Writing for The Conversation Canada

What is The Conversation Canada?

The Conversation Canada is a non-profit online publisher of newspaper-length analytical and explanatory articles (ideally 750-800 words) by academic authors, written and edited for a wide general audience. It publishes under a Creative Commons license, making its content available to other media outlets to republish at no cost. McMaster University is a founding member of The Conversation Canada, which is part of an international network of Conversation outlets.

Writing for The Conversation increases the reach and public impact of your work. More than 22,000 media outlets around the world use content from The Conversation, including The National Post, Maclean’s, and Salon. The site attracts more than 4.8 million users per month, and republished content reaches more than 35 million people. Articles published there often generate requests from other outlets, which can further extend the reach of your work.

The Conversation prioritizes articles that fall under one of three categories:

  1. Timely, evidence-based analysis of what’s making the news
  2. Articles explaining new research and its significant to a non-expert audience
  3. Timeless “explainers” of complex issues

Lead authors must be active researchers or academics. Faculty members, PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers are all eligible. Masters students may write with a professor as a co-author.

First, register as an author, then submit a simple pitch for your article idea. You do not need to write the article before you pitch. A pitch summarizes what your article will be about, including the main points you would like to make and why the story matters.

If your pitch is accepted, you will be paired with a Conversation Canada editor who will work closely with you to craft your article in their online editorial system. Once published, you will have access to an analytics dashboard that shows you how often your article has been viewed, from where around the world it has been viewed, and where it has been republished.