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Synergise ContributorsWe do not pay for accepted articles. All published articles become part of the ongoing 'MERIT-scored' competition and currently a cash prize is awarded for the best article at the end of each year. Please read on for further details.
Travel Article SubmissionsIt is essential you include good pictures to illustrate your article, plus one of yourself - otherwise your article will be automatically rejected. If you wish to submit an ORIGINAL article then please send it to: We particularly like to hear from previous Synergise writers. All articles must follow our general style, should be relatively 'timeless' so they will 'endure', and should avoid detail such as prices or potentially transient commercial establishment names. The aim of Synergise is to give people a feel for the 'spirit' of the places we cover through the eyes of the writer. Articles not written in a suitable style will not be accepted. Synergise is a useful showcase for travel writing talent. Unlike many article sites, its article pages have high rankings by Google, confirming Synergise is considered an important travel site by the world's most important search engine. It is also listed in the major travel directories such as Yahoo! and the important, influential and human-edited Open Directory Project (DMOZ). Our articles are assessed by an editor and are only published if they are of a high standard - possibly subject to light editing. Your articles are therefore much more likely to be seen here by editors than are 'free-for-all' article websites. Please make sure you are familiar with our style before writing anything: by reading some of the articles listed on the Articles Page. To ensure your article stands the best chance of acceptance please carefully read our Submission Page and use the article template it provides. It is essential that within your original article submission email body you confirm you hold the copyright of your text and of the pictures. If someone else holds the copyright of the pictures then permission is required before they can be published and we must know about this from the outset. If you infringe copyright then you are liable for prosecution. If you do not have any pictures to illustrate your article, check the submissions page to find out how you can specify pictures from our preferred picture library. RequirementsPlease confirm within your submission email that your article has not been published elsewhere. (We use software to check originality; if it has, it will be rejected.) Use a single space between sentences and do NOT introduce line returns other than carriage returns to separate paragraphs. An article on a location already covered is unlikely to be accepted — so please check the Places page before submitting, to ensure it is original to Synergise! Length should be 1,000-2,000 words. The article text may be part of the submission email or an 'rtf' file attachment. The text MUST include embedded picture locators in square brackets that give the picture file name and provide a suitable caption to clearly identify the location, something like this: [pic001.jpg - Tower Bridge, London]. Pictures should ideally be not smaller than around 450 px on their longest dimension (although ones near to this should be OK), and should all illustrate the article. They should ideally have a resolution of 75dpi. Allow 1 to 5 pictures, including a picture of yourself (suitable for cropping, to clearly show your head-and-shoulders). Include clearly linked captions plus a picture filename within square brackets in the body of the text to show which paragraph refers to each picture (eg [Trafalgar Square - traf-square3.jpg] ). All the pictures MUST be included within the original submission email. Each article should ideally include one really good picture that can be reduced to 450px wide x 300px high for use as the picture used in our picture gallery to advertise your article. Each article should be well titled, name its author, state how many words it is, and indicate its location in the style: 'CONTINENT > Country > Place(s) featured'. We do not accept articles from commercial enterprises that are blatant advertising vehicles for their business and will not respond to such submissions; if commercial articles are accepted they are not accepted as FreeStyle articles.
and are not, therefore, eligible for a prize. Terms of Acceptance & CopyrightNo payment is offered for articles. The payment of prize money, and the selection of articles eligible for a prize, is at the discretion of Synergise. Articles MUST be original. By submitting your original article to Synergise you agree NOT to reproduce the article elsewhere on the internet without the prior agreement of Synergise. If this is granted, you must then include the phrase 'Originally published on synergise.com', with this entire phrase linked to the synergise home page. (CopyScape gives us the means of discovering when our articles are duplicated or copyright is infringed. This is important because the search engine ranking of both your reproduced page and the original Synergise article page can also be harmed by this act of duplication.) All the pictures you include MUST be your own copyright, or you must supply clear verifiable written evidence you have the copyright holder's permission for Synergise to use them. If you submit text or pictures that infringe someone else's copyright then you will be held personally responsible for any legal redress against such copyright infringement. Original articles accepted as suitable for publication will be listed below with the initial assessment of their 'MERIT' rating (explained below), prior to publication. It is our expectation to publish all high-scoring listed articles in due course, although we do not guarantee to do so, and publication will not be to any set timescale. It is currently envisaged this will average one FreeStyle article per month. The order these articles will be published in is primarily by the highest current MERIT score: meaning the best articles will be published first and the lowest-scoring articles will take longer. Authors may NOT revise submitted articles in an attempt to increase their MERIT score. The initial assessment for the purposes of placing a submission in the table below and for providing some feedback are only quick judgements. A more detailed MERIT assessment of all published articles will take place prior to selecting a winner and this could well mean an adjustment of the MERIT scores for all articles. This process also allows us to 'raise the bar' if articles reach a generally higher standard. In the event of a tie during the final MERIT assessment the editor's decision on the greatest professionalism will decide the winning article. Given the unpredictable nature of these terms, authors of the articles listed below are welcome to publish them elsewhere prior to Synergise publication - but please let us know first so we can take them off our list. 'Getting to Know... Nationalities' Article SubmissionsPlease visit the relevant Index page for full article requirements. Articles submitted for this series are FreeStyle articles but they should just include one picture to illustrate the spirit of the nationality chosen plus an author head-and-shoulders. Synergise Travel Articles Pending PublicationThe articles in the DYNAMIC Future Publications List shown below are pending publication. The list is ordered in descending MERIT and then chronological submission date order. This means the best articles get published first, and articles with identical MERIT score are published in order of receipt. So if you submit a new article that receives a MERIT score higher than the best currently shown below then it will go right to the top of the list; otherwise it will slot into this list at the relevant place. If this list exceeds 12 articles, the bottom articles drop out of the list! Articles not published during 2009 will be carried over to any subsequent FreeStyle competition in the following year. DYNAMIC FUTURE PUBLICATIONS LISTWE
