Materials Evaluation Sponsored Article Submission Guidelines

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Sponsored articles give your technical experts a way to share what they know with the nondestructive testing (NDT) professionals who read Materials Evaluation (ME) every month. The strongest pieces lead with insight: a method applied to a real inspection problem, a trend your team is tracking, or a capability explained well enough that readers can judge whether it fits their work. The requirements below help you turn that expertise into a published article.

Article Content & Length

  • Length limit: Keep the full piece to 2,000 words or fewer. That count includes headings, references, author biographies, company information, tables, and figure captions.

  • Tone and voice: Write in a professional, informative tone focused on technical applications, processes, or product capabilities. Third person is preferred. Use “we” only in the final call to action.

  • Claims and symbols: Avoid promotional superlatives, unsupported award or comparison claims, and prices. Leave out the ® and ™ symbols.

Visual and Sourcing Requirements

  • Quantity: Include up to four figures.

  • File format and resolution: Submit each figure as a separate, high-quality JPEG or PNG, preferably at least 1,200 pixels wide. Images must stay clear and legible at the size they display online. Diagrams, charts, and inspection images need readable labels and enough resolution to preserve important details. Don’t enlarge low-resolution images to meet the minimum size, and don’t embed images in Word documents, since they won’t be accepted.

  • Captions and rights: Provide a numbered caption of one or two sentences, a source credit, descriptive alt text, and confirmation that you have permission to publish each image.

  • Numbering and structure: Refer to figures in the manuscript in numerical order. Each figure must be a single image. Multipart figures, such as 2a and 2b, aren’t accepted.

  • Content limits: Text-heavy diagrams, flowcharts, process charts, specification sheets, and screenshots aren’t accepted as figures. Present their substantive text in the article instead. Figures can’t appear inside tables.

  • Quantity: One simple table is permitted.

  • Structure: Use editable text in standard rows and columns. Don’t use merged cells, multiline cells, embedded lists, images, QR codes, links, footnotes within cells, or empty rows and columns. Don’t use tables to control page layout.

  • Specification sheets: Summarize the key specification information in the table. Where it fits, link to the relevant page on your website instead.

  • Promotional links: Include no more than three outbound promotional links. Place them on descriptive text within the body of the article, not as visible URLs or within tables, captions, or footnotes. Links should lead readers to relevant pages on the sponsor’s website. Identify any link that leads to gated content or a download.

  • References: References are optional. Include no more than eight. Number them in the order first cited, cite every listed reference in the article, and make sure the numbers match. No more than half of the references may be to the sponsor’s own materials.

  • QR codes: QR codes aren’t permitted.

  • Quantity: Include up to four figures.

  • File format and resolution: Submit each figure as a separate, high-quality JPEG or PNG, preferably at least 1,200 pixels wide. Images must stay clear and legible at the size they display online. Diagrams, charts, and inspection images need readable labels and enough resolution to preserve important details. Don’t enlarge low-resolution images to meet the minimum size, and don’t embed images in Word documents, since they won’t be accepted.

  • Captions and rights: Provide a numbered caption of one or two sentences, a source credit, descriptive alt text, and confirmation that you have permission to publish each image.

  • Numbering and structure: Refer to figures in the manuscript in numerical order. Each figure must be a single image. Multipart figures, such as 2a and 2b, aren’t accepted.

  • Content limits: Text-heavy diagrams, flowcharts, process charts, specification sheets, and screenshots aren’t accepted as figures. Present their substantive text in the article instead. Figures can’t appear inside tables.

  • Quantity: One simple table is permitted.

  • Structure: Use editable text in standard rows and columns. Don’t use merged cells, multiline cells, embedded lists, images, QR codes, links, footnotes within cells, or empty rows and columns. Don’t use tables to control page layout.

  • Specification sheets: Summarize the key specification information in the table. Where it fits, link to the relevant page on your website instead.

  • Promotional links: Include no more than three outbound promotional links. Place them on descriptive text within the body of the article, not as visible URLs or within tables, captions, or footnotes. Links should lead readers to relevant pages on the sponsor’s website. Identify any link that leads to gated content or a download.

  • References: References are optional. Include no more than eight. Number them in the order first cited, cite every listed reference in the article, and make sure the numbers match. No more than half of the references may be to the sponsor’s own materials.

  • QR codes: QR codes aren’t permitted.

Manuscript Preparation

Word file: Submit one final Microsoft Word (.docx) manuscript with simple default formatting. Accept all tracked changes, remove comments, and run spelling and grammar checks before submission.

Headings: Use short, sentence-case headings with no more than one level of subheading. Don’t add category tags or keyword lines above the title.

Emphasis: Avoid colored, highlighted, underlined, all-capital, or decorative text. Don’t use bold or italics for emphasis. Reserve italics for publication titles and standard scientific usage.

Layout: Don’t use manual tabs or spaces for indentation, blank lines for spacing, or forced line breaks within paragraphs. Avoid text boxes, columns, running headers or footers, page numbers, and end-of-document markers.

Figure captions: List all numbered figure captions together at the end of the manuscript, matching the separate image files.

Quotations: Keep quotations from outside sources brief, in quotation marks, and cited. Paraphrase longer passages.

Units and characters: Use SI units, with US customary units in parentheses where helpful. Type special characters such as µ, °, and × as standard text characters, not in the Symbol font.

Editorial Review and Disclosure

ASNT provides editorial review for grammar, style, and formatting, including one round of author queries. This service does not include substantive rewriting, article restructuring, fact-checking, technical verification, table reconstruction, or sourcing missing images. Manuscripts that exceed the stated limits or do not meet formatting and artwork requirements may be returned for correction before editing begins. Please allow 15 to 20 business days for editorial review and revisions, if required.  

Published articles will be identified as sponsored content and will name the sponsor. The disclosure will also state that ASNT does not endorse products or services. 

Before You Submit

  • The manuscript is final, in .docx format, and no more than 2,000 words.

  • There are no more than four publication-ready figure files, each with its caption, alt text, credit, and rights confirmation.

  • There is no more than one editable table, three promotional outbound links, and eight numbered references.

  • All figures and references are cited in order, and the manuscript is proofread with no tracked changes or comments.

Please submit your manuscript and accompanying figure files to your ASNT advertising contact using the submission instructions provided for your placement.

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