Contributor Guidelines
Thank you for contributing content to OutHistory. We ask that you keep the following guidelines in mind.
Audience: One audience for OutHistory is the general public. Another consists of scholars, teachers, and students, including community-based researchers. We also see our audience as including archivists, artists, journalists, lawyers, librarians, policymakers, and politicians.
Language: We ask contributors to present their work in clear, lively, and engaging language and to include visual and aural content appealing to a wide range of diverse users.
Evidence: We ask contributors to maintain a high standard of reliability as to all factual claims. We request that contributors provide complete source citations, especially for quotations. If there are conflicting facts and views about your subject, contributors should address those conflicts.
Time: OutHistory is a historical website, so time is of the essence. The basic aim of this site is to provide specifically temporal and historical perspectives on LGTBQ experiences. Contributors should strive to develop creative, innovative ways of representing change and continuity in LGBTQ history, addressing the “who, where, what, how,” and especially the “when” of their history. To maintain this focus on time and history, contributors should, when possible, include chronological references.
Present/Past: Present-day concerns inform research on the past, and we appreciate anything contributors can do to provide illuminating historical perspectives on subjects of current topical interest. Documenting and analyzing the past can help us all better understand the present. If you can, make an explicit connection between past and present that will interest our readers.
Context: We welcome your attempt to situate the history of particular LGTBQ people and phenomena within larger histories of sex, gender, sexuality, religion, nation, politics, law, economics, society, and culture.
Diversity: We especially welcome contributions that address LGBTQ history in relation to age, class, dis(ability), ethnicity, geography, indigeneity, nationality, race, region, religion, and other historically, politically, and socially influential factors. We encourage contributions on under-represented, under-researched, and under-studied aspects of LGBTQ history, including the history of African, Asian, Latinx, Muslim, Native, and Pacific Islander Americans; intersex, nonbinary, and trans people; poor, undocumented, and unhoused people; sex workers; institutionalized and incarcerated people; and people with disabilities.
Content Types: The site publishes a wide variety of content types: archival materials, audio and audiovisual recordings, documentary records, government records, historical essays, interviews, legal documents, oral histories, organizational records, periodicals, personal papers, photographic materials, visual art, and more.
Collaborations: OutHistory looks forward to collaborating with other current and future efforts to make LGTBQ history freely accessible and available. OutHistory is a collaborative effort to which many people contribute work of different kinds.
Editing: All contributors to this website should expect to have their work edited. In most cases, editorial changes will not be made without the approval of authors.