Guest Expert Article Submission Guidelines

Auto Central guest expert articles provide industry authorities with an outlet to share their views and insights on emerging trends, challenges, technologies, best practices, and regulatory compliance. 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 thought leadership opportunities via:

• Prominent placement of all articles on the Auto Central home page
• Prominent placement in the Auto Central email newsletter
• Article exposure through multiple social media channels
• Significant article exposure through LinkedIn activity.
• Potential cross-promotion to other relevant websites and their newsletters in the Life Science Connect network.

Authors
Authors are typically subject matter experts from life sciences companies, associations, industry consortia, consulting and analyst firms, and academia.

• We cannot accept any content from vendors/suppliers, technology partners, or outsourcing partners of life sciences companies as guest columns, even if it’s not promotional.
• Authors should be subject matter experts. They cannot hold roles related to marketing, business development, or public relations.
• 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 author’s company. The bio may include author contact information.

Content
Articles should be original and exclusive to Auto Central and other websites in our network. They should not have appeared in any print or online publication previously, in any form. They also should not be slated to appear in any other publications or online sources. However, if you are presenting at a conference or other speaking engagement, you may convert your talk into an article for consideration on Auto Central (as long as the event host doesn’t retain the rights to the content).

Guest expert articles should address a significant trend or issue of interest to Auto Central readers, and should provide practical, actionable information that our readers will find useful. 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. Articles should not opine on industry challenges (“preach to the choir”) without also offering recommendations or best practices to overcome or mitigate those challenges.

Articles should provide value to our audience, which includes professionals working at life sciences companies in development/manufacturing roles, which may include compliance, quality, operations, and other related roles. Our audience does not include healthcare professionals, patients, or regulatory authorities.

Articles should not promote, either directly or indirectly, a company, product, or service. An article written as a “puff piece” for your company will not be considered.

Authors should use active voice (e.g., “Pharmaceutical companies should…” or “Establish analytical tests for…”) rather than passive voice (e.g., “Analytical tests should be established…”.

We publish in American English. We do not provide translation services. Authors who are not fluent in American English should work with a translator before submitting their article.

Length
Guest expert articles should be 1,000–2,000 words in length, excluding headline, references, and author bio. For articles well over that word count, we will work with authors to convert them into multi-part series.

The article’s introduction should take up no more than three paragraphs. The majority of the article should be spent sharing the actionable considerations that you are aiming to convey.

Format

• Articles should be submitted in editable Microsoft Word format, with the language set to American English.
• Articles should include a working headline/title and in-text subheads. Headlines should be accurate, as succinct as possible (ideally <8 words or <50 characters), and engaging. Our editor is happy to collaborate with you on this.
• 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. References should be superscripted in numerical order (i.e., the first reference referred to in the body text should be reference 1, and then reference 2, etc.). In lieu of numbered references, authors may use in-text hyperlinks to the appropriate citations. Do not use Microsoft Word's reference features or footnote features.

Images
Graphic elements (figures, photos, illustrations, charts, graphs, etc.) may be included.

• Authors are responsible for securing copyright permission to use any images that are not their (or their firm's) own work. Please note that attributing the source of an image in the caption or body text does not equal permission; permission must still be obtained.
• Company logos or images bearing company logos will not be accepted.
• Images may be embedded in Word docs to indicate where they should appear in the article, but they should also be submitted in their original high-resolution JPEG, GIF, or PNG format.
• Authors should provide captions for all images.

Additional Guidelines Of Note

• 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 readability. However, authors are responsible for all statements in their 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. Authors must confirm that they have read and will adhere to the above guidelines.