Submitting articles to the ResearchOps Community

Welcome to the ResearchOps Community’s Medium guidance page: our open-access, expanding knowledge base for those working in — or around — Research operations (ResearchOps).

All the articles we publish are to help the community members to help ResearchOps grow as a field and are written by members of the ResearchOps community.

If you’re looking to submit your own article, make an article, or if you’ve found a good ResearchOps article, this page will take you through how to get it posted and shared through the community.

We have an article idea submission link at the bottom of this guide but first ask you read this guidance before submitting.

The ResearchOps Community

ResearchOps is a growing field focused on managing user research operations and knowledge work within an organization and how they integrate with other teams and organizational goals. It is an emerging field with new discoveries and practices emerging each day.

The ResearchOps Community is a community of ResearchOps professionals created and maintained by ResearchOps professionals.

Our goal is to provide a supportive community — and knowledge base — for anyone working in, interested in, or working with ResearchOps, so that we can provide the best resources and spaces for the community.

For the content side of the ResearchOps community, we publish articles here on Medium and make podcasts. We make sure that all our content is as accessible as possible so that anyone in the community can get to them. The focus of our content is on practical articles about research operations topics, updates from our work streams, and other community contributions.

Why submit to the ResearchOps Community

The best and biggest reason to submit an article to the ResearchOps Community is to share ideas, strategies, and information to help the ResearchOps Community grow, but there are a few other reasons to submit articles to us as well:

• Reach a wide audience: Not only do we post your article on Medium, we also share the article on our large and growing communities Slack and LinkedIn.
  NOTE: To reach the widest audience possible, we ask that submitted articles are not behind a paywall.
• Become recognized in the community: We make sure to credit all authors who contribute to the Medium Publication, giving you recognition for your work and your contribution to the community.
• Improve your article writing skills: We make sure to review all articles and will arrange for volunteers to help read through and improve the article before it’s published. If you’ve got lots of good ideas, but struggle expressing them in an article, we’ll help you out.

Types of articles the ResearchOps Community publishes

While we welcome submissions from all sorts of people to help grow our knowledge base, we are still selective about what we choose. After all, the articles that we pick must be targeted specifically towards ResearchOps instead of just research or another discipline.

To help show what kinds of articles we’re looking for, we’ve created a few guidelines.

We favor ‘operational’ topics over ‘general research’ topics

The web is full of articles on research in product development. While publications like UX Collective have a larger audience for general research topics, we seek out articles that fall on the ‘operational’ side of research organizations and practice. Our goal is to make it easier for organizations and individuals to carry out research.

For example, we might pick an article on managing user research operations in mature organizations that may not be used to user research or an article that talks about working a knowledge base that has years of individual user research projects.

All articles must fit one of the 8 Pillars of ResearchOps

The 8 pillars define the scope of our Medium publication:

1. Environment — Why does research happen? Who is engaged?
   For example, People silos, Education, Value of research, Buy in, Push back, Internally focused, Stakeholders, Executives, Colleagues, all of these things make-up the environment.
2. Scope — How and when does research happen? What methods?
   For example, Cadence, Sharing insights, Prioritization, Integrating insights, Processes, Methods, Protocols, Research as team support, all of these things make up the scope.
3. Recruitment and admin — How do I manage all the project and participant admin?
   For example, Incentives, Scheduling, Logistics, Panel management, Paperwork, Timesheets, Participant coordination.
4. Data and Knowledge Management — What happens to the findings, data and insights? For example, Research library, Data silos, Data gardening, Document templates, Knowledge management
5. People — Who is responsible for carrying out research?
   For example, Community of practice, Professional development, Staffing, Mature career paths, Leadership, Org design
6. Organizational context — What are the internal and external constraints?
   For example, Space, Time, Resources, Budget, R.O.I, Business constraints, Market forces, Org Maturity
7. Governance — What are the legal and ethical considerations?
   For example, Risk assessments, GDPR, Legal, Infosec, Consent, Ethics
8. Tools and infrastructure — What systems and tools do I need for my projects?
   For example, Procurement, Software, hardware, Labs, Systems, Technology, Networks

No advertisements/marketing

ResearchOps is not a place to market products and services. While it’s okay for authors to mention where they work and what tools they are using, we do not support the marketing of specific offerings in our articles.

Reposting appropriate articles

Assuming that an article meets our other requirements, above, and has not been posted in another Medium publication, we are open to connecting with authors about publishing their already-completed articles.

If you have an article that meets our requirements and has not been published elsewhere on Medium we will consider publishing your article.

Submitting an article

We welcome all articles that fit the goals outlined earlier. If you have an article and you think it fits, please do submit it.

The ResearchOps board reviews submissions monthly. After making sure your article fits our publication, we will invite you to our monthly writing meeting where we will discuss your idea and assign volunteers to support your process.

Here’s the suggested process for anyone looking to contribute:

1. Start by looking at past articles — Review the current publication site to see if the topic you are interested in has already been covered. If there is a related article already, consider how your article might have a different point of view or add on what’s already been shared.
2. Connect in our ResearchOps Slack — Consider sharing your ideas in the ResearchOps Slack to gather others’s experiences and guidance.
3. Submit an idea — Use this form to submit your proposed title, a brief description of your idea, the ResearchOps pillar that it most closely matches, and some other details. Remember to shape your idea to the aims of our publication, with our ResearchOps community in mind.
4. Receive feedback — ResearchOps board members will review your article idea and contact you. Your idea will either be accepted, returned with some suggested modifications, or we may suggest a more suitable publication location.
5. Attend an introductory working session — If your article is accepted, we will invite you to attend the next monthly content volunteer meeting. If you can’t attend the meeting, other arrangements can be made, but we encourage our contributors to join one session.
6. Connect with assigned volunteers — After the meeting, we will allocate up to 2 volunteers to help shape and support the writing process for your article, with additional support provided by ResearchOps board members. We’ll also start a Slack conversation thread with this small group.
7. Write your article — We’ll share a google doc in our workspace and some basic style guidelines. Keep in mind that your article may be translated for an international audience at some point, which could affect the clarity of parts of your writing.
8. Volunteers provide input — You can expect feedback on your work in progress, with a light, supportive approach. Keep in mind, it may take a few days for the volunteers to review your article content and get back to you, and a second meeting may be needed to talk through feedback ideas.
9. Move your article to Medium — Once you are done with the article, we’ll invite you to submit to our Medium.com publication so that you can be attributed as the author of the article. If you would prefer not to create a Medium account, a board member can publish for you and attribute to you.
10. Editors schedule your article’s date — Keep in mind that while you can submit your article whenever it is complete, our ResearchOps-Community publishes one article every Tuesday, so your piece will go on our release schedule. We will notify you of the expected publication date.
11. Share your article — Once your article has been published, we ask that you share it on three different locations / social networks. The board will share your article on our ResearchOps Slack, Twitter, and LinkedIn feeds.

Link to submit an article to ResearchOps

Ready to submit your article idea? Please use this form.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact writing@researchops.community.