Letters to the Editor & Submissions

Letters to the editor

Letters to the editor should be 400 words or less and should comment on something you have read in University Affairs. Please send the letter to editor@aucc.ca. Unlike web-only comments, a letter to the editor must include your full name and city, and preferably your title (or role, such as graduate student) and institution, and you must provide a way for us to contact you (e-mail or mail). We reserve the right to edit letters for length and clarity. Letters may be published online, in the print magazine or both.

Requesting a correction

Please e-mail the editor at editor@aucc.ca to inform us of errors and to request corrections that may have appeared in print or online. We will always publish a clear, appropriate and timely correction when warranted.

Submissions

We welcome submissions from our readers. If you are a freelance writer interested in writing for University Affairs, please see our Freelancers’ Guidelines below. If you are a reader interested in contributing, please read the following guidelines carefully.

University Affairs is a bilingual, general-interest magazine about Canada’s universities written for a highly educated audience who come from a wide range of fields and professions. Articles should be journalistic, jargon-free and contain no endnotes. All articles are subject to editing for clarity, length and style and authors are informed of any significant changes to their work. We use Gage Canadian Dictionary for spelling and follow the latest edition of the Canadian Press Stylebook. For French-written articles, we use Le guide du rédacteur of the Bureau de la traduction of the Federal Government of Canada for style. We use honorifics with names, so it is helpful if you determine whether the person you are citing has a doctorate or is a professor.

If you send an unsolicited article, it will be read by an editor. However, in all cases we prefer to receive an e-mail describing your story idea first, with a note saying who you are. If you submit a manuscript, we will not publish it without contacting you first. If you haven’t heard from us within four weeks, feel free to e-mail again, but you may also assume that we are not going to use it.

If you have any questions, contact the Editor, Peggy Berkowitz, at editor@aucc.ca or 613-563-3961 ext. 228.

Story ideas

Many of our best articles come from our readers and we welcome your ideas at submissions@aucc.ca. All e-mails to this address will receive an automated response acknowledging receipt. We try to but cannot always respond to readers’ mail individually.

Opinion pieces

If you’d like to submit an opinion piece, we prefer to receive a short written summary of your idea, rather than a completed manuscript. We like opinion pieces that voice a strong point of view. We are not interested in pieces that are promotion for a company, institution or department. Our opinion pieces are generally 750 to 850 words but on occasion are up to 1,500 words. We prefer to be the first publisher to publish your viewpoint or article, and we rarely publish articles that have appeared in other magazines, newspapers or websites.

Essays and articles from the university community

University Affairs actively solicits articles written by faculty members, administrators, staff and occasionally students at Canadian universities. These cover a wide range of topics but what they share in common is resonance with other people who work and study at Canada’s universities. Memorable articles written by our readers have included: an inside look at a history department at a time of faculty renewal after a long hiring drought; lessons learned in managing multidisciplinary projects and centres; a plea to rethink graduate studies in Canada from a research chair in graduate training; a first-person account by undergraduates who took part in a research program. Length of these essays and articles varies from 1,000 to 2,500 words.

Book reviews

If you would like to submit a book for review consideration, please e-mail the editor at editor@aucc.ca. If you would like to review books in your discipline, please e-mail the editor.

Career development articles

Our career articles are written by experts on the front lines of graduate career counseling. If you are an expert and would like to write an article for our career section, or if you are a graduate job seeker with an interest in a particular subject and would like to suggest a topic for us to cover, please contact -mail the web editor at webeditor@aucc.ca.

We also occasionally publish first-person narratives about the issues affecting Canadians academics in their careers. Please contact the web editor for details.

People on the Move

University Affairs publishes appointment announcements at the director level and above including:

  • Presidents
  • Chancellors
  • Chairs of boards
  • Vice-presidents
  • Associate and assistant vice-presidents
  • Deans
  • Directors
  • Acting Presidents

We also publish, at our discretion, selected awards announcements, such as the Killam Prizes, 3M Teaching Fellows and various prizes from the federal research granting agencies.

Please email appointment announcements to the deputy editor at lcharbon@aucc.ca. Appointments are edited for length and clarity and are posted as they are received. All postings are removed after a maximum of 60 days online.

Freelancer guidelines

If you’re interested in writing for University Affairs magazine or website for a fee, please read the magazine or our website before submitting ideas.

We try to respond to queries promptly, but in exceptionally busy parts of the publishing schedule, it may take several weeks. If you haven’t heard from us within a month, feel free to submit your idea again or to take it to another publication.

In general, we work with journalists who live and work in Canada and are familiar with the Canadian university system.

When introducing yourself to us, we prefer a detailed query, along with samples of your writing and a short resumé, rather than a completed article.

If we accept your proposal, we buy first rights – we aren’t interested in articles that have been previously published or which have been accepted for publication in another forum or magazine. Please note that payment varies based on length, the writer’s experience and the complexity of the article.

University Affairs is a bilingual, general-interest magazine about Canada’s universities written for a highly educated audience who come from a wide range of fields and professions. We have high standards for reporting and writing and we often require revisions or at least one rewrite from depending, among other things, on the reporter. All articles are edited for clarity, length and style, and authors are informed of any significant changes to their work.

We use Gage Canadian Dictionary for spelling and follow the latest edition of the Canadian Press Stylebook. For French-written articles, we use Le guide du rédacteur of the Bureau de la traduction of the Federal Government of Canada for style. We use honorifics with names, so it is helpful if you determine whether the person you are citing has a doctorate or is a professor.

Comment guidelines

We encourage feedback on articles. Readers may comment on articles by using the comment function or by sending an e-mail to the web editor at webeditor@aucc.ca. We review all comments to ensure they are relevant and meet our guidelines on civility but we don’t edit comments – either we post them or not.

Please note that the maximum word count for a comment is 650 words. If your comment is longer than that, you will have to break it up into sections and submit them separately. We will let you know if we notice your comment has been cut off due to length and ask you submit the continuation.

We ask that users keep their comments relevant to the topic or theme of that particular article or forum and that they use language that is civil, respectful and professional. We reserve the right to remove or to refuse to post any comments or information that we consider unacceptable. If you believe a posted comment contravenes these guidelines, please e-mail the editor, Peggy Berkowitz, at editor@aucc.ca.

Language that is civil, respectful and professional doesn’t contain:

  • potential libel
  • obscene, rude or racist language
  • personal attacks or threats
  • product promotions or SPAM
  • personal information published without consent
  • discussion unrelated to the article or forum
  • hyperlinks that aren’t related to the discussion