Guidelines for Prospective Authors

 

Guidelines for Prospective Authors

Prospective authors find may find the following suggestions helpful — they provide a general overview of the editorial approach of Process Heating magazine.

Process Heating covers thermal processing applications at temperatures up to 1,000°F in nine key industries:

  • Chemicals/Petrochemicals
  • Finishing
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Ethanol/Biodiesel Fuels
  • Electronics
  • Food Processing
  • Plastics/Rubber
  • Pulp/Paper/Engineered Wood/Converting
  • Packaging/Printing

Articles in Process Heating take one of two approaches: generic, technology-oriented or case history.

Technology-Oriented Articles

Technology articles in Process Heating take a practical, how-to approach and should be generic, not company/product specific and noncommercial. It is appropriate to explain technology and how it is used, and it should provide an impartial, unbiased discussion of advances in technology, development in methods or other topics applicable to the subject.

A good starting point is to ask “How to …” and fill in the blank with an active verb: select, buy, troubleshoot, repair, maintain, improve, reduce, update, rebuild, etc. By starting with this question, you can be sure that your article provides an answer to a problem that manufacturing engineers involved in heat processing face.

Technology articles can take many formats: Question/Answer, 10 Tips, narrative, etc. No one format is right for every article. To help determine the format you should use, evaluate what information you’d like to provide. For example, if you’d like to explain common temperature control problems and possible solutions, you may want to use the Question/Answer format. Alternatively, you may have several small pieces of information that all relate to a single topic such as “How to Improve the Accuracy of Temperature Measurements,” you can group them as a list of tips: “7 Ways to Improve RTD Accuracy.”

Finally, don’t be afraid to let photographs, tables, charts and graphs tell part of the story, or include a short sidebar. A good quality photograph and a well-written caption sometimes say more than 500 words of copy. Use these materials to tell some new piece of information, or to illustrate a point, rather than just repeating what has been stated in the body of the article.

Case History Articles

“Application Solutions” (case histories) highlight ways engineers can use equipment or services to cut costs, save time, improve operations and product quality, or solve production problems. This editorial feature is an excellent way for you to showcase your success stories by teaming up with your customers. A case history allows you to highlight specific product features and the competitive advantages they have provided for your customer.

A good case history is all in the details: Outline specific results that your customer achieved, naming the customer/company involved. Include a historical perspective of the problem and describe the goals that were set and accomplished. Tell the story through the eyes of your customer, quoting at least one of the customer’s engineers or employees who explains what the company wanted the heat processing operation to accomplish and how the product or service met the objectives or solved the problem. Provide credible evidence — cite how much money was saved, how much production increased, etc. You may also include quotes from engineers or employees at your company.

Include Web-Exclusive Content

The Internet is becoming an ever-more important part of everyday life. Process Heating publishes all articles accepted for print publication on its website, www.process-heating.com. Wherever possible, we augment the print content with web-exclusive content related to the article. This can include expanded photo galleries, a brief case history (to accompany a technology article), glossary of terms, a video demonstration, etc. Think about what you would include in the article if you had one more page to fill, and think about how to present that online.

In General …

--Text. While length is somewhat dependent on how much you have to say, a good rule of thumb is 1,250 to 1,500 words. Use sidebars and subheads when needed to break up sections of your article. Provide captions for all graphics.

Once your article is complete, please send the document as a Microsoft Word file attached to an e-mail to beckerl@bnpmedia.com. Remember to provide a contact name and phone number (and your customer’s name and phone if submitting a case history).

--Artwork. Please include three to five graphics (tables, charts, photos, diagrams, etc.) to further illustrate your story. Electronic images (photos, charts, etc.) should be provided in JPG, TIFF or EPS format, scanned at 300 DPI and with an image size of at least 3 x 4" (900x1200 pixels, though larger is better).

To submit your images electronically, you can attach the file(s) to an email or place them on our FTP site. You can use compression software (WinZip or the like) to reduce the attached file size but please send the LARGEST version you have.

Our e-mail system has a 10 MB cap on attached files, so any images larger than that will need to be placed on our FTP site. To upload files, visit http://upload.bnpmedia.com/ and follow the instructions on the web page.

--Please Note: BNP Media shall own all rights to any submission accepted for publication (including text, photographs, artwork, charts, graphs, etc.) in its edited, redesigned or otherwise altered state. In order for your article to be published, we must receive a signed copy of the attached Copyright Agreement. Please review, sign and return the agreement, which is on the next page of this document. Contact Editor Linda Becker at BeckerL@bnpmedia.com with any questions or concerns.

Thank you for considering Process Heating. If you have any questions, please call Linda Becker at (262) 564-0074 or e-mail BeckerL@bnpmedia.com.