ARE STILL FAST-TRACKING
Symbols in the above table
† indicated the article is shortly to be published. MERIT Scores shown with a double-asterisk (**) includes a 1-point penalty in the Expertise element due to repetition of information about destinations covered elsewhere on this website. If an article has been in the list for some time we sometimes promote it ahead of higher MERIT scoring articles to ensure it does not get passed over for too long (indicated by '^'). Well, we like to be fair! This explains why an article is higher in the list than its MERIT score alone justifies. *The 'MERIT' Scoring SystemPublished articles must be of a high standard and our criteria for acceptance is based upon assessment within 5 categories, summarized by the following easily remembered acronym: MERIT:
When we assess a submitted article for suitability we award points for each of the five different categories as follows (disregarding any improvements we feel we have made through editing):
For example, taking each element of the 'MERIT' assessment in turn, an article rated as '43302=12' signifies the following assessment: Memorability is of good standard (scoring 4), Expertise and Rendition are of average standard (both scoring 3), Images were non-existent or poor (scoring 0), and Travel content was well below average (scoring 2); the individual points in the MERIT Assessment give a total of '12'. Thus, articles with totals above 12 are likely to get published before this one. To qualify as a 'Feature Article', an article must normally score a minimum of 2 points in each category and have a total score of 18+; it must also be a suitable topic that fits into our publication plans. Assessment for prize selection firstly takes into account the highest MERIT score in the group. In the event of more than one article being scored with the highest points, final assessment will look for the article judged to be the most professional and atmospheric. The Benefits of Writing for SynergiseImmediate AssessmentThe fact that articles considered suitable for publication are listed in the table above means you get immediate feedback. You can use the MERIT scoring for your article to spot any weaknesses in your writing - and correct them in future submissions. (Remember, we do not accept resubmissions of the same article.) Author PagesWhen we publish more than one article by a given author
we create an 'Author Page' for them (Example).
Not only does this list all their articles published on this site, it
also provides the option of including a short biography, a photograph,
and a list of their published work, perhaps including future aspirations.
It's a bit like having an online CV or web page that can be referenced
when writing to publishers and agents - or viewed when an interested editor
reads one of your Synergise articles. Your web address takes the following
form: Your Author Page showcases your online work - without the cost and hassle of producing and hosting your own website. It could also lead to independent approaches from editors and commissions. VisibilitySynergise also has a high ranking by Google (level 5, where Yahoo! is top, at 10, because this system uses a 'points ranking' out of 10), confirming Synergise is considered an important travel site by the world's most important search engine. It is also listed in the major travel directories such as Yahoo! and the important and influential Open Directory Project (DMOZ). Your articles are therefore much more likely to be seen by editors here than on many comparable travel websites which have low Google page rankings (1-3) and may well be unranked by Alexa for traffic significance. Most article submission sites do not even have any ranking on their article pages whereas our pages gain good rankings over time; it takes several months of stability for a page to reach its final rankings with Google. Free Book PromotionWe offer the option of FREE advertising of books published by contributing authors under FreeStyle submissions: one per article on an article page, with these repeated on the Author Page. This can link directly to up to four online sites selling your book (eg Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, your publisher's site and even your own website). Online Writing: A Reality-CheckIt is very hard to get paid for writing articles published on the Internet. This is because most article sites have a very small income, usually derived solely from cheap advertising, and they just don't have the means to pay high fees. Even search-engine derived advertising only brings a small reward except for sites with an exceptionally high number of visitors: these ads only pay a tiny amount for actual 'clicks'. Nearly all article web sites therefore publish articles without offering any financial reward to their writers - and there are well over a hundred of them. Exceptions? Of course there are exceptions, but these are normally sites linked by a company to a saleable product which produces the income necessary to cover payment: such as the sales from an associated magazine; to get published in these you need to be a high-flyer. Nearly all of the article submission sites require that you offer free syndication of your articles on other websites, for that is their pull: they offer free content to other sites. This means that writers' articles may thereafter appear anywhere else on the web providing their name and 'resource box' details are also published. This gives their writers a high profile - but no financial reward. Whatever they might say about copyright, in effect, you are giving it away for free. Multiple copies of articles on different sites gets those sites penalized by major search engines, which degrades their value and originality. Much of the content on submission sites comprises short articles of poor quality containing 'weazle-words' that barely disguise their advertising slant; they usually have very little to offer by way of interest - and the same old articles appear everywhere. That is why these are not sites to keep the average visitor around for very long: a few page-views at most until the truth dawns. Some of these article sites are virtually clones of each other. This is where Synergise.com is very different - we only publish quality articles with worthwhile content. We get many thousands of unique visitors every week. Once someone has visited our site they soon discover it is all about QUALITY and they come back as a consequence. We prefer ORIGINAL articles. Original, non-duplicated articles will rank higher in search engine results than duplicated ones which, in simple terms, means more people will be led to them from search engine results due to their higher positioning in those results. Current authors are asked to bear this in mind before they get counter-productive and flood the web with copies of an article! We detect all duplication of articles using Copyscape. Previous Prize Winners
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signifies a newly accepted article which has nudged in above earlier articles
due to a higher MERIT score.
