Guidelines for contributors

SUN is dedicated to fostering fraternal and open political debate. These notes are designed to help you understand what we are looking for, and are likely to publish. Please read them carefully, thank you.

We may choose not to print your piece for the following reasons

Repetition

If we have a number of submissions on the same topic, or have covered a topic thoroughly already, we may not print them all.

Not relevant

If the topic you have submitted on would not be of interest to our readers.

Inaccurate

If there is a good deal of clearly inaccurate information in your submission we may reject, or ask you to resubmit a corrected version.

Sectarian

SUN hopes to foster a fraternal debate on the left that gets to the political issues rather than indulges in political point scoring. We will not print articles that we consider to be sectarian or unhelpful.

Obscure

SUN believes that there are millions of people out there that are interested in the ideas and contribution that the left has to make. However, we also understand that parts of the left are wedded to expressing themselves in academic or Marxist jargon.

Our policy is that this can obscure the message rather than facilitate it.

We advise that contributions are made in everyday and accessible language rather than relying on outdated algebra. We may ask contributors to rework submissions to bring them closer to the everyday speech of our readers.

Organisational

SUN hopes to engage in the political issues of debate rather than a tit for tat ping pong match. We may ask you to resubmit your piece if we feel the contents is designed to advertise a particular organisation rather than advocate a course of action.

Abusive or bigoted

We will not print right wing, homophobic or otherwise politically undesirable material.

Sections you might like to contribute to;

News

News items will generally be written by our SUN editorial team, but feel free to submit news reports of not more than 350 words.

Sport

SUN has launched a new subsection on sport - please feel free to contribute to this. We recommend no more than 800 words.

Reports

All reports on local or national events are welcome. We recommend 100 - 300 words.

Voices

We print articles on key issues for our movement. We recommend not more than 800 words.

CounterBlasts

Our regular arts and culture section is open to all our readers to contribute to. We recommend no more than 800 words.

Responses

We print responses to our articles in every edition. We recommend not more than 400 words.

Diary or links

We welcome as many submissions as possible to our links and diary pages. Also feel free to draw our attention to news stories in the mainstream or left press.

An open invitation to contribute

We'd like to encourage our readers to become writers. We are not affiliated to any specific left group welcome contributions from both independent and affiliated leftists. If you're unsure about the topic or need advise feel free to contact us first and we'll be happy to let you know what we think of your ideas.

Also; spelling corrections and pedantic proofing more than welcome!

Statement on Copyright

The Socialist Unity Network believes in the principle of copyleft, and has no objection to work we publish being reproduced by not-for profit organisations on the following terms:

• Attribution: you must give the original author credit

• Non-commercial: you may not use this work for commercial purposes

• Share Alike: if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.

Should you wish to reproduce any work for commercial purposes then this cannot be done without our prior permission. Please contact us to discuss.

We reserve the right to manipulate or alter work submitted to us for publication, or that is in the public domain without copyright protection..

The editorial team reviews all content for our web-site to ensure that third party brands, trade marks or logos are not used in breach of the rights of the brand owner.

As a not for profit organisation Socialist Unity Network gains no commercial benefit from any works published or reproduced. Occasionally we reproduce work that has been previously published
elsewhere. Usually we seek to obtain permission from the original author for its reproduction, except in circumstances where it seems obvious to us by context that the author would have no objection. We operate on the presumption that socialist debate and journalism is published everywhere on a copyleft basis.

Should we unwittingly breach copyright or use trade marks and logos in beach of the rights of the brand owner then we will immediately rectify should the copyright holders or trade mark holders contact us and assert their rights.

 

Statement on Libel

The Socialist Unity Network exercises due diligence to ensure that we do not publish defamatory comment. We seek to check that our facts are correct and to report news and conduct debate in a responsible and constructive manner.

We agree with the late Paul Foot that: "It has been a long tradition in the labour movement that arguments between socialists should be conducted openly and should not, except in extreme
circumstances, be tested in the courts by the libel laws"

If you feel that mistakes of fact have been made in an article published by us, or if an interpretation has been put on facts that is unreasonable then please contact us to discuss. We will promptly correct any errors of fact once this is brought to our attention, and in most cases we are prepared to offer a right to reply provided it is within our submission guidelines.

Socialist Unity Network's website is published in the United Kingdom: we do not consider our articles to be knowingly published outside of the United Kingdom. Articles from our web-site are not
knowingly published in the USA, its possessions or territories or in Canada. The jurisdiction is English law.
 

Statement on E-mail Protocol