What are we looking for?

ROAR publishes a wide variety of content, from opinion pieces and political essays to photo reports and documentaries. We are also open to interviews, book reviews and book excerpts. We do not accept simultaneous submissions, which means that we expect you to submit your work exclusively to ROAR, unless explicitly stated otherwise in your pitch.

We maintain the same basic principles for all our content. Your writing should be accessible to a broad international readership, so try to avoid academic jargon, ditch those footnotes, break up your paragraphs, keep sentences to the point and always contextualize your narrative. We strongly encourage critical thinking, radical analysis and subversive commentaries. We also expect you to engage in rigorous fact-checking and proofreading prior to submitting your piece.

Please keep in mind that ROAR is an activist-run publication working on a shoestring budget. We are unfortunately not in a position to pay for unsolicited submissions.

Commentaries / op-eds (600-1,200 words)

Short and timely interventions on current affairs and ongoing social struggles. These will really need to be on top of the news cycle to gain traction.

Essays (1,200-3,000 words)

The bulk of our content. Our most successful essays tend to take an in-depth look at a specific topic. We expect the author to develop a clear and coherent argument, which is briefly presented in the introduction and elaborated on in the main body of the text. Keep in mind that we are a political magazine. We are looking for engaged content. Essays do not necessarily need to be on top of the news cycle — they can also provide background, pursue a particular story, develop a historical narrative or present a more theoretical analysis.

Longreads (3,000+ words)

For submissions that exceed our average word limit we maintain one simple rule: do not waste the reader’s time. Do you really need 5,000 words to tell your story or bring your message across? If not, then please consider shortening your piece to a more manageable length, as we are likely to reject anything that smacks of “fluff.” If you do need more words to make a point, please make it worth the reader’s time and make every word count.

Photo reportage (10-20 photos)

Not something we do very often, but we are certainly open to it! Send us a PDF with a selection of 10-20 photos and a short text of 300-800 words introducing or contextualizing the series.

Interviews (1,200-3,000 words)

We are always interested in publishing interviews with leading thinkers, activists and organizers. In the past we have published interviews with David Harvey, Kristin Ross, Silvia Federici, Vandana Shiva and David Graeber, among many others. Have a look at these to get an idea of what we are looking for in this regard.

Book reviews (1,200-3,000 words)

We are also keen to stay abreast of the latest radical publications — just keep in mind that ROAR is neither an academic journal nor a literary review. When you plan to review a book for ROAR, make sure to contextualize it within the broader debate and shape your review to develop a clear and coherent argument. Summarizing or criticizing the book under review is not enough. Your piece will need to hold its own as a standalone essay.

Book excerpts

If you are an author or publisher interested in having a new book promoted on ROAR, you can always send us an email with a PDF of the book, and we will see what we can do. We also accept physical review copies, but due to the large volume of galleys we receive we need to be selective about the ones we actually end up reviewing and/or excerpting on ROAR.

Short films

ROAR is a proud curator of a wide range of independently-produced short films, documentaries and animations with a clear political message. If you would like your film to be hosted on ROAR, please make sure to include a 200-500 word introduction as part of your submission, which will be published alongside the film.

What we are not looking for

We do not publish poetry or fiction. We do accept book review submissions, but cannot honor requests to review new books ourselves. We also do not publish academic papers or student essays. Anything containing academic footnotes or citations will be immediately rejected.

ROAR is committed to publishing original content. Only in highly exceptional cases do we reproduce previously published content from other platforms. Please do not submit articles that have already been published elsewhere. Related to this, as mentioned above, we do not accept simultaneous submissions, so please make sure that all content submitted to ROAR is original, and submitted to ROAR only.

How to pitch?

Simply send an email with your pitch of no more than 200 words to submissions@roarmag.org, explaining the type of content you are pitching, the main argument you seek to develop in your contribution, and why this is relevant to ROAR’s international readership. Also make sure to introduce yourself briefly, with a few words on your professional/educational background, links to relevant past publications and outlining your expertise on the topic you are proposing to write about.

In case you have a draft ready, please include it as an attachment to the email (doc/x files only, submissions in any other format cannot be considered). If you do not have a draft yet, please provide some links to previously published work if you have any.

IMPORTANT: When submitting a draft, make sure you save it as follows: “[your last name]-[essay title].” Submissions saved as “ROAR article” or “Piece for ROAR” will inevitably get lost (it might be a unique reference for you, but not for us).

Due to the large volume of submissions we receive, we unfortunately cannot confirm receipt of each individual submission. Feel free to follow up if you do not hear back from us within 10 days, or if your piece is particularly urgent. If you decide to take your pitch elsewhere, please send us a quick email informing us about your retraction.

If English is not your first language, please have your work proofread by a native speaker before submitting it to ROAR.

Some general pointers (for more detailed guidelines we refer to the AP stylebook, cheatsheet here):

• We use US spelling. We write US and not U.S.
• Dates are written in US style: Monday, July 1, 2018.
• Always use the full word “percent” instead of %.
• Commas and periods go “inside quotation marks.”
• Use a single space after a period. No discussion.
• No footnotes; use hyperlinks where possible. Hyperlinks cover no more than two, or maximum three words, and should be placed on either the verb or the data, e.g.:
  — Donald Trump won Ohio union households…
  — Labor unions spent more than $100 million…
  — … a fiscal base amounting to $8.6 billion.
  — The Guardian reported that…
• We use the em-dash (—) with a space before and after the dash. Do not use the regular dash (-) or en-dash (–).
• Please avoid the use of parentheses wherever possible (except in cases like this, where you need to specify something, like an exception, or provide a translation).
• Oxford commas only where necessary to avoid confusion.
• With every submission, please include a 150-character deck or lede (including spaces) that serves as both a summary of the main argument and a hook for the article.
• Finally, for the purpose of readability we encourage you to keep your sentences and paragraphs relatively short, and to divide your text into different sections, each with their own short (sub-)headings.