Submitting an Article to Quanta Study
Let’s get this started.
Welcome to Quanta Study! We are a publication by students for students who are looking to share how they succeed in their learning endeavors through study tips, campus stories, and free resources. Our aim with this publication is to provide a place for students already producing great content on social media sites like Tumblr to add to their professional portfolio.
And maybe make some money from their hard work, too. More on that later.
Content Categories
Since we are a relatively new publication, as of the time of this guide’s publishing, our guidelines are fairly open-ended. If it has to do with studying methods and the learning process, it is within guidelines and you are welcome to submit. But here are some suggestions:
Study Tips
These are articles that explain methods for different types of studying.
- Course-specific (e.g., how to study for quantum mechanics)
- Academic discipline (e.g., ways to study for college-level math courses)
- College major (e.g., preparing for labs as a chemistry major)
- Study Tools (e.g., this method changed how I used flashcards)
Education-Level Advice
Some advice differs between education levels. A middle school student would need different advice than a master’s student, for example.
- Secondary School (e.g., my tips for acing your AP exams)
- College / University (e.g., surviving the sophomore slump)
- Graduate School (e.g., tips for choosing a PhD advisor)
- Continuing Education (e.g., how I learned Python for my job)
Learning Outside of Academia
Not all learning happens in a classroom. We also welcome learning content for self-study subjects.
- Language learning (e.g., my sentence mining method or how I cracked B2 level in German)
- Programming (e.g., how I taught myself to code)
- Bootcamp courses (e.g., my experience in an online UX design bootcamp)
- …and more!
Article Formats
For this publication, we aim to provide detailed and engaging content that provides direct value to our readers. With that in mind, we strongly recommend that you write your article in a narrative style whether it is fact-reporting or a personal account. It helps your article flow better. Formatting, like in this article (e.g., bullet points, title headers, bolded text, etc.), is encouraged to improve the readability of your piece.
While “listicles” will still be considered, we strongly discourage them. If you choose to write in a format of “7 Ways to Improve Your English Essays” then please be sure to provide ample detail for each point you make.
We welcome articles of any length for submission, but recommend a reading time between 3–6 minutes. This is not a hard rule, but a recommendation to ensure people are engaged enough to finish the article. Do not be discouraged for submission if it does not fit into that guide, we will still look at your work.
Who We’re Looking For
While this publication is branded as being “by students, for students” we want to emphasize that this publication is not exclusive to those enrolled at accredited institutions. Recent graduates and those who are currently in pursuit of other higher learning, whether through an organization or self-study, are also welcome.
What we don’t want to see, though, is tired old advice from those who have been outside of the learning process for decades. This stems from some of our editors’ experiences in college where near-retirement professors who have not had to study for a class in 20+ years have parroted old, time-consuming, and not-research-backed methods that don’t work for modern students.
We simply aim to provide content that is timely and relevant to our audience.
What Your Pieces Should Include
Depending on the type of article you’re writing, there are certain things you might want to include.
- If you’re writing a more academic piece on research-backed study methods, be sure to cite your sources. How you do this is up to you; it can be as simple as a link to a manuscript from a scientific journal or in-article citations with a list at the end. We are flexible to how you do this, we just ask that you do so to ensure readers can trust the content of your work.
- When writing about personal experiences, we encourage you to post your own pictures and/or desribe the specific ways in which this method has benefitted your study. The more detail you can provide the better. Especially if it’s something completely new!
All piece submitted, however, are expected to follow a professional and positive tone. Accusatory statements and negative assumptions that are not evidence-based will not be tolerated. Therefore, submissions of that nature will either be rejected or edited for tone. We aim to provide a pleasant space to help each other improve and would like our pieces to reflect that.
How to Submit Your Piece
Woo! Finally. Now that you’ve written your piece, let’s talk about how to get it published.
- Please submit unpublished articles by sending us a friend link from your draft. This is for two reasons: (1) Your piece might require editing before it can be published and (2) once published, your article will appear chronologically from when it was published. We want your latest work to be seen.
- We currently do accept articles which are already published, so long as it was recently within the last week. The points above still apply.
- As far as monetization goes, we do not require your piece to be behind Medium’s paywall. We respect the author’s decision on whether they wish for their piece to be monetized or free-access. You can learn more about Medium’s Partner Program here.
Send a link to your Medium draft to quantastudy@gmail.com for consideration.
Resources for Success
Are you ready to start writing? Here are some tips from Medium’s largest publication, The Startup, on how to succeed on the platform.
Thank you for stopping by and we hope to see your story soon!
Lead Editor at Quanta Study
