Contributor guidelines
Image from ViiV Healthcare and Shutterstock’s HIV in View collection
Purpose of the PozQoL Stories
PozQoL Stories provide a space where:
- Organisations using PozQoL can share their experiences and findings
- Organisations thinking about using PozQoL can find ideas, tips, and confidence
Who can contribute to PozQoL Stories
Organisations that are using, or have used, PozQoL in their work with PLHIV are welcome to share their story.
What to say
In order for the posts to be as helpful as possible, we ask authors to include (where relevant):
- In what service, project, study, program (etc.) did you use PozQoL?
- Where (what location) and in which languages did you use PozQoL?
- How did you use PozQoL?
- Why did you choose PozQoL?
- What was useful about PozQoL?
Other information you might like to include:
- What did you learn? (Have you published anything?)
- Do you have any messages or advice for others thinking about using PozQoL?
- Does your service, program, study (etc) have a website?
- Do you have contact details you are happy to share? (Can people looking for more information get in touch with you?)
Written stories
Please provide your story in English. You are welcome to provide your story in other languages* in addition to the English version.
Please be mindful that not everyone finds it easy to read in English. We ask you to write in plain English.
This includes keeping your:
- Sentences and words simple
- Sentences and paragraphs short
Tools to help with writing in plain English:
- Microsoft Word provides readability scores
- Monash University has some helpful tips for using these
- Please make sure the Flesch Reading Ease Score of your story is above 60 if possible and not lower than 50
- Readable is an online tool that helps you improve text under 1,000 words
- WebFX calculates readability scores for longer text but does not give tips for improving it
Video stories
You are welcome to share your story as a video.
If you choose to submit a video story, you must:
- Demonstrate that you have informed consent from everyone appearing in the video
- Provide a written transcript of your video
Images
- You must have the right to publish the image for this purpose
- If necessary, please provide attribution information
- Header images should be large enough to use in the header
- Images must not contain identifiable images of adults (aged 18 and over) unless you can demonstrate that you have their consent to use their image for this purpose
- Images must not contain identifiable images of children (aged 17 and under) unless you can demonstrate that their parents or legal guardians consent to the use of their image for this purpose
How to submit your story
- Contact us to discuss your story.
- Send us:
- The text of your story (around 300 words)
- A short blurb about yourself (50-100 words)
- For written stories: at least one image that we can use as a feature image for the story (if you do not have any suitable images, we can help you find a stock image)
- A profile picture of yourself (optional)
- Our editor will work with you to make sure that what we publish meets our guidelines and stays true to your voice and story.
*Please note, to ensure the safety of our communities, we cannot publish stories in languages other than English unless we can independently confirm that they are true translations of the English version.