Submission guidelines

Pitching the idea

Paragraph-long pitches or whole articles can be sent to the following email address: editors@redthreads.media. Please, consult the Mission statement page for our political principles.

Submitting the article

While we don’t have word-count cut-offs, our regular articles are usually 1,500-2,000 words in length. Articles that are part of a thematic issue tend to be longer: 3,000-4,000 words.

Please submit prospective articles as Word documents in 12-point type, single spaced. We prefer hyperlinks to footnotes or any other form of reference, and ask that authors insert and format the hyperlinks themselves. When clarifications that cannot be part of the main text are absolutely needed, please, use footnotes.

If the article is accepted for publication, we will also ask you to send us (1) an illustrative image (your own, or with permission to use from the author, or from a public domain source such as Wikimedia or Openverse), (2) a short, one- or two-sentence biographical note, which can include a twitter handle, blog, etc., and accept (3) the substack invitation, which we send by email (sometime it gets lost in the Spam, update, etc. folder). Or if you already have a substack account, please, share it with us.

Editorial process

Once an article passes an initial desk assessment, it will be reviewed by at least two editors, who will make the final editorial decision. We aim to keep the process fast, considering both the authors’ capacity and our own. It might occasionally take us between 2-3 weeks to work on one round of revisions. Feedback can include suggestions related to the argument, structure, and tone of the article; more pointed comments related to the content; and revisions of the text in accordance with standard English usage. Even after revisions, it might still happen that editors and authors decide not to go ahead with publishing an article.

Republication policy

Red Threads is copy-left. Our articles can be copied, translated, and republished as long as the author and Red Threads are credited and a link is provided to the original publication.