Submitted blog articles should be about science news that would be of interest to the average person. However, blog articles that are included in Science Gossip should also follow the general guidelines below:

1. Must be a blog article.
2. Should discuss recent science news.
3. Should not be a summary of an item from another news source.
4. Should not be about one's own research.
5. Should be credible.

Must be a blog article

One thing that Science Gossip is trying to do is to see if sufficient coverage of science news for the layman can be achieved only through blogs. This is why only blog articles will be acceptable for Science Gossip. Obviously there is the problem of what exactly a blog is, but this will be left to the editors' discretion.

Should be recent science news

Blog articles that are submitted should be about recent science news. Educational content covering science in general is definitely worthwhile. However, such content is outside the scope of Science Gossip, whose goal is only to cover science news. Attempting to organize all scientific knowledge in general would also be overreaching.

How recent should "recent" science news be? As it can take time for a blog article to be written, not only to write the article itself but also to gather and analyze all the relevant facts, there is no hard and fast rule. However, it should be safe to say that scientific results that are decades old would not qualify as science news.

Should be original

For the same reason why a submitted web page should be a blog article, the blog article in question should also not depend on traditional media such as newspapers or television for its content. Since Science Gossip is also an experiment to see whether traditional media is unnecessary for good science journalism, it would be missing the point if most of the submitted content could not exist without traditional media. This does not mean that simply linking to traditional media would disqualify a submission, but it does mean that there should be substantial content that is original.

The same restrictions do not apply to press releases, but they have their own limits. For the same reason why a blog article should not be about one's own work, a submitted blog article should not just duplicate content from a press release. While public interest might be indicated when a third party blogs about science news announced through a press release, it would be better if the blog article does not just repeat what is said in the press release.

Of course, a blog article that lifted most of its content from another source but did not credit it with even a link would be guilty of plagiarism, which is an even bigger no-no.

Should be about someone else

Getting information from the horse's mouth directly can be great. Unfortunately, it is also often pretty bad. Not only could someone feel the strong desire to exaggerate or even falsify their scientific achievements, they often are not even aware of their own hyperbole or misinformation. It is even more frequent for people to overestimate how interesting the public might find their work. Therefore Science Gossip will usually only accept blog article submissions written by third parties.

This is not an ironclad rule, and there will be exceptions in cases such as when a well-known organization writes about themselves that is of public interest and where the accuracy of the blog article is not controversial.

Should be credible

There is already far too much misinformation among the public that masquerades as science: Science Gossip will strive to not be part of the problem. This is why only blog articles with credible content will be accepted. This does not mean that it has to be written by an acclaimed scientist, but it does mean that the content should at least be plausible to a mainstream scientist. It will be a very bad sign if a submitted blog article scores high on the crackpot index.

This does not mean that it is impossible for a pseudoscientific fringe theory to be true, but Science Gossip is not the place for promoting or proving such theories.