
Hi there
I’m a junior postdoc, still active on the bench, but with a lifelong interest in scientific writing and an idea to switch my career in that direction in the future.
I’ve noticed that among the pieces of advise on how to make this transition that I’ve collected (including here at Nature Network), freelance writing keeps popping up as a way to highlight one’s interest about science writing to potential employers. My question is: how exactly does one get commisioned to write a piece? I know that editorial boards include so-called “commision editors”, and the role of these persons is to contact potential writers when they want a piece about a particular subject to appear on an incoming issue of the journal, but looking at the background of the authors whose work is actually published you realize that they are either senior scientists with an established reputation in their field, or people who are already working within the organization (professional journalists, let’s say, or people who have already made the transition). How does someone who’s just starting manage to get something published? Are there some etiquette rules that apply here? Is it common for editors to be approached with an idea for an article by someone they’ve probably never heard of before? Should one instead go ahead, write the article in question and then start sending it to editors in hope that some may become interested? And finally, do you happen to know of any specific publications that would be more willing to accept pieces from someone with (almost) no journalistic experience?
Thank you in advance.
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Correction: The topic of this particular forum is for Nature Network users to ask questions of the Nature editors about matters relating to publishing their papers and our editorial publication policies.
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Sincere apologies, Maxine. I posted the notice in full in the spirit of helpfulness and advance notice as there is no link yet for people to go to. I’m sorry I didn’t, as I have always done before on this public forum, qualify that the post was not from a Nature editor – I left it out because I’d mentioned it four posts above and, since the physical gap was small, thought it would be clear to readers. I’d responded initially, and again this week, as the original posting seemed such a general query and I felt able to provide additional information in an area which is not only of such high interest amongst many young researchers, ie how to get into science communication, but also highly competitive and with relatively few opportunities. But gentle reminder totally taken on board and in the spirit intended!
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Thanks for your gracious response, Irene. I was mainly concerned that we didn’t encourage a flood of job postings from other users! (Fine for other forums on the network).
Perhaps we Nature journal editors should be more circumspect about posting opporutnities at our own journals here. For my part, I began to do this because questions about opportunities at NPG are very commmon from users. But it is getting away from the purpose of the forum somewhat. Also, since the forum started, the main NPG website has revamped its job listings so positions at NPG are much easier to find now, as they are broken out.
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