Write for us: FAQs and Terms

Do I qualify as an contributor?

The Chief Officers' Network is written by business leaders for business leaders and their senior staff. It follows, therefore that contributors will be Chief Officers, members of the Board of companies or partners in unincorporated businesses. However, we also accept contributions from heads of department, managers in professional firms.

Junior staff and students as well as publicists are not qualifying contributors.

In order to register as a contributor, you must provide your personal and company details and register your corporate email address. Non-corporate addresses, including those such as yahoo, hotmail, msn or gmail are not acceptable.

What does it cost me to contribute?

So long as you meet the format guidelines set out below, absolutely nothing. Nil. Zero. Better still, you and your company get profile as experts.

Who can read my content?

Absolutely anyone who has access to the internet and has a web browser. We do not restrict access to contributions to registered readers (although we may elect to do so in the future). However, in order to access certain information, such as contact information for contributors, readers will need to register free of charge. This is to primarily to protect against automated “bots” collecting contributor information.

How will people find out about my contributions?

The Chief Officers Network website is regularly indexed by all major search engines.

Is my content relevant?

If your content matters to you, it will matter to others. We want to help you to raise your profile in the world of international business, and therefore indirectly to raise the profile of your company. But we also want your expertise and knowledge to contribute to the greater well-being of the business community. So long as your content does not breach the editorial guidelines, it will be valuable to yourself and others.

The Chief Officers' Network sections are both business and socially orientated. Articles are encouraged on specific business areas - Active Planet, Legal Issues, Taxation, Risk but also on social aspects such as Music reviews (all genres, all formats), Technology reviews, Book Reviews, Travel stories and tips, etc.

What are the editorial guidelines?

First and foremost, there are many reasons why an article may be rejected. These include but are not limited to

• on the face of the article there is unsubstantiated comment which may be defamatory, blasphemous, racist, sexist, pornographic, otherwise criminal or inflammatory. Note: articles may be contentious and authors are invited to present articles which challenge established views so long as they do not offend the sensibilities of a reasonable person.

• the article is a public relations piece designed to promote any person, company, product or service
• the article has been published elsewhere in its entirety or substantially similar terms
• the article contains material in which a third party holds copyright (if the author certifies that copyright approval has been obtained, this issue is less important). Note that US copyright law is extremely weak compared to the law in other countries and the fact that publication in the US would be permitted should not be taken as a guide that it will be accepted for publication in The Chief Officers' Network.

Secondly, contributions must be of an expert level – remember the nature of the readership. Your contribution should demonstrate your knowledge and expertise not just of your immediate topic but also of relevant markets and the political and business context of your contribution.

Contributions should be in English, using English spelling and grammar. More information on this is in the Style Guide.

Who owns copyright?

You do. You assign to us “First World Serial Rights” which means that your contributions are must be your own original work and not published elsewhere. However, once the contribution appears in The Chief Officers' Network, you are free to permit your work to appear elsewhere subject only to the condition that it carries the line “First Published at www.chiefofficers.net”.

In submitting your content you warrant (that is promise with a full indemnity as to any costs or loss we may suffer as a result of your submission) that the work is your own work and does not include any material in which any third party owns any intellectual property rights. If you have engaged anyone to write the contribution for you, you must make sure you have an assignment to you of all rights that person has in the contribution.

If you employ someone to help you right the contribution, your name must appear first. Others may be named as equal contributors or mentioned in an end note.

Who publishes the material?

You do. Chiefofficers.net is a platform in which you publish your material for the world to read. We do not perform editorial services (except as to style) and we do not review the content for accuracy. You are entirely responsible for what is in your contribution.

We do not own rights in the contribution except those granted as the right to reproduce your work under “First World Serial Rights.”

However, where it is clear to us in our absolute discretion that the subject matter is blasphemous, libellous, racially divisive or discriminatory or infringing upon any rights of any third party we will reject it. However, we do not bear any responsibility to any author or third party if any material does not so obviously infringe our policy that we do not reject it.

What format should I submit in?

The format is extremely important because the format you submit in makes a great difference to the amount of work we have to do to publish your contributions. Our preferred format is OpenOffice.Org 2 (“Writer” .odt) format. You can download OpenOffice.Org from http://www.openoffice.org for free.

If you cannot use OpenOffice.Org, your submission may be in a simple text file (no formatting, except for paragraphs), ASCII or HTML.

If you are not able to use OpenOffice.Org or simple text, we will charge you GBP100 for conversion charges.

Additional charges will be incurred for the following file formats:

Microsoft Word (.doc) files – the reason for this is the risk that such files contain macros that carry a virus. Also, our primary technology runs on Linux and there is a minor risk of incompatibility.

Lotus WordPro (.lwp) – the reason for this is that we have to do additional conversion work and the minor risk of incompatibility.

