Impact Author Agreement & Guidelines
Thank you for being part of this exciting Impact issue. For nearly 40 years, Impact has been a powerful tool in promoting the community inclusion of persons with disabilities, and we're looking forward to your contribution to the upcoming issue. Please take a moment to review the steps in our process and our writer guidelines.
Getting Started
Before you begin writing, please take a look at past issues of Impact to familiarize yourself with our tone, style, and content. Sign up for a print and digital subscription to the magazine, which will ensure you get a personal copy of the print magazine and an alert when the digital edition is available. We’ll discuss further distribution as we get closer to the publication date.
Format
Greta will share a link to a Google Doc of your working article.
Reference Style
As a magazine, and not a peer-reviewed journal, we do not use footnoted references. If you are citing a source of information, please do so in the text of the article, as you would see in a mainstream publication, followed by the (complete URL). Do not embed the link in the Word file. We will use a link shortener for the print edition and will embed it in the digital edition.
EXAMPLE
According to a 2022 Kaiser Family Foundation report (https://www.kff.org/mental-health/report/2022-employer-health-benefits-survey/ ), all states that allow self-direction permit individuals to select and dismiss their direct care workers.
If you are citing the work of a person, include first and last name:
EXAMPLE
“Research on the efficacy of supported employment in leading to customized, integrated employment outcomes is strong, with demonstrated success using the highest levels of methodological rigour,” Joshua Taylor and colleagues wrote in a 2022 article (URL HERE) published in the Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities.
Photos & Graphics
We produce a professionally designed magazine and promote every article in our issue on social media, so each article will need accompanying photos and, if relevant, graphics/charts. These visual elements greatly enhance the reader experience. We have access to stock images in the disability field, but they are a last resort and often don’t convey the authentic experiences we are trying to portray in the articles. Please think about images you may have from your work, or that could be created for your article. For photos, we will need high resolution images (jpg files over 1 MB in size work best, Smart Phone photos usually work well) with sharp focus and good lighting. In some cases, we have access to hire professional photographers, so please let us know early in the process if you have ideas that would make for compelling images.
You may email photos to accompany your article to curtn007@umn.edu at any time.
Resources
Impact is published in print, and in a digital version with additional related content. If you have video clips, webinars, podcasts, or other multimedia resources that can complement or expand on your article, please include the links at the bottom of your work. If you know of good resources on the issue topic in general, not necessarily specific to your article, please send us a link to those, too, and we may include them.
Publication & Outreach
Finally, please think creatively about ways to promote your article and our issue within and outside the disability field. Connect with your communications team early about re-posting social media stories, conferences that would be a good fit for our content, distribution lists that would be appropriate to send the promo email that links to all the articles, etc. You’ve worked hard on the article – let’s make sure people read it!
On the day the digital edition launches, you will receive an email from the Institute on Community Integration that shares excerpts from each article and contains links to articles in the digital edition. Be sure to look for this and share widely across your networks.