Your Research. Your Life. Your Story

You can write about any story or experience from your research/academic journey that you feel strongest about. It could be a story about:

• The beginning of your academic career. For instance, what/who inspired you to do research, why did you pick your field of study, etc.
• A memorable first-time experience, such as your first successful experiment, your first publication, your first conference experience, etc.
• Successes, triumphs, and moments of celebration along your academic journey.
• Failure, rejection, challenges, and moments of struggle in your journey.
• PhD life. your experiences as a PhD student, your PhD viva, writing your PhD thesis, etc.
• A typical day in your life as a researcher/scientist.
• Work-life balance. For instance, how do you juggle your work and family responsibilities, how do you make time for self-care, etc.
• A milestone from your publishing journey. For instance, how you dealt with a journal rejection, your experiences with peer review, the challenges you faced while writing your first manuscript, etc. 

Yes, absolutely! We understand that while you have a lot that you’d like to share with the academic community, you might not be ready for people to trace the story back to you. We also acknowledge that you might want to conceal your identity for stories that are rather personal or those that deal with sensitive topics. We respect your choice to remain anonymous and will make no mention of your identity when we publish your story. If you wish to share a story anonymously, please check the box labelled "I'd like to share my story anonymously" on the form.

You can share your story in one of three formats – text, audio, or video. We will accept any file type in any format for this purpose.

• Text: If you feel more comfortable writing down your story, add it to any text file and submit that to us. It doesn’t have to be perfect and could even be a rough draft of your thoughts.
   
• Audio: If you’re short on time and feel that writing would be too cumbersome, feel free to record your story and submit the audio file.
  
  Side note – Don't worry, it doesn't have to be like a professional podcast with a smooth flow. It can simply sound like an informal monologue/dump of your thoughts. Once you submit the audio file, we'll take care of getting it transcribed and will send you the transcript for your approval before we publish it. If we find the quality of the audio file suitable for publication, we'll publish it as is directly and inform you. If you choose to remain anonymous and worry that people will recognize your voice, we'll publish only your story transcript without the audio clip. 
   

• Video: Similar to an audio file, feel free to shoot a video of yourself narrating the story and submit it to us. Based on the quality of the video, we’ll either publish it as and/or edit it before publishing OR create a transcript and share it with you for approval before publishing.

Absolutely! If you think that adding an image or video would help tell your story, feel free to attach these media in the "Upload your story and any related files/media" field on the form. If you've shared a text file with us, you could also indicate where you’d like these media to appear within the story.

Please note: If you're attaching an image/video that you don't own, i.e., the image has not been captured by you or you don't own the copyright for it, please share the image attribution details with us in a text file so that we can credit the appropriate owner of the image at the time of publishing your story. Any images lacking these credits will not be published with the story to avoid any issues with copyright.

Once you’ve approved the final version of your story, it will be published on Your Research. Your Life. Your Story. – our special section on Editage Insights reserved for the personal stories and experiences of researchers and other academics. This will make you part of a global community of researchers that is home to more than 400 unique stories!

Your story will be read by the Editage Insights global researcher community. Editage Insights enjoys a readership of more of 300,000 readers globally. Our website is also available in Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. If we find your story relevant for our readers in these countries, we will take care of translating and publishing it across all language websites. Your contribution can thus reach more people all around the world! Your story will also be shared via our social media accounts with the larger academic community.

No, there is no payment involved for submitting a story. Your Research. Your Life. Your Story. is a global community-building initiative with the sole purpose of giving researchers a safe space on which they can freely talk about their experiences without any fear. The stories we publish on our website are completely voluntary. 

Side note: If you’ve submitted your story as part of a contest you will be eligible for and stand a chance to win the mentioned prizes.

Yes, you will still be the owner of your story. This means that you are free to publish it on your own blog or some other website with a link back to Editage Insights. We believe in the widespread dissemination of knowledge, information, and resources. That is why we use a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Under this license, our readers are free to copy, reuse, share, redistribute, or adapt our content for non-commercial purposes, as long as they give us appropriate credit and share our material under the same license. The same would be applicable to your story once published on Editage Insights. Learn more about the terms of use for the CC-BY-NC-SA license.