Guest Expert Articles - Submission Guidelines

Auto Central guest expert articles provide industry authorities with an outlet to share their views and insights on emerging trends, challenges, technologies, and best practices. Interested contributors should submit their questions, abstracts, outlines, or completed drafts to the editor for consideration.

Benefits
By delivering valuable information and ideas to Auto Central readers, industry insiders bring increased visibility and credibility to themselves, their organizations, and issues of importance to them. Guest expert articles provide contributors with unique branding and thought-leadership opportunities via:

• Prominent placement of all articles on the Auto Central home page
• Prominent placement in the Auto Central email newsletter (received by tens of thousands of subscribers)
• Article exposure through multiple social media channels
• A dedicated author landing page, which highlights the author's bio, contact information, and published articles
• Potential cross-promotion to other relevant websites (and their e-newsletters) in the Life Science Connect network

Content
Guest expert articles should address a significant trend or issue of interest to Auto Central readers, and should provide information that our readers will find useful/actionable. Articles should offer a thoughtful — even provocative — take on the chosen theme, and can combine opinion with fact-based observation and information. Possible angles include:

• Discuss the significance of a hot topic, trend, or development within the industry — one that is generating a lot of excitement, concern, and/or confusion.
• Point to an emerging topic or issue that hasn’t yet garnered much attention or had much impact. Make a case for why readers should pay early attention to it and possibly start preparing for its eventual impact.
• Identify a familiar need, challenge, or pain point commonly expressed by readers. Offer suggestions/options (best practices) for addressing it.

Authors
Authors are typically subject matter experts from companies, associations, consulting and analyst firms, academia, or other organizations.

• Author cannot have marketing, business development, or public relations related titles.
• A brief author bio and headshot should be included with any guest expert article submission. The bio should not include excessive or promotional (e.g., "a leading provider...") description of the company, but it may include contact information (email, LinkedIn, etc.).

Length
Guest expert articles should be at least 1,000 words in length (not including headline, references, or author bio). For articles well over 2,000 words, we will work with the author to convert them into multi-part series.

Format
Articles should be submitted in editable Microsoft Word format, with the language set to American English.

Images
Graphic elements photos, illustrations, charts, graphs, etc.) may be included. However, the author will be responsible for securing copyright permission to use any images that are not their (or their firm's) own work. Company logos or images bearing company logos will not be accepted. Images ideally should be submitted in JPEG, GIF, or PNG format, and may be embedded in Word docs. The author should indicate where each image should appear within the text, and provide captions for all images.

Exclusivity
Articles should be original and exclusive to Auto Central (and other websites in our network). They should not have run in any print or online publication previously, in any form. They also should not be slated to run in any other publications or online sources.

Other Guidelines

• Articles should not promote, either directly or indirectly, a company or product or service.
• Articles should include a headline/title and in-text subheads. Headlines should be accurate, as succinct as possible (ideally <12 words), and engaging (including terms that will grab reader attention).
• Acronyms and abbreviations should be defined upon first reference and within tables and figures.
• References should be called out in text using superscript numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.) and cited at the end of the article in a dedicated References section. Do not use Word's reference or footnote features.
• The editorial team reserves the right to accept or reject any article submitted.
• All accepted articles and accompanying bios will be edited for style, clarity, spelling/grammar, and accuracy. However, the author is responsible for all statements in his or her work.

Deadlines
We have a rolling submission schedule and do not use a traditional editorial calendar, so we can work with authors to set mutually agreeable submission deadlines.

Submissions
Interested contributors should submit their questions, abstracts, outlines, or completed drafts to the editor for consideration.