Wellcome History guidelines for contributors

'Wellcome History' publishes several types of article. Main features are normally up to 1500 words long. Other articles - such as summaries of work in progress, conference reports, book reviews and profiles of research resources - are normally up to 800 words long.

For an idea of the range of articles published, explore some of the back issues.

Submitting articles

If you want to submit an article, you should first contact the Editor, Dr Elizabeth T Hurren - eh140@le.ac.uk - to check the suitability of your idea.

When submitting an article, please send it as a Microsoft Word file attached to an email. Please make sure you are satisfied with it, as it is often difficult to incorporate changes at the proof stage.

Bear in mind that 'Wellcome History' isn’t an academic journal. While many readers are medical history researchers or students, many others are not; certainly, a majority of readers will not be experts in your particular field. So try to pitch your article appropriately.

Articles may not be published until several months after submission, so take care when referring to events in the recent past or due to take place in the very near future (we will make sure that the tenses are correct at the time of publishing).

Please also include a couple of lines about yourself (e.g. position and institution) that we can print at the end of your article.

Choosing images

We like to print images with articles wherever possible, to make the magazine more attractive and engaging. But some areas of study are harder to illustrate than others. If you can suggest or provide any pictures, that will help us.

We have a wide range of imagery on medical themes throughout history at Wellcome Images. Feel free to search for anything appropriate to your article and list any suggestions, using the individual image codes (in the format L0012345).

If you have any good-quality, relevant images from other sources, do send these along with your article. But please bear in mind:

• We look for visually striking pictures. This is especially important for the main feature, which usually provides the front cover image as well as one or two on the inside pages.
• The quality of the image files is crucial. Things that look good on a screen often work less well in print. Please send image files that are as sharp and as high-resolution as possible (not pasted into Word).
• Only send images if you have established that we have permission from the creator and/or copyright holder (if applicable) to use them.
• Please add a description of each image so that we can write a caption, as well as any individuals or organisations that we need to credit for its use.