News Writers’ Guide

At EUSci, we publish news stories both in the print version of the magazine, which comes out twice a year, but also on the website, weekly. 

Sign up to EUSci’s mailing list to get news prompts, or come up with your own idea. If you’re not sure whether your idea is suitable for the website, contact us at euscinews@gmail.com).

Selecting your topic

The topic of your article should be a recent scientific discovery (in the last month or so). The top three categories you can cover are: 

  • General news – this is fairly easy to find ideas for. Try to avoid ideas that have been heavily covered in the mainstream media. Sites like Reddit, Slashdot, Science Daily and SciDev.Net are good for original ideas.
  • Research in Edinburgh – the best source of inspiration for local research is the twitter pages of individual schools (e.g. @EdinUniCVS; @EdinUniNeuro) or the twitter pages university press offices (e.g. @EdinUniMedia). Or perhaps you know of some local research in your own department that you could write about – even better if you can get quotes from the scientists who made the discoveries!
  • Local science events – keep an eye out on social media or the university website for events you’d like to attend and write an article about. Annual events that we tend to cover include Pint of Science and Edinburgh International Science Festival – but we’re always on the lookout for new events to cover.

Structure and style

News articles should be between 300-500 words and 4-5 paragraphs long. If you are writing for the print version of the magazine, we may give you a stricter word count to allow space for images. Articles should be aimed at non-specialist science students – so try to avoid to much scientific jargon, or explain it where necessary. Please refer to the Guardian style guide for guidance. Below is a suggested structure that your article might follow, but it is just a suggestion – feel free to play around with the structure until you’re happy!

  1. Briefly introduce the problem and the discovery
  2. Background/origins (where does the problem come from, what has been done in the past)
  3. Elaborate on methodology (including challenges overcome)
  4. Relevance to the reader/society

Images

If writing for the website, please provide an image to go with your article. The image needs to have a Creative Commons licence to allow us to reuse it (unless you’ve taken it yourself). Good sites to search for images include Wikimedia commons, pixabay and pexels. Or, you can do a Google image search and filter for images with Creative Commons licence (Tools → Usage rights → Labelled for reuse). Don’t forget to send us the details for image credit.

Submission

Please submit your article via our Google Form.

Example article

It is not often that people associate Albert Einstein with getting something wrong, yet even he made a mistake when he could not bring himself to believe in the existence of gravitational waves, as predicted by his own theory of general relativity. Luckily he was dissuaded from withholding his astonishing findings by a colleague, though he himself could not be convinced as to their existence for the next twenty years. 

For those unfamiliar with gravitational waves, they are minute ripples in the fabric of space and time caused by the acceleration of extremely heavy objects. A good example of the kind of phenomenon that can produce gravitational waves is a pair of black holes orbiting each other. These waves travel through space at the speed of light in a manner akin to the ripples that appear on a pond after you throw a stone into it.

Whilst the scientific community has been aware of their existence theoretically for over 70 years, the physical evidence for these waves was not found until their detection by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) experiment in September 2015. This initial detection provided experimental evidence as to their existence, and opened the door to a whole new branch of astronomy. On the 1st June, the LIGO experiment announced a third such detection of the waves recorded in January. This new results has allowed for other aspects of Einstein’s theory to be put to the test. One such facet is whether gravitational waves have a dispersion relation; that is to say whether waves of different frequencies travel at different velocities. The evidence from this particular detection suggests they do not, once again perfectly matching the predictions of general relativity.

The gravitational waves from this month’s detection were generated from the collision of two black holes, 3 billion light years away – over twice as far away as the previous two detection’s sources. When they collided, they produced more energy than all of the stars in the universe shining at any one time, distorting the fabric of space and time around them. The LIGO team, which includes scientists from the University of Glasgow, are excited at the prospect of observing other events not detected by normal telescopes, and further understanding the dark corners of our universe.

Written by James Hitchen