R&D World publishes contributed articles from working experts. We accept pieces on advances in lab equipment, patent activity in research-heavy industries from biotech to materials science, and significant trends in funding or research direction at major R&D-heavy companies, including lab equipment firms, automotive and aerospace, Big Tech, and green energy and sustainability in science.
Our readers are researchers, engineers and lab leaders. They can find an overview of any topic in thirty seconds. What they cannot find easily is the perspective of someone who has actually done the work.
The need for specificity and accuracy
The best submissions offer exclusive analysis rather than a survey of the subject that pulls together other sources. Tell us the what and the why. Show us something you learned that is not already documented elsewhere. You can include data from your own work, a result that contradicted expectations, a tradeoff that only becomes visible at scale, a method that failed before it worked or a unique analysis of public data.
Specificity and accuracy is the whole game. If a sentence would be equally true of every company or lab in your category, it is not telling our readers anything. Claims about cost, performance, timelines, yield or scale need a number, a range or a concrete example behind them. Where you cannot obtain a figure for a given section, cut the section rather than writing that results vary by application.
Proprietary and internal data is welcome, including anonymized figures. Tell us how it was collected and over what period.
Sourcing and data
Every statistic must identify the originating organization, the publication date of the specific report or dataset it came from, and link to that primary source. Where an organization publishes on a recurring schedule, cite the current edition. Figures drawn from secondary coverage, vendor blogs or aggregators will be returned for primary sourcing.
Quotes and expert claims must be attributed to a named individual with a title. Our readers follow up with sources, and they need a person to reach.
Links
Links exist to serve the reader. Link to primary research, standards documents, datasets, regulatory filings and original reporting.
Do not link to product pages, gated downloads, landing pages or company websites within the body of the article. Your organization receives one link, in your author bio. Submissions with commercial links in the body copy will be returned for revision.
Do not close the article with a call to action, download offer or contact prompt.
Authorship and accountability
The byline belongs to a person who can discuss the content on the record. That person is accountable for every sentence in the piece.
We ask whether you have read every sentence, verified every factual claim against its original source, and can produce those sources on request. Submitting an article to us affirms all three. It also affirms that you are available to answer a reader or an editor who follows up on any claim in it.
If the piece was drafted by an agency, contractor or communications team on your behalf, tell us at submission. We will still consider it. We will not consider it if we learn this afterward.
Content must be original and exclusive to R&D World, including with respect to your own company blog or newsroom. Do not offer the same piece to other publications simultaneously. We ask for a 90-day window from publication before the article is republished elsewhere, with attribution and a link back.
On images, figures and article length
Include at least one high-resolution image supporting your content. This may be a photograph, illustration, chart or embedded video, and it should be at least 800 pixels wide. Original charts built from your own data are the most valuable thing you can send us.
Authors must confirm they hold republication rights for any third-party material. Where rights cannot be verified, exclude the material.
In terms of length, aim for 750 to 1,000 words. Exceptions are possible when the material warrants it.
Include a few subheadings to break up the main themes. Written in sentence case, and specific rather than generic: a subhead should tell the reader what is coming, not announce a category.
Pitching and editorial review
Pitch before you write. A pitch that answers these three questions will get a fast and substantive reply:
Who is the author, and what specifically qualifies them on this topic?
What is in the piece that a reader cannot find anywhere else?
What are the two or three primary sources the argument rests on?
All submissions undergo editorial review for relevance, accuracy and value to our readers. We edit for clarity and house style, and we will come back to you with questions about sourcing before anything runs.
Email pitches to associate editor Julia Rock-Torcivia and editor-in-chief Brian Buntz.