Other Word Processor formats and other document formats are not acceptable.

Do not include your contribution in the body of an email – this involves substantial formatting work and are automatically rejected pending resubmission in an acceptable format.

Graphics (including photos, logos, graphs, etc) must be in jpeg format of a maximum file size 15kb each.

What language should be contribution be in?

Currently, we accept contributions only in English. Please see the style guide for more information as to the presentation of contributions, spelling, grammar, etc.

How long can my contribution be?

The contribution should be as follows:

Contributions should be at least 200 words.

Executive Summary – maximum 200 words;

Principle contribution – maximum 3800 words.

Additional words are charged per thousand or part of a thousand at a rate of GBP75 per thousand or part of a thousand.

The word count includes title, author name(s) and any disclaimer and is as calculated by OpenOffice.Org 2.

Note: you are welcome to divide long contributions into multiple parts each of which qualifies and submit each individually in which case the charge for additional length will not apply. Multi-part contributions will be published several days apart so as to increase the profile of the contribution.

e.g. 4800 word contribution – one contribution attracts charge of GBP75.

But if the contribution is divided into two contributions (e.g. 3000 and 1800 respectively) no additional charge.

Can I include tables?

Yes. Tables must be prepared in an html format or contained in your OpenOffice.Org document. Other table formats cannot be accepted. However, you may convert a table to a graphic, so long as it meets the graphics format requirements.

Can I include footnotes?

We prefer to avoid footnotes: this is because readers do not enjoy scrolling down long pages of text to look for explanations. We prefer you to insert a note at the end of the relevant paragraph. This can be marked by the insertion of // at the beginning and the end of the note. We will format it. Up to ten notes per contribution are free. If you include more than ten notes, we will charge you GBP100 for up to 40 additional notes. We will not accept more than 40 additional notes. Notes count towards your word total.

Can I include a bibliography?

Yes, of course. A bibliography should be in the format:

Surname, First initial, Title of Work, Publication in which it appeared (if any), Date of first publication.

References to the work should be in the format:

First occasion: Surname, First initial, Title of Work

Second and subsequent occasions: Surname, ibid.

A bibliography counts towards your word total.

Can I include multi-level numbering and bullet points?

We prefer that these are avoided as they are often difficult to read on screen. If you must use them, then we will charge a fee of GBP100 per contribution. for their inclusion.

Note: this charge is avoided if all are aligned to the left margin.

Can I include contact details, email addresses, urls (links to websites)?

You cannot include links to your own or third party websites in the body of the document. Nor can you include email addresses (not that you would want to – that would only result in spammers illegally collecting your email address and sending you even more junk), phone etc. numbers or other means of contact.

Readers will be able to contribute you and visit your website via your contact information page, in which your email address will be shielded to reduce the risk of spam. In order to further protect your details from automated “bot” harvesting, access to contributor details is available only to registered readers (no charge is made for that registration).

How can I improve the visibility of my contribution?

Contributions are indexed by major search engines and by our own internal search service.

Most search engines only look at the first 180 words of an contribution, and some place more weight on the title and first paragraph. So you should make sure that your title contains the most important keywords and also that you “load” these into the opening of your contribution. Even those that read more of the contribution place higher priority on what they find at the beginning of the contribution.

Also, append to the end of the contribution the most important keywords and we will add them to the “meta data” that some search engines examine.

Contributions appear in our RSS feed: this means that websites that incorporate our headlines into their content can link directly to your contribution. Such links improve the ranking in websites using Google style algorithms.

You can include a link direct to your own contribution on your own website which will, again, improve its ranking and also encourage readers of your website to visit your published contributions.

Remember that search engines such as Google also index graphics – so it helps if you name your graphics carefully, so as to be relevant to the contribution and the contributor.

Can readers download my contribution?

Yes. We provide the facility for readers to produce and download a pdf file of contributions they like.

When will my contribution appear?

We aim to publish your contribution within seven working days of receipt. When contribution is ready for publication, we will publish it and send you notification including details of the direct link so you may add that to your own website or include it in your own marketing material e.g. newsletters. Where additional formatting charges are levied, the contribution will be held pending payment of the additional charges.

How do I submit my contributions?

When your registration as a contributor is accepted, we will provide you with an email address to which your contributions should be sent.

Your subject line should contain only your contributor number followed by the title of the contribution (e.g. “123456 Belgium: company formation requirements and procedures.”

In the body of your email put indexing information (i.e. the section / subsection that your contribution is intended for (e.g. Doing business in / Canada / Quebec.

If there is not a suitable subsection already present, let us know and we will consider adding it.

How do I register as a contributor?

Simply complete the contribution form here

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These terms may be amended or superseded at any time.

This version effective and © 1 June 2007

Updated 5 March 2008.