The AMUN Accords Submission Guidelines

Goals, Target Audience and Writing Style

The AMUN Accords strives to publish high-quality content related to American Model United Nations in particular, Model United Nations more generally, and the work of the actual United Nations most broadly. This purpose is in keeping with AMUN’s educational mission and its commitment to producing high-quality, realistic simulations that replicate (as closely as possible) both the processes and substantive debate of diplomacy and international relations in the United Nations system. At the same time, AMUN wants to spread the word about Model UN and the United Nations widely, reaching as broad an audience as possible. Therefore, all posts should be written with a general, educated (generally collegiate-level or above) audience in mind. The below are the current submission guidelines for The AMUN Accords.

Authorship, Editing, and Copyright

1. Blog posts may be written by current and former AMUN staffers, AMUN participants such as faculty advisors or permanent representatives, and other invited experts.
2. The editorial team of The AMUN Accords has final editorial control over all content posted to the AMUN Accords.
3. Blog authors agree to release their work under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0). Authors additionally agree to grant American Model United Nations a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sub-licenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of the original work in any media format and in any media channel. Authors may choose to release their work under more permissive terms upon request.

Writing for the AMUN Blog

1. There are three general ways to author a post on the AMUN blog.
   1. By invitation: The social media team may reach out to individual authors to request they author a blog post on a topic about which they have special expertise. The editors will work directly with the author in crafting an appropriate topic, scope and angle.
   2. Volunteer for an AMUN-generated topic: The AMUN social media team keeps a running list of potential blog topics. If you would like to write on one of these topics, send an email to accords@amun.org with “TOPIC REQUEST” in the subject line that briefly  (150 words max) describes your angle on the topic and your interest/expertise on the topic.
   3. Author-generated topics: Send a short pitch (150 words max) to accords@amun.org with “PITCH” in the subject line. The pitch should describe the proposed topic and angle of the blog post. Also include in this e-mail a brief bio that includes your expertise in your proposed topic.
2. For options b and c, a member of the AMUN Accords editorial team will be in touch about your proposal.

Submission, review and editing

1. Once you have accepted an invitation to write, or we have accepted your proposal, get to drafting!
2. Submit your draft via Google Docs. Share your document with accords@amun.org and allow editing.
3. Our team of editors will review your draft. You will receive both substantive comments and stylistic edits from at least two editors.
4. Accept any stylistic suggestions you wish to incorporate into your blog post using the “Editing” feature in Google Docs. Please leave any suggestions you do not wish to make in the document.
5. Respond to the editors’ comments and make other necessary modifications—additions, clarifications, deletions, etc.—using the “Suggesting” feature in Google Docs. Please DO NOT use the “editing” function at this stage, so we can see the changes you have made and whether there are any outstanding issues.
6. An editor will send you a final copy of the text for your review. You will have 24 hours to suggest any further changes to the post. If the editorial team does not hear from you within 24 hours, we will post the content to the blog as written.
7. The editorial team of The AMUN Accords reserves the right to request subsequent revision or review, or to reject a piece for final publication if the post does not meet AMUN’s standards for content and style.

Images

1. All blog posts will have a “featured image” with the post.
2. If you have an image in mind, please submit a hyperlink to the digital image with your draft, or submit the image as a JPEG file to media@amun.org with “IMAGE” in the subject line. Please include attribution and license information (e.g., By John Photographer, released under CC-BY-SA 3.0)  
3.  Please ensure that any image you submit is rights-free or available for use under Public Domain rules or a CC license. More information on how to find and understand rights-free images, click here.
   1. For photos from the United Nations Photo library, please provide the permalink for the photo.
4. You may include other images (with a caption) in your post. Follow the same instructions as above, along with directions about where in the post it should be placed.
5. If you do not submit an image with your post, the AMUN editorial team will select an appropriate image.

 

Style and formatting

1. All contributions must conform to the most recent version of the Accords Style Guide. Posts should refrain from jargon and unexplained or unnecessary acronyms.
2. Contributions should generally be between 500-800 words. We may accept longer posts (up to 1500 words) at the discretion of the editorial team.
3. All contributions must include a byline. Authors may, at their discretion, also include a brief bio (1-2 sentences) at the bottom of the submission. The bio may include an institutional affiliation or a hyperlink to a personal professional website or Twitter handle.
4. Whenever possible, the contribution should include active hyperlinks to documents, websites, and sources.
5. All direct quotations must include a citation; an active hyperlink is best, a parenthetical citation can be used if a hyperlink is unavailable. Citations to full-text sources or book pages should also include a page number in parentheses.