The Editorial Board welcomes the submission of papers and would encourage prospective authors to consider the following guidelines.
Criteria
To be considered for publication, articles must demonstrate three things:
- Thought leadership
- An interesting and probably challenging point of view
- Relevance to financial services marketing
Synopsis approval
Before pushing ahead with an article, please forward a theme and short synopsis to the Editor, Lourna Bourke, so that we can provide you with some initial thoughts on whether the subject is potentially of interest. This also gives us an opportunity to ensure that you are aware of the content of any previous articles in Argent that may be relevant to the subject. There is no problem in offering alternative perspectives or challenging earlier contributions directly - we believe that cogent debate is very effective in advancing the practice of good marketing - but our readers will expect you to argue your case clearly and effectively.
Copyright
Copyright in any article obviously remains with the author and/or his employer, but we do ask that any article submitted has not been published elsewhere. We also ask that you grant us a limited licence to publish the article, the main effects of which are: (i) that you agree not to offer the article to another external publication for a period of at least six months; and (ii) that if you reproduce it "in-house" within this period you include an acknowledgement that it was first published in Argent, or - if the article is modified - that it has been developed from an article first published in Argent.
Length
We prefer not to set fixed lengths for articles, but rather be guided by the needs of the argument. An article that uses more words than are necessary is too long and may bore our readers; an article that does not complete the argument is too short, and will frustrate our readers. Variety in length is also useful from an editorial perspective, as it avoids visual monotony and offers a broad range of "reading experiences". As a rough guide, however, a typical article in Argent is about three pages long - which corresponds to about 1500 words with illustrations or 1800 words with pure text. We have carried articles as short as one page, however, and as long as seven. As a rule of thumb, articles longer than three pages generally need either diagrams or text boxes with additional facts or summaries as an aid to digestion and understanding.
Style
Again, we prefer not to be over-prescriptive in terms of prose style - it is important for the author's character to come through - but it is also important that any article is comfortable to read. We have many style and typographical preferences that will be applied at the sub-editing stage (such revisions are always sent back to the authors for comment), but the two commonest style problems we find with submitted articles are: lazy repetition of words (nothing wrong if this is done for effect, but using (for example) "marketing" five times in one paragraph is likely to tire the reader; and over-use of the continuous present tense ("we are seeing increasingly more advertising .") - this is fine in speech, but has a different effect on the page. As a general rule, articles should be written in the impersonal third person - "It is ." - but there is sometimes a case for the use of the first person or a more colloquial style in particular articles - generally where the author is expressing a specifically-personal view.
Content
Content is obviously more important. Our vision is that any article in Argent should carry sufficient insight and authority for a reader to use the article as a full justification to support any business proposals that he might discuss with his colleagues or his boss. That clearly requires that the content is accurate and realistic - articles should not read like sales promotion brochures for the latest (proprietary) management technique - but also that any observations or assertions should be properly supported by references where appropriate. Don't just say "It is well known that" or "It has been shown that ". If you are citing published research or the work of a respected author, then give a proper reference (including the page or chapter if it is a book) - and make sure that the reference actually says what you are ascribing to it, and is in an appropriate context. And don't cite just one side of an argument or a postulate that you know (or suspect) to be controversial.
None of this should preclude a "this is what I think even if everyone else disagrees" article - we like polemical perspectives, not least because they can add greatly to our readers' understanding of marketing and management issues - but they should be clearly presented as such.
As a general observation, articles should be fairly erudite and authoritative, with sufficient depth of content to inform rather than just interest (think Harvard Business Review rather than Newsweek), and should ideally make our readers think differently about an apparently-familiar topic, or consider an unfamiliar or unknown subject for the first time.
These points should also be clear from the general style and tone of previous issues of Argent.
To discuss editorial opportunities in more detail, please contact:
Lorna Bourke
Editor, Argent
The Financial Services Forum
8a Utopia Village
7 Chalcot Road
London NW1 8LH
Tel: 020 7449 9000
Email: lb@thefsforum.co.uk