Publishing Guidelines
Who you are:
You are passionate about issues related to international security. You have academic or professional experience relevant to the field. You have a strong analytical sense and a lot of ideas about what affects security around the world. You are often referred to as a lazy millennial but feel that the field of security studies is lacking fresh perspectives. You believe that it takes more than a wall to solve complex security threats in the 21st century. If you fit this description, then TFA might be the right place to share your thoughts!
What you will do:
TFA gives priority to contributions relevant for its chosen monthly theme. If you want to be informed about upcoming themes, do not hesitate to reach out to us. Whether your profile matches the upcoming theme or not, the editorial board will keep your contact in its roster for upcoming issues relevant to your area of interest. While TFA focuses on a specific theme every month, side publications will also occasionally be released. If there is a topic you feel strongly about, make sure to discuss it with us!
TFA tries to be flexible regarding the length of its publications. A good way to look at it is to consider that we are neither publishing short news articles nor long academic papers. The length of your contribution should ideally be between 1,500 and 3,000 words. If your contribution goes over this limit, we strongly suggest that you discuss it with us first. We encourage you to be natural while writing, but again, keep in mind that you are neither having a casual bar conversation with some friends nor trying to impress a jury for your thesis defense. In any case, be honest (cite your sources) and make your article entertaining, informative and analytical!
Unless your article is already completed, we encourage you to contact us before you start writing. It is much more efficient (for us and for you) to discuss and agree on an outline prior to producing a full-length article. Keep in mind that your submission should be exclusive to TFA. DO NOT submit your article to any other publications unless notified of its rejection by the editorial board. We do our best to reply to solicitations within a short period of time (no more than two weeks).
Technical elements:
For all contributions, sources should be acknowledged using in-line hyperlinks or in-text references when online sources are not available (eg. As John Rawls says in his 1971 book ‘A Theory of Justice’…).
Authors are welcome to use acronyms but should make sure to define them in full letters on their first use (eg. the Free Syrian Army (FSA)). Try to avoid using too many different acronyms and jargons in your article. Similarly, try to be engaging and straightforward. Avoid unnecessarily long sentences and passive voice.
Contributors are encouraged to provide pictures, graphs or other figures with their articles as long as they are their legal owners or if these media files are free of copyright restrictions (eg. Wikimedia Commons). Please note that cover pictures will be formatted to 1170 x 530 pixels.
Note that while you have authorship over your article, TFA retains all rights over the content published on its website including the possibility to share your article on external platforms (social media or else).
To submit your contribution (or outline) to the editorial board, please email it to editorial@theforeignanalyst.com, in a word format.